Living without human connection? It’s an empty life with no meaning

By David McElroy · June 13, 2013

Wednesday was a terrible day for me. It started out badly when I woke up and found a picture and some text that someone had sent me in the night. Someone who I love has been depressed and suicidal for some time. There were times when it was better and times when it was worse. Right now is one of the worse times.

But this isn’t her story. Instead, it’s the story of someone who loves a depressed and suicidal person. It’s about how it’s affecting me.

All day Wednesday, I felt physically sick and mentally anxious and emotionally heartsick, simply because someone I love needs help that I don’t know how to provide.

I’ve been through things in my own life that scared me, but I’ve never been as afraid as I am now about this situation. The most recent crisis point had passed by the time I knew it was going on, but I still walked around in a daze all day. At different times, I felt fear, despair, anger and determination.

I can’t be sure how much of my fear is for her and how much is the realization that her death would destroy me. So am I feeling empathy for her or am I selfishly fearing the loss of someone I value? I keep thinking about that, but I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters, because the same outcome is in the best interest of both of us, even if she doesn’t see that now.

Why is the idea of losing one person enough to strike this kind of existential fear into me? Although this is someone I love, it’s not someone I’ve seen lately. So why does it even matter?

Human connection is hard for me. I actually think it’s difficult for most people, although I think most people are so bad at it that they don’t realize this. I think most people never know what it’s like to really connect with another human at the heart level. Regardless of what it’s like for others, though, it’s very difficult for me to make that connection with another — because I don’t “match” many people inside — so I treasure the rare time when it can exist.

I feel a deep connection with this person. It’s one that has survived things that should have destroyed it for both of us. I can’t explain it. I wish I could.

All I know is that most of the things I do in life are for her, even though she never knows that or sees the connection. She’s the motivation for the good things I do, not because they’re going to get something from her, but because my heart knows that she’s in the world.

And that gets to the heart of it all. Something about her heart still feeling and her brain still thinking — her mere existence — makes the world a different place for me. I don’t know how to live in a world where I can’t feel her presence from afar and I can’t hope for the day when I’ll see her again. A world without her would be a very empty and nihilistic place for me to live in. I’d rather not find out how it would feel — because living without real human connection again would be losing all meaning in life.

I can’t give up on her life without a fight. I know that she can find meaning in life and can enjoy living, even if she can’t see that right now. I don’t have any idea how to make her believe that. But I somehow have to find a way.

These words aren’t really about her. They’re about my fears. They’re about the existential crisis I face. They’re about trying to find the courage to keep fighting for someone who’s lost the ability to go on — when it would be easier to run away. They’re about shoving aside the fear and concentrating on finding a way to bring meaning in life to someone who’s given up.

So this is all about me. It’s about my fear and anger and frustration and sheer terror of having absolutely no control over something very important to me.

I have tremendous empathy for her. I have tremendous faith in her. I like her. I love her. And I respect her.

Those are the things that won’t let me give up. I’m feeling a lot of fear, but I won’t give up on her. I hope she won’t give up on me.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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