Lives change in moments of truth when we stop lying to ourselves

By David McElroy · September 5, 2017

I looked across the table at Nicole’s face. I was intimately familiar with every single bit of her beautiful face. We had dated for several years and we were engaged to be married. But I suddenly saw her as though it was for the first time.

“I can’t marry you,” I thought to myself. “I absolutely can’t marry you. We’re not right for each other.”

I had known this for a long time, but I had been lying to myself. On the surface, Nicole was everything I could want. She was a tall, beautiful and well-educated woman from the Midwest. She had moved to Birmingham because she loved me and wanted a future with me.

I had been lying to myself about her for quite some time. After I broke up with her early in the relationship and she begged me to give us another chance, I relented — even though I knew better. When she told me she wanted to move down here for us to date full time, I didn’t promise her anything, but I also didn’t tell her what I knew — that it wouldn’t work.

After we dated for awhile, I found myself engaged to marry her. She wanted it very much and I didn’t seem to have a better alternative. I gave her a ring — which made her happy — but I knew better.

On that night in a restaurant — 10 years ago this month — I finally stopped lying to myself. I don’t know what it was about that moment, but something changed. As I stared at her beautiful face, I simply knew that my charade had to end. For the sake of both of us, I couldn’t marry this woman.

I broke off the engagement and we’ve gone separate ways. She’s happily married to someone else now and I’m happy for her. I have nothing bad to say about her, but I’m very happy I didn’t marry her.

With every positive major change in my life, there has been such a moment.

You see, I’m very good at lying to myself. When I know what I want, I can convince myself I’ll have it if I just wait long enough. And if I’m afraid to change something which I know is wrong for me, I’m good at convincing myself that things will somehow turn out fine if I’ll ignore what should be obvious.

One of the most horrifying realizations of adult life is that we are our own worst enemies. Other people might lay the foundations for our mistakes and disasters, but we’re almost always the ones who pull the trigger for these self-inflicted wounds.

When I look back at the things I’ve learned, I can see the ways in which my childhood left me ill-prepared for making emotionally healthy decisions in some cases, but with every single one of the major mistakes I’ve made along the way — the mistakes which fill me with regret today — I find they were all within my own power to change.

When I’ve made mistakes, I can almost always point to one moment when I made a decision that led me to somewhere I regretted.

There are moments when I’ve given up on something or someone I wanted when I shouldn’t have. There are moments when I’ve let fear keep me from attempting something I wanted to do. But there are moments when I’ve done the right thing — quit lying to myself — and made the right decision. It’s not always obvious in the moment which moments are which.

The common thread, though, is that there’s always a moment when I’m facing a choice between two paths. In retrospect, the right choice is always obvious. In the moment, fear and indecision can make things look confusing.

I’m more aware than ever lately of those brief moments of decision which change everything.

I have a feeling some more of those moments are coming for me soon. I’ve had to make some painful changes lately and I know the path I’m on isn’t sustainable in an emotional sense. Something has to change. I keep telling myself I can keep living the way I’m living — but I know I’m lying to myself.

Whether I like it or not, I’m approaching one of those moments of decision when everything will change. I don’t know what the decision will be, but I feel it coming.

Self-deception is a terrible thing. Admitting truth and making the right changes — however painful they are — is the only way to change a life and redeem lost hope. I just hope when that moment comes this time, I’ll be able to have the courage to stop lying to myself — and make whatever change I need to make right now.

Note: The name in this article has been changed from the actual woman’s name.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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