No loneliness worse than being with others, but not the right one

By David McElroy · February 27, 2019

This has happened to me before. It will happen again. Maybe it’s happened to you.

I got into my car Wednesday evening after a long day at work. Nothing earth-shattering happened, but it was busy. Interesting things happened. OK, more like “mildly interesting” things. But as I absentmindedly left the I-65 ramp to merge onto I-459 heading home, I picked up my iPhone to make a call. And then I stopped.

What was I doing? Oh, yeah. I picked up the phone to call her.

It wasn’t a conscious impulse. Nothing in me decided it was finally time to call her out of the blue. It was just an automatic reflex of my body to a yearning that I’m accustomed to squelching all the time.

Oh, yeah. We don’t talk anymore. I can’t call her. I can’t tell her what happened today. And I felt it again — that painful jolt that hits my nervous system every time this happens — as though something inside dies once more to realize how things really are.

I’ve started to realize lately just how many people experience something similar. One of the most-read articles every day on my site for the last year or so has been something I wrote about three years ago called “Missing someone creates incredibly intense physical sensations in heart.”

I wasn’t clueless enough when I wrote it to think that nobody else experienced such things, but because people frequently write me after reading that article, I’ve become aware of just how devastating it is for others.

I can’t tell you everybody else’s stories, but I hear a lot of them. I hear about people who can’t be with someone they love because their families keep them apart. I hear about unrequited love. Some of them know they’ll never be loved in return. Others hold out hope. I hear from those who are kept from another person — the one to whom they’ve given their hearts — for all sorts of reasons.

And they all hurt.

I recently discovered that the kind of loneliness experienced by these people — and by me — really does create a physical reaction in the brain. The feeling of loneliness is processed by the same part of the brain as the area in which physical pain is processed. It’s called the anterior cingulate cortex. So when you feel that jolt of emptiness — such as what I felt in the car Wednesday evening — it’s not just your imagination. You’re feeling real, physical pain.

A lot of people misunderstand this sort of loneliness. They say, “Well, here’s how you can meet someone.” But just “meeting someone” isn’t the issue.

When I’ve gone through times in my life when I loved nobody — and I simply wanted someone to whom I could give my love — I’ve experienced that need to just “meet someone.” But this is different.

This is the desire — more like a need, according to my gut — for a particular other. A particular mind. A certain soul. A loving heart. A beautiful voice. Everything.

It’s not just a need for human companionship. The people who write to me aren’t saying, “Hey, I don’t know how to meet people.” They always have somebody in particular who they love and don’t want to live without.

I’m sure this story is as old as humanity itself. Our literature is full of stories of broken-hearted people missing those they can’t have. It’s the stuff of popular movies. And popular music frequently explores the theme.

There’s not much to say about it that’s new. I can never give good advice to those who write me about it. I can’t even change my own stubborn certainty about how my life ought to be.

I can only offer love and support to those who are hurting. For those who can end up with the object of their desire, I can only wish the unification to come soon. And for those who can’t end up with the object of their love, I can only wish they can find a greater love — a new love — which can take its place.

Every time I’ve loved — not that many times in my life — I’ve thought she was the only woman in the world. But in each case, someone has come along and made me feel that someone even better loves me and wants me and chooses me.

That’s what I wait for, but it’s hard to know whether this time might be different — whether this time might be the one who can’t be replaced. It’s a heartbreaking way to live, but some of us have no choice.

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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

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