David McElroy

Loneliness is the most deadly disease a human soul can suffer.

It wounds a heart. It numbs a mind. It breaks a soul. Worst of all, it’s invisible to the others in the crowd.

Nobody spots the lonely man or woman going about his or her business — working, talking, laughing, caring for others, pretending all is well. The lonely soul wears a mask — and nobody sees what lies underneath until something inside breaks.

Around 1960, there were 3 billion souls on this planet. Less than 60 years later, there are around 7.5 billion of us. Those of us in the West — and particularly in the U.S. — are wealthy enough to be around as many or as few others as we want.

We’re more connected than ever. At least theoretically. A couple of centuries ago, a man might never know more than a few hundred people. He would marry from among a limited number of women. He would have few opportunities to make a living. He had no hope of making something better of himself.

With the Internet and modern transportation, I can get to know the right woman — wherever she is — and marry her. (Theoretically, at least.) I am surrounded by people with money and resources and ideas. I can travel to whatever opportunity I want. I have every hope and expectation of making something better of myself.

So why do so many of us feel most alone in crowds? Why do so many of us walk silently around in a bubble — in a lonely fog — reaching out from wounded hearts and whispering, “Are you the one who will know me? Will you be the one who will love me and never leave?”

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I had come to the restaurant to write. The place was mostly empty in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. I should have gotten a lot of writing done, but Robert had other ideas.

Robert is a talker. His dad works in the kitchen of the restaurant and had been called in to finish someone else’s shift, so Robert tagged along to wait for him. He quickly struck up a conversation with me.

Robert is in the third grade and he wanted to tell me all about his life. He’s a golfer, he said, but people frequently ask him whether he’s a quarterback on a football team. He and his family have five cats and the one called Boo Bear is is favorite. (Boo Bear sleeps with him.) He’s going to be a firefighter or maybe “something easy” like a landscaper.

There was nothing extraordinary about Robert’s story, but everything about this sweet kid sparkled with life and wit and happiness. That such a thing is so ordinary is extraordinary in itself.

I’m not exactly sure whether children gravitate to me or whether I gravitate to them, but I constantly seem to end up interacting with them. In another restaurant this week, I had another “ordinary extraordinary” encounter.

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I looked across the table at Nicole’s face. I was intimately familiar with every single bit of her beautiful face. We had dated for several years and we were engaged to be married. But I suddenly saw her as though it was for the first time.

“I can’t marry you,” I thought to myself. “I absolutely can’t marry you. We’re not right for each other.”

I had known this for a long time, but I had been lying to myself. On the surface, Nicole was everything I could want. She was a tall, beautiful and well-educated woman from the Midwest. She had moved to Birmingham because she loved me and wanted a future with me.

I had been lying to myself about her for quite some time. After I broke up with her early in the relationship and she begged me to give us another chance, I relented — even though I knew better. When she told me she wanted to move down here for us to date full time, I didn’t promise her anything, but I also didn’t tell her what I knew — that it wouldn’t work.

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