David McElroy

I’m afraid of dying.

It’s not that I fear the process of dying or what happens after death. It’s not that I fear there’s nothing that lies beyond this world after my body is still and cold.

My fears aren’t about the next world. My fears are about this life — a life that I haven’t yet lived. A life that I’ve half-lived, like a man sleepwalking through an experience that should be filled with love and joy and the ecstasy of mortal existence.

I’m afraid of dying before I ever really live.

I hate what my life has become. Every choice I’ve made seemed to make sense in the moment, but the choices have brought me to a place of unhappiness. Depression. Emptiness. Regret. Hurt.

I hate the experience of living the life I have created, but I don’t want to die. I love this world too much. I love what I know my life could be. And I hunger for the life that would allow me to die in peace one day — knowing I had loved and created joy for those I love.

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I was about 14 years old when I figured out how to bug my family’s home telephone.

Although it was a touchtone phone instead of rotary dial by then, it looked a lot like this one. It was mounted on a wall in a hallway in the middle of the house. I had been tinkering for years with wires, batteries, phone parts and tape recorders. I understood the basics of the technology.

The cable containing four wires ran down the wall and through the floor to an unfinished basement. It was there that I conducted my experiment. I figured out how to trigger the power to a tape recorder when the phone rang. I had spliced the two wires carrying voices into a line-in cable to the recorder.

Every time the phone started ringing, the recorder started — with the record buttons already in position — and it recorded the conversation. I don’t recall how I rigged it to know when a call was over.

For a long time, I’ve told this story with amusement, but it wasn’t until the last few years that I understood what it was all about. The real insight in this story is that I didn’t trust anybody — and I thought nothing of betraying their trust, too.

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I don’t think I made much of an impression on her when we first met. But she made a big impression on me, so I did something I had never done before. I chased her.

We met online. It’s been many years now. She was smart, had beauty-queen looks and seemed to share a lot of my values. It was like spotting a unicorn in the wild, but I felt as though I was way out of my league to pursue this ideal woman.

For a couple of months, we corresponded a bit online. A few of our conversations were deep and intense, but it didn’t seem that important to her. All I knew is that I wanted to get to know her better. I liked what I saw, but I sensed hidden depths that she wasn’t letting me see.

I was pretty sure I would fall in love with this woman if I ever saw her heart.

But she was busy. She was also in demand. I’m sure she was being pursued by other men. I didn’t get to see her heart. Then I didn’t hear from her for awhile. I’ve never been the sort who chased a woman who didn’t seem interested in me, but I couldn’t let this one go.

I set my ego aside and I chased her.

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