Why did I really feel annoyed? They were happy; I was jealous

By David McElroy · July 15, 2020

It was just a few minutes after 11 p.m. when I put Lucy’s leash on her and we headed outside for our late-night walk.

Before I even got outside, I heard unexpected noise. It sounded like people laughing. They were loud. I felt annoyed.

When I opened the front door and stepped outside with Lucy, I realized that my young next-door neighbor had a group of people over. I don’t know how many. I saw at least six extra cars.

They were at the back of the house — possibly in the back yard right next to mine — and they were loud enough that I could hear them talking and laughing all the way to the street in front of our houses. I felt mildly angry.

“He shouldn’t be having this kind of loud party this late,” I thought, “especially on a weeknight.”

As I silently walked down the street with Lucy, I kept hearing their laughter. And then it hit me why I felt angry.

They were happy. I’m not. And I felt jealous of them.

It was a shock to realize that I felt that way, but I knew it was true. I didn’t want to be them. I don’t even like parties. The louder and more crowded a party is, the more I want to leave. So I didn’t want to go join them.

I just wanted to be happy. I was jealous that they were happy — experiencing the enjoyment of people they liked and cared about, or whatever made them feel happy — and I wasn’t.

How long has it been? How long has it been since I really felt happy, I mean?

I couldn’t remember at first. Even when I’ve spent time with friends in the last few years, I hadn’t been happy in more than a fleeting way. When I’ve tried to date women in the last few years, I was mostly miserable. Even when I forced one of those relationships to last for about four months — and it seemed longer — I was miserable.

Then I remembered when I had last felt happy. I realized that I could probably put a couple of dates on it.

I was because of a woman. That’s the way it always seems to be for me. When I’m happy, I’m in love. I feel loved, too. I feel as though I have an emotionally secure future.

It’s been almost six years since I felt that way. Not quite. Five and a half years since it ended? I’m not going to quibble over the timing. I went from being on top of the world — happy with love and what I saw as my future — to having it all crash and burn in that short time.

The whole thing took about six months from start to finish. I can pinpoint the night when it died. I could tell you the date if I looked at a calendar, but it was that Friday night in December when my hopes for happiness died.

A month before, everything had seemed perfect. I had felt loved and adored by someone who I loved and adored.

When I put myself back into that frame of mind — from the vantage point of tonight — I’m shocked at what it feels like. It was the happiest I had ever been.

A lot has happened since the late December night. I’ve put on a brave face and acted happy at times. I’ve tried to do things to make myself happy again. I’ve thrown myself into work at times. But all my efforts seemed ridiculous to me tonight.

After I got home, I went out into my darkened back yard. All the lights were on in the house next door. There were still loud voices. The grill on the back porch smelled like something good that had been cooked earlier.

The back door was open to the pleasant summer breeze. The party had been inside and out, it seemed. A happy dog went back and forth between the yard and the people who had moved inside. Everybody was happy. They were content.

I wasn’t angry with them anymore.

I don’t want to be them. I really don’t. Their way of having fun and being happy probably isn’t much like mine.

But I wanted to be with someone else. I wanted to be with someone who loved me. I wanted to be with someone who I loved. I wanted to feel as though I’m home again.

For now, I’m just jealous that someone else is happy. I’m jealous because I don’t know how to make my heart happy again.

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It’s something I wrote four and a half years ago — in the desperation of loneliness — and it’s become my most popular article. It’s not my best writing. It’s raw and unpolished. But it seems as though a lot of people can identify with it. It’s called Missing someone creates intense physical sensations in my heart. Just to give you an idea how many people still read it, I had 11,586 people visit the page last month — from 2,907 cities and towns around the world. London sent the most readers for it, followed by New York, Westminster, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and almost 3,000 more. I’ve noticed something interesting. It always gets the most hits from an area of the world in the late hours, right after midnight, and that breaks my heart — because I understand why. All these people are so lonely and are missing someone so much that they turn to a search engine looking for answers, so they stumble upon this piece. I wrote this late at night on the day after Christmas because my heart was breaking. I needed to express how much I missed someone, and a lot of people seem to identify with it. If you’re one of those people, I have no way of knowing who you are, but I empathize with you. I know why you hurt. I wish I could do more to help. I hurt with you, because after all this time, I still feel the same way.

I just found out that a long-time Facebook friend died a few days ago. I never met Tom Ender, but reading his posts and interacting with him over the years made me feel as though I knew him. He was a kind and gentle man who was also a fierce and principled individualist. When his long-time wife, Julie, died several years ago, it broke his heart. About a year ago, he posted an old photo from their wedding long ago and wrote, “18 months ago, Julie passed from this world. I believe we will meet again, though I don’t know details of how.” As I mourn the death of this gentle and brilliant man, my fondest hope is that he and Julie are together again by now. Goodbye, Tom.

When Francesca Montanaro’s school shut down in March due to fears about the new new coronavirus, she had nowhere to go. Francesca’s mother is a nurse working long hours in New York City. The grandparents who would otherwise have provided child-care were old enough to be vulnerable to the bug, so they were out. That meant Francesca has spent the last few months with her dad at his pizza shop in the Bronx. In this six-minute piece from Radio Diaries and NPR, we take a look at what it’s been like to be a bright and typical 11-year-old thrust into a completely different world. She puts pizza boxes together and answers phones. She’s even learned to make perfect pizzas. I found the story touching. It reminds me of the degree to which children used to learn more about the real world than they do today. Even though she won’t follow in the pizza-making footsteps of her father, I’ll bet this will be one of the defining experiences of her childhood, one that she will treasure for years to come.

I noticed three instances over the weekend of people talking about Donald Trump’s “campaign of hate.” I wanted to correct them — because they misunderstand this narcissist — but I knew they wouldn’t get my point. It’s not that I’m defending him, because what he does is worse than hate. You simply have to understand the way narcissists think to understand him. Trump doesn’t hate. It’s worse than hate. He’s indifferent and angry with anyone who doesn’t obey him and worship him, those who don’t give him what’s called “narcissistic supply.” People believe that Trump hates blacks or Hispanics or foreigners or whatever group which he’s seen as hating. It’s true that he experiences rage at people who will not give him what he wants, but he’s not in touch enough with his real self to feel real hatred, much less to feel real love. He’s like a vampire who sucks all the available praise and adoration from any group of people — any way he can get it. He doesn’t love rural, blue-collar white folks, but their adoration gives him what he craves. He’s not emotionally mature enough even to hate. For a narcissist, people are simply objects to manipulate, depending on what he can get from them. Trump’s indifference is far worse than hatred. This isn’t ideological or political. It’s pathological. He’s not mature enough to hate.

The decline of modern culture can be seen clearly by looking at what passes for public discourse. There was a time when people who wanted their ideas accepted made rational arguments. It was assumed that most people were bright enough and rational enough to evaluate those arguments — and a surprising number of them really were. Today, the arguments are made in the form of irrational and simplistic graphics called “memes.” Because these graphics can’t convey complex or nuanced information, they present dumbed-down presentations of positions which are stunningly juvenile and seem designed to offend rather than to convince. We have regressed from books and dense pamphlets to a level more like that of angry kindergartners making crayon-scrawled hate notes to send to other children. Reason no longer plays a role in public discourse, and this signals the coming fall of this society.

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