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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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I’ll never really know my mother and I’m envious of those who do

By David McElroy · May 8, 2022

I was only 5 years old, but I remember everything about the incident with startling clarity. I was a child who never did anything wrong — not intentionally, anyway — but I was about to do something destructive. And I never could explain why I did it.

We lived on Holly Hill Drive in Atlanta. My mother had some friends over to the house one morning. They were in another part of the house, having coffee and the sort of conversation which bores little boys. I was alone in the living room. It was fairly dark.

I felt deeply unhappy and alone.

Without any conscious thought, I picked up something sharp. I went to an expensive piece of furniture — a dark mahogany console into which our stereo was built — and I carefully marked a large “X” onto the polished wooden lid.

That ugly damage was a part of my childhood from then on. It couldn’t be repaired and I saw it every time we played music. But I was always baffled about why I did it.

In the last 10 years or so, I‘ve finally figure out what happened. It wasn’t rational. I wasn’t really trying to cause trouble. I just wanted my mother to look at me. My unhappy little heart was crying out for her attention.

I wasn’t consciously aware of how desperately I needed my mother’s attention. How could I have understood? To me, what I experienced was the only reality I knew. And I had no way of interpreting the emotions that my experience caused me to feel.

My parents agreed on few things about their relationship, but they both said that my mother was a different person before they had children. She had been a happy and popular woman before they got married. And they had been happy for the five years of their marriage before I was born.

My father claimed that my mother changed. He blamed everything on the depression that set in for her during the first five years of my life. She never tried to explain what changed, at least not to me. But I’ve come to believe he was largely to blame.

She had always been smart and beautiful and popular and confident. Until I was born, she taught school full-time and was popular with her students and co-workers. Then she started staying home with me full-time — and then had my two sisters — and my father had expectations of her that she couldn’t meet.

My parents were very different in some key personality respects. He was obsessively neat and clean, in an uncompromising sort of way. He allowed nothing about the house to be anything other than what he dictated.

Mother was sloppy and haphazard about the way she kept things. She just didn’t see the point in what he wanted. With her home all the time after my birth, he expected her to keep the house in pristine condition, even with three small children. I’ve always said that growing up with him was a cross between living in a museum and being in Army boot camp. If anything was different from what he wanted — absolutely anything — he screamed and raged like a madman.

In the first five years of my life, the arguments and the screaming got progressively louder. There was constant anger and tension. I never understood why. Many of my earliest memories are of the two of them screaming at one another — sometimes at home, sometimes in a car — and me simply wanting them to stop.

He always “won” every fight. Always. He bullied her.

Mother became depressed. She often didn’t get out of bed in the mornings. There were times when my sister and I would rummage through the kitchen trying to prepare something for us to eat, because Mother couldn’t get out of bed.

To me, that just seemed normal.

Then Mother left my father. She took the three of us with her — and she wasn’t coming back. He convinced her to return. After nothing about his behavior changed, she left him again, this time getting a new house in Birmingham near where her brother lived. She wouldn’t tell him where we were.

As I grew up, my father used to brag from time to time that he bribed an employee at the water utility to tell him the address where she had set up service. He showed up at the house and forced her to come back to Atlanta with him. My mother later told me that she realized at that point that he would never allow her to leave with her children — and she knew that if she stayed, one of them would end up dead.

When my mother left the next time — without my sisters and me — she never returned full-time. She was in and out of our lives until they divorced about four years later. I had little contact with her after that. I never lived with her full-time after the period when I was about 5 years old.

I quickly became numb to any feelings about my mother. I didn’t think I really missed her. For many years, I became a very unemotional person who carefully hid his feelings. But I not only hid them from other people. I even hid my feelings from myself.

There were times during my adult years when I tried to have a relationship with her, but there was nothing satisfying about it for me. My perception is that she had changed too much, but maybe the truth is that my father had programmed me to be something completely different from what she was. I’ll never know for sure.

Mother eventually moved to Nashville to be closer to my sisters. I never heard from her again and I never tried to talk with her. When she died in 2016, the people who knew about her death intentionally decided not to tell me. I will never understand that. It wasn’t until close to two years later that I happened to find her obituary online.

When I see social media posts from others on Mother’s Day each year, I always have mixed feelings. It confuses me that some people who I know have terrible relationships with their mothers post saccharine sweetness about how wonderful their mothers are.

But there are others who post loving tributes which I know are genuine. I didn’t understand for a long time why those posts bothered me in some vague way, but I finally get it now.

I’m jealous of them. I’m envious that they have something which I didn’t have. It’s not that I regret they have something good with their mothers, but simply that I know something is missing for me — something which I can never change.

When I look back at what I did by slashing that large “X” into the furniture when I was 5, I realize that I was acting out some emotions I felt which I didn’t know know how to deal with. I wasn’t getting what I needed then — and I never did figure out how to get what I needed from her. So I remained numb for decades.

When I see people who have emotionally healthy and loving relationships with their mothers, I really am envious. Because a part of me is still that hurt 5-year-old boy who’s hurting for his mother’s attention — and that’s something I will never be able to change.

Note: The photo of my mother above is from her senior yearbook at Jacksonville State University. This picture was from the section for those who had been selected as campus beauties. I wrote previously about all the things I discovered about my parents by combing through their college yearbooks online. I knew when I was a child that other people considered her beautiful, but she was just my mother to me.

