David McElroy

Lucy made a friend tonight while we went to fill my car with gasoline.

“Hey, I like your dog!” cried out an exuberant little blond boy from 30 feet away.

He had just pumped gasoline for his mom’s car and was on his way to the restroom when he spotted us. I greeted him briefly and went about my business. Two minutes later, he was out of the restroom and clearly wanted to meet Lucy, but wasn’t sure what to say.

“What’s your dog’s name?” he asked.

After I introduced him to Lucy, he started telling me about the 11 animals that he and his mother have. He told me that feeding all those dogs and cats was so much that his mother had to help him with it.

He told me his name was Asher and he asked my name. Then he noticed I had a camera, so he asked if he could be in a picture with Lucy.

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I’ve spent my entire life at war with myself. It’s exhausting.

This isn’t a conflict most people recognize. I don’t blame them, though, because I lived with the conflict for decades without understanding this war within. My nature pushed me in one direction, but my childhood programming pushed me in another. Instead of choosing between them, I tried to have one foot on each side.

I wanted to be perfect. I tried to be competent, logical, driven, faultless, charming and well-adjusted. But something inside pushed me to be creative, brilliant, mercurial, iconoclastic and eccentric. I didn’t understand the natural tradeoffs of life.

When I was growing up, my father told me I was just like him. For a long time, I believed him. I tried to emulate him. Through constant self-discipline, I played the role he dictated for me. I loathed the part of myself that was more like my mother. I suppressed it. I denied it. I ignored it.

But I’ll never be what he wanted me to be. I know how to act that role. I can fake it. But on the inside, I’m the eccentric creative type struggling to get past the conventional mask I wear for the world.

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She says she still loves him. Still wants him. Still treasures him above all others.

But she also spent half of our time at dinner tonight telling me the ways she wants to hurt him. She knows things about his business affairs that could hurt him if she revealed her secrets. There’s something he did recently that would embarrass him if his friends knew. She knows his secrets — and she’s trying to decide which of these terrible traps to spring.

She says she loves him. She says he means more to her than anything. But he has rejected her now — nicely, gently, but still a rejection — and this man who means everything to her must pay. She intends to hurt him.

I had dinner with this friend tonight. She had been engaged for six months until her love told her a month ago that he thought they were making a mistake. He was decent and kind, but he broke the engagement. He ended their relationship.

For weeks, I had offered no advice. I had just listened. But tonight, she asked me for advice.

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