David McElroy

Mental health issues devastate lives and they destroy families, but a lot of people don’t take them seriously. Those aren’t “real problems,” they say.

I was sad to discover this evening that some kind of mental illness has taken the life of Marilane Carter, a Kansas pastor’s wife who’s been missing for two weeks. She was the mother of two small boys and a little girl, who you’ll see in this family photo, and she had been having unspecified mental issues.

About two weeks ago, she left home in Kansas to drive to Birmingham, where she planned to visit her pregnant sister — and she also planned to seek mental help.

Carter had graduated from divinity school here in Birmingham, so she felt comfortable asking for help here. But she never made it. Her family lost touch with her near Memphis and she completely disappeared. Searchers discovered her car today just west of Memphis and her body was still inside.

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It was dark outside as I rode toward home on the YMCA bus that night, so it must have been fall or winter. I was about 11 years old when I rode that bus twice a week from Golden Springs Elementary School to the YMCA in downtown Anniston, Ala., where I took swimming lessons and played on a basketball team, among other activities, depending on the time of year.

I was sitting at the very back of the darkened, noisy bus looking forward at all the other kids. The song on the speakers at that moment — from the radio, I presume — was the Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You.” I don’t know why the scene is so strongly imprinted on me.

“I’m not like y’all and I don’t really like you very much,” I thought. “I’m all by myself.”

I felt a little bit afraid — not for my physical safety, of course — but I mostly felt completely alone. It’s the first time I can recall ever feeling so disconnected and alone and alienated. And in a very simple and childlike way, it was the first time I felt a yearning to be connected to someone.

It’s the first time I remember feeling so alone that I had a powerful need for love and understanding to fill a part of me that I couldn’t yet understand.

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I have a desperate need to be right — but that doesn’t mean what you probably think it means.

It’s not that I want you to believe I know everything. In fact, I very loudly and clearly confess how little I know. It’s not that I want to convince you that I’m never mistaken about anything. It’s easy for me to confess when I’ve made a mistake. I often go out of my way to explain to someone why I was wrong, even if nobody cares.

It’s simply that I have an incredibly strong sense of what is right and what is wrong — and I am driven by something deep inside me to align with whatever I believe it means to do the right thing. So my desire to “be right” is more of a standard for myself.

If I believe I know the right thing, I am obligated to do that right thing. It doesn’t matter whether anybody else will ever know. It doesn’t matter that there might be no consequences. It only matters that I obey the firm moral compass inside me.

I can look back on my past life and see that this has been the core motivation for my entire life. I must do the right thing, no matter what it costs. I can’t help it.

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