A haunting question: ‘Where is love now, out here in the dark?’

By David McElroy · April 21, 2020

There’s no moon out here tonight. It seems almost pitch black — and that feels appropriate.

Because of the street lights and porch lights of my quiet suburban street, the sky looks totally dark from my front porch. I know there are no clouds tonight, though, so the stars have to be there.

The glow of all these dim ambient lights covers up the pinpricks which represent a million burning infernos of light and heat in the distance.

But the light and heat of those stars seem impossibly far away right now. As much as I wish I could feel the heat and see the light, my heart feels the cold distance and knows that it reflects the emptiness of my heart — and the distance between my cold heart and warm love.

I touched real love a little while ago. Just for a moment. It was an accident. But I touched it for a moment — and it was warm and bright and colorful — yet it was just an illusion that I could not hold onto.

But that brief touch has me looking for light and warmth as I sit alone in the darkness after midnight.

My heart needs to know where love is now.

It doesn’t matter what I was looking for. It almost doesn’t matter what I found. It was an email thread between a woman and me. And as soon as I started reading it, I felt as though I was diving into waves and waves of love and understanding.

It felt as though I had been starving for oxygen and the waves of love were filling my lungs and my heart with joy and life.

In that moment, I felt loved. I felt understood. I felt free — as though nothing could ever take that love away from me again.

And then it was gone.

I couldn’t keep reading. It was too painful. It was from a past where all of those things were true and I felt as though all was right with my world.

So I came outside to be alone in the dark. What I had experienced was too bright and powerful. I needed the darkness and the stillness of the night air. And now I’m sitting alone in the quiet, wondering where love is now.

I keep hearing a Sam Phillips song right now. It’s mostly the chorus, where she asks over and over, “Where is love now, out here in the dark?”

It feels more like a stream of consciousness than real words, but I hear the verse:

If I could wait here for you
Without hope or knowing what to do
Watch the light fade away
Without fear or knowing what to say

I don’t even know who “you” is right now. Is it about her? Or is it all about the love which I need from someone else — from some unknowable source? When I ask where love is, I don’t know whether my heart is angrily demanding to know where that woman’s promised love went or if it’s simply pleading for some unknown love instead.

I don’t guess it matters right now. Neither is here. Neither seems possible anymore.

My heart just sits in silence and darkness and mourns the loss of something which ought to be here. I feel as though I should be able to reach out through the millions and millions of miles to one of those stars and pull it down to Earth.

Because love seems that far away.

On a whim, I took a few photos of the empty sky. When I walked into the darkest part of the street — free from any obstruction by trees — I started seeing a few stars. I tried a few manual exposures and got something which is better than I thought I could get, which you see above.

It’s just distant pinpricks of light on the cloudless night sky. But that seems so appropriate. I know what they really are, but they seem so far away that they almost don’t even seem to exist.

That’s the way love feels right now. I know how powerful love is. I know how all-consuming it is. I know how it changes everything.

But it feels so far away that it might as well not exist. And the words from one of the verses from the Sam Phillips song float back into my mind.

And if I can’t see which way to go
I’ll stay lost in silence ’til I know

And that’s where I am. Lost in silence. It’s where I’ve been for years. It’s where I am tonight. And I seem stuck in this lonely silence and darkness. But my heart still needs to know where love is now.

I need to know how to get it back.

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I haven’t posted anything new in my YouTube series about narcissism in the last couple of weeks, so some people have been asking about it. There’s nothing wrong and I’ll be back soon. The issue is simply a technical problem because of a piece of equipment that died. Here’s a brief video I posted on YouTube to explain.

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.

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