We often don’t see who loves us until it’s too late to be an option

By David McElroy · February 28, 2026

Emily is somewhere between Birmingham and Los Angeles by now. She was leaving on a plane around 2 p.m., because she’s moving back to California to marry a guy she went to high school with. Seeing me was one of the last things she did before she left town.

I can’t remember exactly when I met Emily. Maybe 10 or 11 years ago? Something like that. She had moved here to be with a guy she had met online while she was in college. They were in the last stages of their relationship by the time I met her. She worked at a store near my house and we used to talk a lot.

We would meet at the cafe of a book store near her job from time to time. We talked about books and ideas and love and life. She was bright and funny. We texted and emailed quite a bit. But I hadn’t seen her for something like seven or eight years — until today.

She emailed me Thursday night and asked if she could see me before she left town today. I didn’t know she was moving or getting married — and I had no idea why she wanted to see me.

When I saw Emily Friday, I was struck again by how beautiful she is. As a tall, blue-eyed blonde, she’s the stereotype of the California girl she is. When she greeted me, she hugged me tightly — for long enough that I wasn’t sure she was going to let go.

She seemed oddly nervous, so I just started asking her questions about what’s been going on for her and why she was moving. She wasn’t interested in telling me about the man to whom she’s engaged. It seemed odd.

Finally, she said, “I have something for you.”

She reached into her purse and pulled something out, but she kept it in her hand, so I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. It just looked like something small and silver-colored.

She told me there was something she had wanted to tell me. She said she hadn’t planned to ever tell me, but as she was sorting through the last of her things this week before moving, she came across something that she knew she needed to get rid of — and she had decided to give it to me as a memento and a confession.

Emily explained that she had fallen in love with me back when I used to talk with her a lot. She said she tried to hint around at her interest, but she couldn’t bring herself to be more open about it. She said it was right after she and the other guy had broken up, so she was afraid I would think it was just emotion born of wanting a rebound.

On a whim, she bought a little locket at Target — a cheap trinket designed for a little girl, no doubt — and she put a picture of me in there. (It was an old profile picture from Facebook.) She said she couldn’t talk to anybody about how she felt about me, but in that period when we were starting to talk more — and she was getting over the ugly breakup with the old boyfriend — she often talked to “me” in the locket for hours.

And now, she said, she was leaving to get married, so it wasn’t a thing she needed to keep anymore. How would she explain such a thing if her husband-to-be ran across it? But instead of throwing it away, she was leaving it with me.

I asked her why she had never told me of her interest. She reminded me that I had fallen in love with someone else right as she and I had been talking more and more, so she didn’t want to compete with someone I seemed to be so crazy about. And then I had moved to another part of town and we drifted away from seeing each other.

As she spoke, I felt a strange tightening in my chest — not because I wished we had ended up together, but because I realized how easily I can miss what’s quietly offered to me.

There wasn’t much I could say. I thanked her for sharing her secret with me. I told her — honestly — that it was very flattering to have a woman like her think I was worth pursuing. And I told her I hope she will be happy as she moves back home and marries someone she knew before college — someone she had reconnected with on a trip home.

“I hope so, too,” she said quietly, but there was no joy or hope in her voice. I thought it was best if I didn’t ask more.

And then we parted for the last time.

Emily is somewhere in the sky over Arkansas or Texas by now. I doubt I’ll ever see her again. And I’m left wondering again why we can be so blind — until it’s too late to matter — to someone who really wants to give us love.

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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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