I thought I saw her face — and I whispered, ‘Are you proud of me?’

By David McElroy · October 5, 2024

The woman was tall and strikingly beautiful. There was something about her that made her stand out in a loud restaurant that was packed almost shoulder to shoulder late Friday night. Then she turned her face toward me.

I gasped, at least inwardly. Was that her? It was her, but it couldn’t be. The restaurant was so loud and packed that nobody could have heard me, but I felt my lips move involuntarily.

“Are you proud of me?” I whispered.

For a brief moment, our eyes met. She was beautiful. She had a powerful presence. But it wasn’t her.

She was leaving through one door and I was heading out the door on the other side of the place. Then she was gone and I was in my car. I put the key into the ignition, but I didn’t start the car. I just sat there thinking about what had just happened.

I had thought for a moment that she was someone who I once loved. I was mistaken, but just thinking it was her made me realize — because of the question I blurted out — that I still want her to be proud of me. Even after all these years.

I feel as though my life has been stuck on a very long detour since about 2008. Or was it 2009? I’ve lost track.

In some ways, most of my adult life has been a series of detours. Regardless what came before, though, the last 15 years stand out as time spent wandering in metaphorical wilderness. It hasn’t been 40 years — and I haven’t entered my Promised Land — but it’s been a long and slow climb out of the worst part of my life.

After a romantic relationship failed — for complicated reasons that no longer matter — I entered a period of depression. I was already getting out of political consulting, but the depression left me unable to figure out what to do next. And I floundered.

Over the next few years, I spent all the money I had left from my high-income years in politics. I ended up broke. I had no family. I had no prospects of a family or a new career. The goals that I still had seemed like pie in the sky for someone who was as lost as I’d become.

In 2014, I thought I’d found a reason to live — so to speak — and I thought things were heading in the right direction. But that was a dead end, too, and I ended up lower than ever.

In the decade since then, I’ve started from scratch. I bought a cheap house that I was embarrassed to live in. I took a job — at a college — that I honestly felt was beneath me. But given how far I’d allowed myself to slide, I had to start somewhere.

And for 10 years, I’ve worked steadily to slowly dig my way out of the hole into which I’d fallen.

I’m slowly improving the house that embarrassed me. It’s still not a place where I’d be proud to show off to a potential wife, but I can see how it might finally get there in the next year or so.

My income still isn’t what it was when I worked in politics. Back then, I made better than six figures a year — and much more than that some years. I’m running a small real estate company as a broker now, so I’m doing decently.

For the first time in a long time, I’m starting to see myself as having something to offer to a woman of the caliber who I tend to fall for. There’s nobody who interests me right now, but for the first time in a long time, I would feel as though I had a potential life to offer to the right woman.

And I’ve been realizing lately that I’m proud of myself for all these things. Tonight, I realized that I want a woman to be proud of me for these things, too.

I don’t know why I felt that way when I thought I saw this particular woman. I’m not sure if this experience was really about her or if the memory of her love was a stand-in for a love who I’d like to have today. I’m not sure it matters to answer that right now.

I’m not holding onto the hope of renewed love from someone in the past. This isn’t limerence. This is something that men have experienced for as long as men and women have wanted one another and chosen someone else with whom to build families.

A man wants to do good things with his life. He wants to be productive. He wants to solve problems. He wants to fix things in his life. He wants to build a life that is worthy of attracting the sort of woman he might love. He wants to be worthy of attracting a good woman.

There was a time — when I was quite young — that I was arrogant enough to believe my talent and intelligence were impressive enough that anybody would be lucky to have me. I mostly felt that way professionally, but even when it came to my personal life, I was convinced that my potential was so impressive that anybody would see how far I might go.

Today, my aims are lower. My goals are more short-term and more concrete. I’d still like to do some much bigger things, but if those never happen, I’m OK with that.

I just want to keep building a life that a woman would be proud of — something that would make the right woman say, “I can see a real future with this man.”

I don’t know who that woman might be. I just know that I want to keep slowly rebuilding my life — to the point that the right woman is soon going to see me and see what I’ve done. And she’s going to be impressed in some little way. Then she’s going to get to know me more closely and she’s going to decide she’s proud of me. In time, she might even decide she wants to be my wife.

And that’s what I think it really meant tonight when I involuntarily asked whether this woman — this abstract woman who wasn’t really there — was proud of me.

I don’t know who she is. I just know that I’m eager for the day when the right woman will be proud of me — proud enough to choose me as the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

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.

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