David McElroy

I would be bored to death with myself if I were still the same person I was in my 20s.

I can divide my adult life in a number of different ways, but the easiest is according to how I’ve earned a living. Some people do the same thing all their lives. Many have two or three careers. I’ve had at least seven distinct periods — none of which I expected when I was 25.

I’ve changed radically over the years, so my needs have changed. The opportunities presented to me have been all over the chart. All of that has meant I’ve needed to reinvent myself time after time. It’s taught me a lot. It’s kept me from getting bored. But it’s also brought me to a place I never expected.

The last 10 years of my life have mostly been spent in places I didn’t want to be. For the first time in my life, I’ve felt stuck. Trapped. I somehow felt as though I had lost control. The old magic which had given me success and excitement had deserted me.

And now the time has come for me to reinvent myself one more time — and to write a story that might be very different from what I once expected.

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I didn’t get into fights when I was a child. I never picked on other kids. I was taught to walk away from trouble if I could. So I almost never had physical confrontations.

But there was one Sunday night — when I was about 12 or 13 — when a small-town bully left me no choice. I hadn’t thought about that confrontation for a long time, but I’ve dreamed about it repeatedly lately. I’m not sure what my unconscious is trying to tell me.

I was spending a week with a friend who lived an hour or so from my home. His father was the pastor of Oakman Central Baptist Church in the tiny town of Oakman, Ala., so I had been to the church several times that week. And there was a bully there — a slightly older kid — who seemed to think it was great sport to pick on the visitor.

Sunday night was going to be my last time at the church for that week. I was going home the next day. And it was after the Sunday night service — on the front porch of the church — when the bully pushed me one last time.

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No one will have any secret
No one will tell any lie
Things that we’ve done in hiding
Are gonna reach to the highest sky
— Annie Herring, “No One Will Have a Secret”

A friend of mine almost died Sunday. He was just finishing work when he knew something wasn’t right. He drove to an emergency room, where he passed out as he had a heart attack.

Doctors told him later that he was clinically dead for at least two minutes — and the work to revive him went on for nine minutes before it was clear he would live. If he had been anywhere other than a hospital, he would have died.

My friend’s experience reminded me of some study I’ve been doing lately about people who go through “near-death experiences.” One of the common features I’ve heard from the people who describe such experiences is of being in a place where everybody knows what they have ever done or thought or said.

In many of these stories, the subjects say that the people to whom they had lied or hidden things in life were completely aware of everything. There were no secrets — and they found themselves experiencing the pain they caused for other people.

In the weeks since I first encountered these stories — some in books and some on YouTube videos — I’ve found myself wondering uncomfortably how I would feel if this is really true.

I’ve realized that I would be ashamed if you knew many of my secret thoughts.

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