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David McElroy

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I hate the intense pain, but I don’t know how to live without longing

By David McElroy · December 9, 2017

Imagine living in a world where everybody sees black and white and shades of gray — and you realize that you’re different from everyone else, because you see the world in vivid colors instead.

The experience of color is amazing, but how frustrating would it be if you couldn’t explain to others what you saw? What if others didn’t understand, because they had no frame of reference? How painful would it be to want to share that experience of color — but you couldn’t share it with anyone? How lonely would that be?

For much of my early life, I assumed everyone experienced emotions in the same intense ways that I do. When I discovered otherwise, I was confused and struggled to explain how my interior experience of painful emotion works. I’ve almost given up, because so few are even interested.

I was reminded of this again tonight because of what I felt during a movie. It was just a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, so it’s not something most people would have seen as intensely emotional, but interaction between two characters struck me in that oddly intense way. Two characters each experienced painful longing for the other, even though they couldn’t be together.

As I’ve had to do so many times when I experience such things, I had to pause the film and let the feelings dissipate.

This isn’t unusual for me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a theater watching a movie with a girlfriend and I’ve had to suddenly quit listening and look away from the screen. In those moments, the intensity of whatever I’m feeling is so strong that I have to get away from it. During a couple of movies — “The Hours” and “Radio Flyer” — the intensity of the feelings was so strong I had to briefly go to the lobby to compose myself.

I doubt any of my girlfriends has entirely understood what was going on, but the best among them have at least empathized with my experience.

I can’t say why my emotional experiences are so intense, especially around the subject of connecting with deeply felt love for another. For years, I thought about this and read psychology books in an effort to understand, but the most helpful possibility I’ve ever run across was from writer Shari Schreiber. She says it goes back to unresolved childhood issues — and that feels right for me. She wrote:

A child who’s grown up believing they have to behave perfectly in order to receive attention, affirmation or praise has acquired a distorted definition of love. For this child, Love means painful longing and yearning for that which cannot be gratified. Thus, this same type of emotional experience is intoxicating in his/her adult attachments, for their present anguish is literally identical to feelings that he/she experienced throughout childhood, which are now interpreted as “the real deal,” or True Love.

This means that lovers who are capable of reciprocating their care and affection are rejected out of hand. It’s boring and doesn’t feel like a fit, because this dynamic doesn’t trigger the dramatic inner pain that was consistently associated with loving, as a kid.

Core-damaged children grow into needful adults, but they could fear that if they let themselves love somebody as intensely as they want to, that person will freak out, run off into the night, and abandon them. Their sense of need feels gigantic, and often very painful. It presumes that someone on the receiving end won’t be able to handle it — which triggers shame for being “so needy.”

There’s a French phrase which applies here. The French speak of “la douleur exquise” and it literally means “the exquisite pain.” It expresses the pain of wanting the love of someone unattainable. I can see ways in which this applied in my childhood — and it would be natural that I would still be seeking to resolve the same longing as an adult.

One of the things I accepted years ago is that I’m not attracted to women who are completely emotionally healthy. It’s obviously not a conscious choice, but I’ve seen it play out too many times not to accept it.

As Schreiber says, someone who is too normal and emotionally healthy seems boring to me. That doesn’t feel right. A person like that couldn’t possibly have experienced the emotional trauma that drives me to be what I am. On the other hand, someone who is too far into the realm of emotional damage — and who has no understanding of her internal damage or interest in emotional health — is useless in an entirely different way. (I almost married someone like that. I loved her, but I doubt she’s ever going to be emotionally healthy. I hope for her sake that I’m wrong, although she will never be in my life again.)

A woman I’m attracted to walks a fine line — like a razor’s edge between two chasms. If she’s too far in one direction, she’s too “normal” to ever understand me. If she’s too damaged, she will never have the ability to heal enough to have a healthy relationship and form a healthy family.

There aren’t many women at that very narrow place — and even fewer who recognize something in me which they believe could make us good for one another.

When I was young, kids at school perceived me as having little in the way of emotions. I didn’t express myself and I was pretty withdrawn except in the academic sense. (In those situations, I was driven and competitive. I needed to achieve and prove myself superior.) When I was in middle school, some of my classmates derisively called me “Spockelroy” — a portmanteau for Star Trek’s Spock and my last name — because they saw me as operating like a computer with no feelings.

It took me many years to get in touch with those hidden emotions and to realize how much of me was buried in them. The teen version of myself wouldn’t recognize the emotional self I am today and I barely recognize him. I understand now that I buried my emotions because it would have been too intensely painful to actually feel them.

Today, I walk around with my feelings as a flag. I no longer hide who I am or what I feel. Other people frequently don’t understand that, but I can’t help it. As Pat Terry said in a song many years ago, “Sometimes these feelings are a curse to me, but they’re who I am and they’re the way I see; guess I’ll take them with me to eternity some bright and glorious day.”

The longing that I carry with me is looking to resolve childhood pain. If you believe a lot of psychology, almost everything we do is about resolving something painful from childhood. We’re trying to overcome trauma or a loss of someone or rejection or a thousand other possibilities.

I used to see this aspect of myself as broken, but then I realized that we’re all broken. Some people just don’t accept their brokenness. They’re ashamed of their brokenness and they hide it in ways that prevent them from having any chance of healing.

Today, I accept it for what it is. The longing isn’t so much about the past — and it’s not about blame for anyone — but rather diagnosing the damage and finding ways to repair it.

I’ve come a long way from where I once was. I understand far more than I understood even 10 years ago, much less 20 or 30 years ago. Much of what I understand now would have scared me then.

I still need a partner who is strong where I am weak — someone for whom I can be strong in places where she is weak. Needing such reciprocity isn’t weakness. It’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s simply a recognition that many of us are badly broken — and we need each other to repair what’s wrong and to become what we are capable of being.

Until I have that, I’ll keep walking around being open about who and what I am. I’ll keep hoping she sees this longing I carry and say, “You have something I need — and I have something you need — so we belong together.”

I hate this feeling of longing — and I look forward to the day when I no longer have to feel it — but for today, I know no other way to live. So I embrace these intense feelings and long for the day when I can share them with the right partner who needs what I offer.

I pray that day comes soon.

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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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