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This was the view just after sunset Tuesday evenin This was the view just after sunset Tuesday evening near my house. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
At sunset Tuesday evening, the cloud cover over me At sunset Tuesday evening, the cloud cover over me was solidly gray and black, but one tiny break in the clouds appeared just for a few minutes to show a little bit of sunset’s colorful light. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
I just remembered that I caught the sun just befor I just remembered that I caught the sun just before it slipped beneath the horizon Tuesday evening. This is near my house just east of Birmingham. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
This was another experiment with a moon photo — This was another experiment with a moon photo — with my iPhone — but I allowed the moon to be overexposed in order to get the clouds in the foreground to show up. I’d really like to figure out how pros do shots of this sort. I don’t have it even close to right. #nature #naturephotography #sky #clouds #moon #iphone14
This is the sunset I just watched right after dinn This is the sunset I just watched right after dinner. It was one of the most vibrantly colorful displays I’ve seen in weeks. It was really beautiful. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
I don’t have the right lens to photograph the mo I don’t have the right lens to photograph the moon properly, but there are some nights when I try anyway. The longest lens I have goes to 240mm, which means I have to enlarge a tiny part of the frame way too much. But even if I had the right lens, I’m not sure I’ve figured out how to expose the moon decently while still showing some stars around it. Tonight’s attempt has given me a grainy moon and pinpricks of stars that become invisible when viewed at normal size. (Blow this up with your fingers in the app and you can see the tiny stars.) I really want to learn how to do this better, so if anyone has tips for me, I’d be happy to hear them. #nature #naturephotography #sky #moon
It’s been really hot in Birmingham today, so I’ve been thinking about how much I’m looking forward to fall. My iPhone must’ve been reading my mind, because it just showed this photo from November 2016 to me as a featured photo from my library. I remember this day well. It was in Trussville, which is just east of Birmingham. #nature #naturephotography #colorful #autumn #autumnleaves #birmingham #alabama
I just remembered this sunset photo that I took th I just remembered this sunset photo that I took this evening when I had stopped to get gasoline on I-20 just east of Birmingham. I was pumping gas when I suddenly realized the sky had erupted with bright pastel colors. I didn’t have time to get my “real” camera, so I just quickly shot two frames with my iPhone at the edge of the parking lot. It keeps surprising me just how good cameras on our smartphones have become. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
We had dark and stormy skies all day in Birmingham We had dark and stormy skies all day in Birmingham, but there was a little bit of light that was finally able to poke through the darkness right at sunset along U.S. 411 just east of Birmingham. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
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Lucy is doing her Neighborhood Watch duties about Lucy is doing her Neighborhood Watch duties about half a mile from home late Friday night. No matter how many times we do this, the sounds of the night always fascinate her. Watch the way her ears are constantly adjusting to pick up on something else. #dog #dogs #dogstagram #dogsofinstagram #cute #cutedog #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #instadog #ilovedogs #birmingham #alabama
Alex has been battling this little toy mouse for t Alex has been battling this little toy mouse for the last hour or so. A friend sent him several of these last December and he just discovered one of them tonight. #cat #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #cute #cutecat #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #tabby #tabbycat #instacat #ilovecats #birmingham #alabama #caturdayeve
Now that his big brother is gone, Alex has decided Now that his big brother is gone, Alex has decided he has to be the alpha cat around the house, so he has his fiercest face on display. I don’t think anybody is going to want to mess with this powerful predator. #cat #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #cute #cutecat #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #tabby #tabbycat #instacat #ilovecats #birmingham #alabama #caturdayeve
Alex seems to have regained his composure by late Alex seems to have regained his composure by late Thursday night. I don’t know what he might or might not feel about Thomas’s death, but his behavior seems to be returning to what is normal for him. He still wants to be very close to me, but that has always been a key feature of his personality. #cat #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #cute #cutecat #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #tabby #tabbycat #instacat #ilovecats #birmingham #alabama
For “throwback Thursday,” I think it’s appro For “throwback Thursday,” I think it’s appropriate to go back to 2011 for the first photo I was ever able to get with Thomas. He was still living outside my house and I was feeding him on the porch. It took me quite awhile to get him to let me hold him long enough for this brief photo, but he clawed his way out of my arms very quickly. This was the very first photo that I used when I was still trying to find a home for him in October 2011 — before I took him inside to stay soon afterward. #tbt #cat #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #cute #cutecat #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #tabby #tabbycat #instacat #ilovecats #birmingham #alabama
I just got home for the evening and laid down on t I just got home for the evening and laid down on the bed, not realizing how quickly Alex would be lying on my chest purring. I think he’s happy that I’m home. #cat #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #cute #cutecat #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #tabby #tabbycat #instacat #ilovecats #birmingham #alabama
Alex still looks like a man who just lost his best Alex still looks like a man who just lost his best friend today, but he’s a lot closer to acting like his normal self than he was last night. I wish we could know how a cat or dog goes about processing the loss of a companion. #cat #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #cute #cutecat #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #tabby #tabbycat #instacat #ilovecats #birmingham #alabama
Alex has calmed down quite a bit. I hope tomorrow Alex has calmed down quite a bit. I hope tomorrow will seem more routine for him. #cat #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #cute #cutecat #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #tabby #tabbycat #instacat #ilovecats #birmingham #alabama
Alex still seems confused tonight, but he finally Alex still seems confused tonight, but he finally ate a little bit of food. I know that he’ll be back to his normal self pretty quickly, but it really does seem as though Thomas’s death this afternoon has left him perplexed. #cat #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #cute #cutecat #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #tabby #tabbycat #instacat #ilovecats #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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