David McElroy

I haven’t had the nightmare for years, but it used to terrorize the darkest of my nights.

It always started out in a familiar place, with people all around. I would try to speak to others, but they wouldn’t respond. It seemed as though they couldn’t even hear me. When I couldn’t get their attention, I would start frantically trying to get someone to notice.

I would try to touch the people around me, but my hands would go right through their bodies and then the image of the person would disappear. One after another, everyone around me would disappear — until I was left all alone.

And then the place where I was — home, school, office, whatever — would start getting hazy and dark. The physical world around me would slowly disappear. I could still see my body if I looked down at myself — as though something was illuminating me — but there was no physical substance of any kind for as far as I could see.

I was in a dark void. I was all alone. Worst of all, I would always feel as though there was no other presence that I would ever experience again. I knew I would be alone forever.

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I’ve never taken a job because of the money. Not even once.

That came as a shock to me when I realized it the other day. The entire assumption behind the labor market is that we take increasingly difficult roles or maybe jobs that require longer hours because we make more money by taking them. So it confused me when I first realized that financial incentives have never motivated a job change for me.

I don’t mean I haven’t wanted more money when it was available. Each time I changed jobs — back when I worked full-time for others — each promotion meant more money than the last job. But did I take the promotions because they came with more money?

No. I wanted the excitement of doing something new. I wanted a new challenge. I wanted the enjoyment of moving up in the pecking order. I wanted the feeling of achieving something.

I was having fun.

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When I was young, I saw myself as a Golden Child who could do no wrong. I was going to be fabulously successful and wealthy and powerful.

I started achieving early in life and I expected great things ahead of me. But when my newspaper company failed just before I turned 30, I was crushed. I didn’t handle the loss well. It turned out that after my facade of success and perfection was stripped away, there wasn’t much that was healthy underneath.

It was a painful lesson, but I learned that we are all broken in some way. Until you finally fail — and learn the lessons you need to learn — you have no hope of becoming the person you need to be. And you’re not going to find healthy and lasting love until you get vulnerable enough to be broken with the right partner.

It’s not an easy lesson, but the alternative is miserable.

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