Existential crisis makes me ask: Can I ever trust you to love me?

By David McElroy · April 11, 2020

I had my first existential crisis long before I knew what the words meant.

I was a 5-year-old in kindergarten. I remember being alone at the front of our house on Holly Hill Drive in Atlanta. Something in my little brain was trying to figure out my place in the world.

I can’t tell you why. I doubt normal 5-year-olds have such thoughts, but I seriously pondered who I was and whether I mattered. The questions hung heavy on my little heart, because I desperately needed to matter.

Suddenly, I had an answer that somehow made sense to me. I was 5 years old — and there were five people in my family — so that coincidence had to mean something. I must be important.

All of my life, I’ve experienced one crisis of this sort after another. The specific questions change, but they all mean the same thing.

Do I matter? Do I matter to you? Do I belong with you? Are you my home? Can I trust you to love me?

I never felt secure as a child. I understand that now, but I didn’t know enough about what normal love and normal family life felt like to know that the chaos I experienced wasn’t right.

I started asking those questions early, unconsciously at first and then with more and more conscious understanding. At times, I thought I had found security in the answers, but I’ve somehow let anything good slip away from me.

So I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. I can’t find my way home again.

I still want to feel important. I still need to feel as though I have meaning and purpose. I’ve come to call these moments my times of existential crisis because an existential crisis is defined as a time when a person questions whether his life has meaning and purpose and value.

I need to feel as though I’m the best at something which I love. I’m not even certain it’s emotionally healthy to want this, but when I feel this emptiness at such times, I just want something to fill it. I want — I need — to be able to say to you, “I have value because I’m the best at this — and that matters to you.”

I’m good at a lot of things. I’m a good writer. I’m a pretty decent photographer. I’m competent and I can charm my way to getting things done in business settings. I’m smart. I think deeply and connect ideas in original ways. I’m just on the edge of being a good filmmaker. I could come up with a dozen similar things.

But I don’t see myself as the best at any of those things. I don’t feel as though these things are great enough for them to be the special offering I want to make to a woman I love — to be able to bring them to her and say, “This is for you. I made them for you.”

And that lack of having one superlative to offer as a gift — one which would matter to the sort of woman I would love — is causing an existential crisis for me. If I don’t have something about me which is deeply meaningful and desirable — to the specific sort of woman I want — then I have no purpose. I feel as though I have no value. No meaning.

I have a dream. A fantasy, really. It’s the same one which I’ve had since I was a child.

I want someone to love me just for being myself. I want someone to be so moved by my heart and my mind that she loves me for who I am.

I want someone who is capable of allowing her heart to be completely changed by my love — someone who not only can’t live without what I offer, but who desperately wants to be a better and more loving person simply because my love makes her feel something so powerful that all her defenses come down.

I would like to be the world’s best writer. At times, I can be really good, but I’ll never be the best.

I would like to be the world’s best photographer. There are times when I make photos that really move my heart and make me happy, but there will always be photographers with more talent and more experience and more dedication to the craft than I have.

I would like to be the world’s best at a lot of things — but I’m not sure whether that’s because I truly love those things or it’s because I want to buy someone’s love by impressing her. I don’t like asking that question. It makes me uncomfortable, because that’s not the sort of love that would ever last.

The only thing that I’m truly great at is being myself.

It’s hard to even define what that is. I can be pretty great at understanding people. I can see into minds and hearts in ways that I don’t even understand. I know where people are hiding and I usually know why. I can see into the dark sides of people’s hearts and minds — and I can still love them even though I know the ugliness they hide.

Those are the sorts of things I’m pretty great at, but that doesn’t sound like something that’s going to make a great woman — who’s also greatly flawed — love me. And that fear leaves me with these same old existential questions.

Do I matter? Do I matter to you? Do I belong with you? Are you my home? Can I trust you to love me?

So far, the answers to all those questions have been a quiet but resounding no. I don’t matter to someone. There’s no one with whom I belong. There’s no one who is my home. And there’s no one I can trust.

I’ve been looking for a way to answer these questions all my life — and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. Or maybe who I’m looking for.

And so I remain in existential limbo.

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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.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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