David McElroy

When I was a little boy, I went to sleep almost every night making up stories in my head. I was always the hero.

By the time I was old enough to start liking girls and wanting their attention — about fifth grade, it seems — my stories were mostly about being heroic for a girl. I had a crush on a classmate named Wendy, so she was the metaphorical princess and I was the knight on a white horse.

I didn’t understand it at the time, but I was setting a pattern for much of my life.

I wanted to feel special. I craved the attention and admiration of one woman. Over the years, the identity of that woman changed. of course. When I did something I thought might impress her, I wanted the crowds to love me, but only because that meant she would see.

I wanted her to think I was special. I wanted her to love me for that.

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We talk a lot about changing ourselves and we spend a lot of time waiting for other people to change. But what if the truth is that we never change who we are? What if all the people we are waiting to change are never going to change, either?

I’ve been watching others and paying attention to myself long enough to believe that none of us essentially change who we are. We merely develop the maturity and deeper personal understanding to change the way we act.

We learn to listen to the better parts of ourselves and refuse to obey the darker parts which will always be hidden inside, whether we like it or not.

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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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