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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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Not having someone to hope for differs from pain of missing love

By David McElroy · November 1, 2020

I miss having someone to miss.

Loving someone can be a paradox. It can be the most rewarding experience of your life, and it can also be the most miserable experience of your life. But there’s something powerful and life-giving about being in love, even in those times which bring deep hurt.

Nearly five years ago, I wrote something one night when I was in the depths of a painful experience of longing for a woman who I missed. It’s not especially well-written, but it’s raw and honest, which has made it my most-read article for the last few years. A lot of people seem to read it late at night, and I get a lot of email from people either thanking me for reassuring them they weren’t alone or else begging for my advice.

At the time, I was deeply in love with a woman who I desperately wanted back in my life. My need for her was painful. It hurt to want someone back so badly, but I still had hope — so there was constant tension in my life. I was in terrible pain from missing her, but I believed the pain would be worthwhile in the end — because I believed in her and I believed she would return.

Tonight, I feel something different. I don’t feel longing or even the pain of loving someone I can’t have. I feel the emptiness of being alone — but it’s different now, because I don’t have love or hope for a particular woman to focus on.

Isn’t that better than the hurt I was feeling when I wrote about the physical pain of missing someone? In some ways, yes.

The tension I was feeling five years ago is gone. There’s no love. There’s no hope. There’s no longing. I can look at a woman who I idealized — someone for whom I invented all sorts of excuses — and realize I’m better off without her, because an emotionally healthy person who really loved me couldn’t have acted as she did.

In that respect, I can recognize all the good things I saw in her — and understand all of the potential for what could have been — but accept there’s nothing of value for me remaining with her. I couldn’t have accepted that five years ago. Or even a year ago.

When you really love someone — even if you can’t have the person at the moment — you are willing to build your life around him or her. You’re willing to bear any burden. You’re willing to make that person your priority. You’re willing to do anything in your power to give comfort or relief for that person’s hurts.

There’s something extremely powerful about that sort of love. For me, it creates a potential for action — and a willingness for sacrifice — that’s impossible to explain or justify.

I desperately miss having someone who I want to love and to serve. The privilege of doing things for someone — and of actively trying to make someone’s life better — is a powerful driver for me. It’s disorienting for me not to have that. It’s akin to losing a personal sense of purpose.

Yes, there’s far less pain for me tonight than there was five years ago. But there’s a different sort of emptiness.

When I loved and needed her — and believed we would end up together — I had purpose. I would have done anything for her. She had complete power over me.

And now, I have no one to love. No one to hope for. No one to fantasize about building a life with. Nobody who needs me — or who I can believe needs me — as much as I need her.

So the feeling tonight isn’t painful or intense. Instead of longing, there’s a lack of anything. Instead of beautiful faith in love, there’s empty acceptance of being alone and having nobody to need.

I want to say that I miss her, but I don’t. Not anymore. I miss loving her and wanting her. I miss believing that she needed me and that she believed in me. I miss believing her words.

More than anything, I miss the feeling of being loved. I miss the feeling of believing that someone loved me and believed in me enough to eventually make me part of her life. I miss the faith that I could believe someone who said, “Never forget that I want you,” meant exactly that.

I miss all of that. I miss it even though it was painful to believe in it when the evidence made it hard to believe.

I want to love again. I need to love again. It’s incredibly difficult for me to find someone who I’m willing to love, for reasons I can’t even begin to explain here. I almost never find someone who’s anything like what I want and need.

So I’m longing for something tonight — but it’s a longing for something brand new, something I hope I can find again.

I miss having someone to miss. The pain at this point is from not knowing whether I’ll find someone new who will be worth trusting enough to fall in love one more time.

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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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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.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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