The hole is always there, but I foolishly hope it’ll just go away

By David McElroy · December 26, 2020

I fell into a hole last night. I was pulled in by an obsession which I can’t always fight.

I couldn’t climb out of the hole. I couldn’t distract myself from the unfilled need. I couldn’t sleep. I fought this obsession all night, but nothing would distract me from its grip. Exhausted and unsettled, I finally fell asleep about 7:30 a.m.

I don’t fall into this hole very often, but it’s always there — always reminding me it’s waiting. There’s something inside that calls to me like the sirens called the Greek heroes of legend.

I like to pretend the hole doesn’t exist. What else can I do? It’s like a giant sinkhole running through my life, but I don‘t want people to know it’s there. I don’t even want to believe it’s there. I’m like a scared man who walks very fast and whistles loudly as he’s forced to travel through a graveyard which frightens him.

Even on good days, I know the hole is there — just waiting to pull me inside if I let my guard down. And on bad days, I look over into the hole, wanting it to go away but mesmerized by the vain fantasy that something might be different this time.

The hole hasn’t always been there. How long? It’s hard to say, but it’s had an ongoing effect on my life for years now. When I ignore it, there’s still a pull that threatens to overwhelm me. Even if I feel strong and safe some days, I know in the back of my mind that the hole is there. I know it’s not finished with me yet.

When I try to fill the hole — naively confident that this time things will be different — I find the hole is bottomless. No amount of effort will fill it. I don’t have enough of anything to take it away. I shovel everything I have into it — my memories, my hopes, my fears, my anger — but the hole eats everything I can throw into it. The massive hole is still hungry for more — and it wants to pull me inside.

I can even try to cover the hole, ignoring the emptiness inside. I can just put wood and nails and flooring over the hole. Maybe it won’t threaten me then. Maybe it won’t pull me inside. Maybe I can stop being obsessed with this fear and need. It might work for a day or two. Maybe even a week or more at times. But the sirens in that hole eventually laugh and effortlessly pull apart whatever I’ve built.

I’m not the only one who’s faced this. I know that. But it still feels shameful and hopeless. It feels as though nothing can change as long as the hole is there.

The writer Edna St. Vincent Millay had a hole in her world, too. She would have understood my pain. In a letter, she expressed her agony:

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”

I walk around the hole in my life. I avoid it. I pretend it’s not there. I try to cover it. It’s exhausting.

And at night — the literal night at times and the metaphorical night at others — I fall into the hole. I spent all night in that hole last night. I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally.

But I have no idea how to make this huge hole in my life go away.

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Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a possibility that I might be taking in a fourth feline. A couple of months ago, a cat-loving neighbor asked whether I’d seen a “tuxedo cat” hanging out in the neighborhood. I hadn’t, but this guy eventually wandered past my house a few weeks later — and we haven’t been able to find evidence that he has a home. I’ve been giving him water and food for the last week and he finally let me pet him two nights ago. He’s purred for me two nights in a row and he let me take a low-quality selfie with him Thursday night. Tonight, though, he let me pick him up and bring him inside to look around. This went surprisingly well, as you can see from this photo. I don’t know whether he’ll be joining the family, but I’m certain that Alex, Oliver and Sam would vote no, at least until they get to know him. I’m trying to make certain he doesn’t have a home, but if he does join us, what do you suppose his name will be?

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

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