I’m exhausted and numb from placing trust in the wrong people

By David McElroy · December 5, 2020

I wonder whether I disappoint other people as much as they disappoint me.

I really don’t know. Maybe I would be unhappy if I knew the truth about that. Maybe I wouldn’t want to know. All I know is that I keep being disappointed in people I’d like to trust. And I don’t know whether that’s their fault or my own.

I grew up feeling disappointed in most people. It wasn’t their intelligence or their abilities that disappointed me. I could deal with those sorts of things. I was disappointed — and hurt — by people’s values. And especially when they didn’t live up to their values.

When I was about 11 or 12, the pastor at our church was having an affair with my next door neighbor’s wife. My sisters and I played with that couple’s daughter and we spent a lot of time in their house. The mom sometimes drove us to school. I figured out — long before it was public — what was really going on. And even though I was young, I felt disappointed in both the pastor and my neighbor.

Tonight, a woman disappointed me for another reason. Part of me is hurt, but another part is numb. Maybe I have no one to blame, though. Maybe I should know by now not to trust people.

The details ultimately don’t matter. Or maybe they do matter. I’m not sure. Either way, I’m going to skip them. I just know that I just can’t quit feeling this awful disappointment.

I met this woman a couple of years ago through a mutual friend, but I didn’t really get to know her at the time. I was still deeply in love with someone else and couldn’t give anybody else a fair chance. This friend had been trying to play matchmaker for us ever since and I finally decided to give it a shot.

From the outside, everything looked remarkably good about her. She’s bright and has a professional job. She grew up in churches similar to those of my own background. Her values and intelligence seemed to align with what I want. She’s an attractive woman in her early 30s who’s never been married, but she wants to have a family. And she really seems to like me.

I’d seen her several times recently. Things had gone well. But tonight, she shared a part of her life that she keeps carefully hidden from everybody. She was nervous to tell me about it, because she thought it might run me off. She was right about that.

I sometimes joke that there’s a long-running conspiracy to turn me into a misanthrope — and that the conspiracy is working. It’s just a joke, but I’m sometimes so exhausted from feeling disappointed with people that I want to cut myself off from the world. I know that’s not reasonable, but I’m so exhausted. I’m so tired of being disappointed. I’m so tired of finding out that I can’t trust people I wanted to trust.

Do I expect too much from people? I don’t think so, but I’m not sure anymore. Has the culture changed so much that I am so far out of step that I’m the equivalent of some Amish man trying to live among a mainstream culture that simply seems degenerate to me?

A few years ago, singer/songwriter Jason Isbell released a song about feeling uncomfortable when he moved to a big city for college. The verses tell of the various ways that his habits and values didn’t line up with those of the people around him — and the chorus keeps asking, “Am I the last of my kind?”

There are times when I ask myself the same thing. Tonight is one of those times. I know that I need people. I need a partner. I need companionship and a family. I’m painfully aware of how badly I need those things. But I find myself disappointed — yet again — in what other people appear to be — and it makes me feel very alone.

I’m emotionally exhausted. I’m numb from being disappointed in people for years. I’m frustrated from trusting someone and then finding out my trust was misplaced. I feel lost.

It makes me feel as though I must be the last of my kind. And it makes me feel all alone.

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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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