David McElroy

I’m having a slow-motion breakdown lately.

It’s not so different from what a lot of people experience, but the difference is that I’m talking with you about it. I need to talk about it, because that stops it from getting out of control.

I spent so much of my younger life pretending that everything was OK with me — so much that I believed it was true — that I can live a perfectly normal life while I’m breaking down inside. I can move through the world as I always do. I can say and do all the right things. The people around me have no idea that anything‘s going on.

I had to learn that pattern as a child, because any hint of weakness or pain or unhappiness was met with sharp disapproval from my father. I learned to put a happy face on everything. I learned not to show people what I felt. I learned how to be numb to what I felt.

As I eventually learned how to be emotionally healthy, I became more honest with myself about what’s going on inside my head and heart. But I never unlearned the habit of acting as though all is normal. So I wear the mask people see in public.

But I sometimes have to talk about it — or else cracks eventually show up in the mask. And I could eventually lose control in a way that I’ve never allowed to happen. So I need to talk about it. Right now.

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I fell into a hole last night. I was pulled in by an obsession which I can’t always fight.

I couldn’t climb out of the hole. I couldn’t distract myself from the unfilled need. I couldn’t sleep. I fought this obsession all night, but nothing would distract me from its grip. Exhausted and unsettled, I finally fell asleep about 7:30 a.m.

I don’t fall into this hole very often, but it’s always there — always reminding me it’s waiting. There’s something inside that calls to me like the sirens called the Greek heroes of legend.

I like to pretend the hole doesn’t exist. What else can I do? It’s like a giant sinkhole running through my life, but I don‘t want people to know it’s there. I don’t even want to believe it’s there. I’m like a scared man who walks very fast and whistles loudly as he’s forced to travel through a graveyard which frightens him.

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I’ve never experienced a Christmas that felt less like Christmas than this one does.

It’s Christmas Eve, but it feels like just another gray and rainy winter day. I had some work to do at the office, but I was the only one in the building. By the time I left around 3:30 p.m., the rain had stopped and the clouds started to clear as the winds turned bitterly cold.

I didn’t want to be alone, but I couldn’t think of anywhere to be with anybody who I wanted to see. I had planned to go to a Christmas Eve service at my church. There were three services through the afternoon and evening, to accommodate the crowds and still maintain safe distances. But I suddenly realized that if I couldn’t be with a family of my own, the last thing I wanted was to see other happy and loving families together.

As I drove home — lost in thoughts of missing connection — I remembered the chapel at a monastery along my route. I wasn’t dressed appropriately, but I stopped and asked the guard at the gate whether the chapel was open. He warmly encouraged me to go right in.

“There’s a service at 8 tonight, but you’d be the only one in there right now,” he said.

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