As nightmares plague my friends, I’m grateful mine have subsided

By David McElroy · October 4, 2015

Nightmares always end, but when you’re in the middle of one, it seems as though it might last forever.

Last year was terrible for me. For several years, I’d been letting myself slide into a very deep hole. I was depressed. I was broke. I was alone. I was confused.

It was a nightmare that felt as though it would never end. In fact, I didn’t just slide into that deep hole. I fell into the hole and kept digging it deeper and deeper. It seemed as though nothing I could do was right. For the first time in my life, everything felt bleak and hopeless.

But I’ve finally dug my way out of the hole, even though I’ve not really recovered entirely. I’m not where I want to be in life. I don’t have the love or family I need. I haven’t achieved the things I want to achieve. I haven’t become the person I feel driven to become.

I sometimes complain about the things in my life that I’m still unhappy about, but then I see things in the lives of people I care about — and my troubles don’t seem as big as they had seemed before.

• Last weekend, the 16-year-old daughter of a friend in Washington state was riding in a car that was struck by a hit-and-run driver in a stolen car. The young woman suffered serious head injuries and might not make it. My friend has been traumatized, of course. Her daughter had brain surgery but there’s still been serious swelling and she’s remained unconscious. She’s on life support in critical condition. It’s impossible to tell what will happen, so my friend is living in limbo.

• The daughter of a friend in Oklahoma killed herself Thursday. The 43-year-old daughter had been with the same man since she was 17. They have three children together. But she found out he had been cheating on her. Then he suddenly left his family. In her despair and grief, she shot and killed herself. My friend was devastated, especially in light of the fact that another of her children had killed himself 20 years ago.

• A neighbor who I’ve come to love dearly is being evicted from her home. She’s a physician, but she had a car accident last year and couldn’t work for a long time. Because she was away from her practice for so long, she lost all her patients. She didn’t have insurance that replaced the missing income. Her bills piled up and she entered a cycle of debt and despair. Her power is turned off and she’s in the middle of losing her home. Bankruptcy lies ahead for her — and she feels as though recovery is almost impossible.

• Another friend lost her best friend Friday. Ever since her traumatic divorce, she felt as though the only thing she had to live for was her cat, Ruffus. When he died unexpectedly, it sent her into an emotional tailspin, because this feline had been the focus of her emotional survival after the loss of her husband. He was the only one who needed or wanted her. And now she’s truly alone.

I know that problems aren’t really relative in this way. There will always be people with problems worse than mine — no matter what — so I don’t mean to imply that those of us with less serious problems can’t lament our lives not being the way we want them to be.

I don’t mean to say that as long as there’s someone with worse problems, we can’t be hurt and disappointed by things in our own lives. I’m just saying that peeking into other people’s hurts can sometimes put my own problems into perspective.

My life certainly isn’t what I need it to be. But I can still change all of those things I’m unhappy about — and the loneliness and disappointment I feel now don’t begin to compare to the grief some of my friends are feeling tonight.

So while I’m lonely and I’m eager for change in various parts of my life, I’m grateful that things aren’t worse for me. I’m grateful that I’m no longer where I was last year. I’m grateful that I’ve seen such improvement toward getting myself back to where I was 10 years ago.

I’m grateful that I have hope.

Mostly, though, I have strong empathy for my friends, even though I can’t do anything about their pain.

I know their nightmares will end. I know it doesn’t feel that way to them right now. But I know from experience that the nightmare always ends — and the slow process of rebuilding lives can start.

There’s every reason to hope, even in the middle of a nightmare.

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Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

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