Slow death of painful past leaves me trapped in fog of depression

By David McElroy · March 28, 2018

I dreamed that I was stumbling through thick fog. It was mostly dark and I couldn’t see where I was. There were shapes around me that seemed vaguely sinister. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I needed to put this oppressive fog behind me.

That dream a couple of nights ago seems to have been my mind’s way of giving me a metaphor for the last nine days. I know I need to talk about what I’m feeling and experiencing, but I don’t quite know what to say — and there’s no one to say it to.

When I thought my father was dying nine days ago, it brought up all sorts of painful feelings. The feelings are always just underneath the surface for me, but they’ve been front and center for the last nine days. And what I thought would be a crisis of a few days that would resolve itself one way or the other has dragged on — and I feel as though I’m stumbling through old feelings and fears and nightmares.

It makes me feel desperately alone.

It’s not that I haven’t talked with other people about it. After I wrote on Tuesday about some of my feelings about the past, I was flooded with people telling me they’ve been through the same thing. Some said things such as, “I’ve never told anybody this, but that happened to me, too.” A friend who shared the article on Facebook wrote to me to say it led to private discussions with her own friends about shared experiences.

I have a feeling that there is far more of this hidden shame and fear than we’re aware of. A lot of people have been traumatized by things they have trouble talking about — but they feel shame about admitting it could have happened in their families.

I’ve talked with one of my sisters for several long conversations over the last week, comparing notes about current feelings and talking about the past in ways that we haven’t for many years. My other sister sent me a copy of a letter she wrote to our father last month. It was beautifully written, painfully honest and brutally truthful.

But as much as I keep confronting the truth about the past in various ways, there’s something I need to feel or do that goes beyond what my words know how to say. In fact, it seems as though I’m desperately trying to find rational words for painful feeling that simply don’t translate. The feelings are simply too abstract and the pain is too searing to be confined to words.

I want to scream deep feelings of anguish, but no words will come out — and there seems to be no one there to listen.

But even that isn’t right. I can’t figure out how to say it. Dozens of people have offered to listen. People have tried to be helpful and supportive. Some of them have even been through very similar dysfunction with narcissists and it’s helpful to know they understand.

Despite that, though, it feels as though there’s no one to listen. Maybe it’s simply that the right one isn’t there to listen. I have a picture in my mind about what this should be like — having a trusted loved one to talk with at such a time — and she’s not there. I think that’s what makes me feel so alone.

Every story has an end, but I don’t see the resolution for this one.

And that’s another thing that has me feeling as though I’m in the fog of depression. Does this ever end? Even when I’m able to go back to “normal life,” will the past ever be completely gone?

Will I ever be able to stumble out of this fog — and into the light and fresh air of love and emotional health? I don’t know.

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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?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

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.

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