Fixing what’s broken inside often makes things worse until rebirth

By David McElroy · July 6, 2019

The world is full of abandoned and broken houses. Many of them are grand old buildings which were allowed to fall into ruin. Some still look beautiful on the outside. They’ve been left to fall apart on the inside, though, because someone decided they weren’t worth the trouble and expense to save — to repair and make whole again.

The world is also full of broken people. Many look normal from the outside, but on the inside, they’re dysfunctional and falling apart. Most don’t even understand how broken they are. They’re full of invisible damage from their past. They hurt others and they hurt themselves, because it’s all they know to do.

These broken people need repair. They need to be made whole. Even if they figure out how much change they need, they often drift aimlessly or thrash about in pain and confusion.

I know this so well because it’s been my own path for many years.

When I was younger, I didn’t realize how damaged I was. I thought I just needed some minor adjustments. And then I slowly started breaking down my inner layers — stripping off old walls and floors to see the shaky foundation and crumbling supports underneath.

I eventually had to see my own pain. I had to see the damage I had unintentionally done to others. I was forced to acknowledge the source of my inner damage — and then to start taking painful steps to find healing.

When people try to restore old houses, they often take shortcuts. They put plasterboard and paint and new flooring over problems that are left in place. They sometimes spend a lot of money for work that just covers up the underlying faults that can be temporarily hidden. It’s not a wise investment, but people often get away with it. At least for awhile.

The alternative is expensive and time-consuming. It can require stripping everything back to the core of the building and fixing problems with the foundation or the support structure.

If you compare the two processes, one will appear to be making progress more quickly. If you just cover up the problems and make everything look nice with new wood and paint and flooring, a house can look great in a week or two.

But if you look at a house which is having foundational issues dealt with, it will look like a mess after the same week or two. You’ll see walls and floors torn out and you’ll see all the rotten wood and crumbling bricks exposed.

It’s the same way with people.

It’s easy to cover up problems. It’s easy to keep pretending that everything’s fine. And if you play the game just right, everybody will think you’re fine — or they won’t say anything if they suspect otherwise — and you can carry on as a depressed and dysfunctional and angry person inside. The internal details can take a million different forms, but nobody has to know about the demons inside of you.

If you invest the time and effort to really fix the underlying problems, that’s almost certainly going to be obvious to a lot of people. Others are going to know that you have issues. What’s worse, your emotional condition will probably look pretty unhealthy for awhile. Breaking down the damage requires tearing down the walls that you’ve used to hide from everyone.

But once you get that honest — with yourself and others — nothing will be the same. The repair process will be long and difficult. But when you get finished, you will be an emotionally healthy person who is at peace with yourself and with those you choose to love.

When I was young, I tried the “cover up” procedures. I thought that was all I needed. But new paint and floors didn’t fix things. I had to dig more deeply and find far more serious problems. I had to be honest — with myself and with others — about how damaged I was.

I’ve been going through a rough period for the last few weeks. I often feel like this as I’m breaking through another layer of internal resistance, after which I sometimes find the freedom to make changes I’ve needed to make. I couldn’t find that freedom without going through this painful (and often depressing) process.

Right now, I feel like walking away from something in my life. There are things I know I still need to change — which I haven’t allowed myself to change — and something in me feels like simply saying, “I quit,” whether it makes sense or not.

Everything about this would be easier for me if I were still in that place — where I was long ago — when I was in denial about how much needed to change. Lying to myself — and causing pain for those around me — was far easier, but all it did was set me up to keep hurting myself and others.

If you fix the foundational problems in a house, you’ll have a building which will last longer and will be worth more money in the long run. If you don’t fix the building’s core problems, you’re just setting yourself up for unexpected catastrophe when you can least expect it.

The same is true for a person or for a relationship. Dealing with core problems isn’t easy. It isn’t alway pleasant. But it’s the only way to be emotionally healthy and happy.

If a house or a person is worth saving, it’s worth doing the job right. It will take longer that way. It will have a higher cost. It will expose a lot of ugly issues along the way.

But the rebirth waiting at the end makes it all worthwhile.

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I have changed radically about some things over the years, but probably none of those changes have been as great as the ways that I feel about people who are viewed as evil or criminal. When I was young, I was eager to see criminals or foreign political enemies killed. Today, I don’t view such people though rose-colored glasses and I don’t view them as blameless folks who are going to turn their lives around if we just think happy thoughts. But I can’t celebrate the death of anybody, even if he might deserve it in some ways of thinking about it. Even if it’s sometimes necessary to kill someone — and those cases are often debatable — I regret the death of someone who will now never have a chance to discover love and change his life. There are some evil people in this world, but I can’t celebrate their deaths.

There was a time when I was idealistic enough to believe that if a writer expressed his thoughts clearly and simply enough, any bright and honest person would understand his point. I know better now. We all bring so many unconscious assumptions to the things we read that we often see what we expect to see instead of what the writer intended. This is incredibly frustrating to me as a writer, but I’m trying more and more to just say what I need to say — as clearly as I know how — and then ignore the inevitable responses which show that others perceived something which was not intended. I have to write for those who “get” where I’m coming from, not for those who see my words through personal filters that change my meaning. I hope my intentions are clear to you and I hope what I write can be useful to you, but if not, maybe my work just isn’t right for you. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I found out this evening that someone I casually knew killed himself last Wednesday. I didn’t know him well — and I never found him personable — but he had started work a couple of months ago at a restaurant where I go. He was a 26-year-old who struck me as a confused and unhappy person, but I didn’t think much about it since he stayed to himself and resisted my efforts to chat with him. It turns out that he had a history of depression and had a lot of gender confusion. He seemed very androgynous to me and I learned today that he presented himself as female in some situations. He was rejected by a romantic interest last week, so he went to the woods and killed himself. His body wasn’t found for three days. It’s tragic how miserable people around us can be and how we so rarely know the truth about things they struggle with.

I’ve been with people for most of this day, but I feel lonely tonight. I’ve had things on my mind for the last few days that I feel the strong need to talk about. I need someone to share my thoughts with — someone who’s interested in ideas and how they affect us. Someone who gets excited to discover new things and can find joy in seeing new ways those things might change our lives. I feel lonely tonight because I painfully remember what it feels like to have that — and I’m craving that sort of connection. I miss having someone I can call and say, “I’ve been reading something and it’s sparked some thoughts I want to share with you.” Those sorts of conversations have lasted for hours for me in the past — or for thousands of words if it’s an exchange of mail — and it feels wrong that there is nobody who wants to hear such things from me tonight. I used to think being lonely was about being alone, but I understand now it’s a longing for one particular person. The loneliest place to be when you need one person is in a crowd composed of people who cannot be who you need.

I don’t agree with everything the late Neil Postman wrote, but I would argue that no other recent scholar gives coherent structure to the last few hundred years in the way his books do. I’m currently re-reading his book, “Technopoly,” and I’m comforted to have a scholar give structure and definitions to things which I’ve observed and barely understood. I was enough of a technophile when I first read this book that I bristled at much of what it said. I didn’t want him to be right and it was easier to dismiss him as a Luddite. But as I see technology continue to enable an information glut which is changing society for the worse, I find comfort in his explanations for how we got here. I don’t yet know the solutions, but I finally understand the problems more clearly. I suspect that much of what we need to make life more meaningful can be found in things we accidentally threw away in the past to make room for technologies. I strongly urge you to read the book and think about its implications.

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