David McElroy

I still can’t get accustomed to taking midnight walks by myself.

For almost 10 years, Lucy was my constant companion for these meandering walks that let us explore our neighborhood and the downtown area of the suburb where I live.

When I’ve walked those streets for the last nine months, I’ve left the leash at home — and I left it at home tonight. I walk silently down streets where the loudest noises come from the crickets all around me. I hear no heavy panting. I hear no sound of a dog’s nails on the pavement. I see no eyes looking up to me as though to ask where we’re exploring next.

And it feels inconceivable that my friend Lucy is gone.

It’s not just me, though. Other people notice. About six weeks after Lucy died, a stranger who lives a few blocks away stopped me when I was walking earlier in the evening. I was taking a short walk along the route that Lucy had taken most often when I heard someone call out to me from a porch.

It was an older woman who I don’t know. She asked about my dog and I explained that I had lost Lucy six weeks before. She said she had been watching us walk for years and had missed us lately, so she feared something might be wrong.

Then she broke down and cried.

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For some of us, the demons are always lurking.

We’re not always aware of them. They don’t always make themselves obvious. But when certain things happen and certain triggers are pushed inside of us, the echoes of old dysfunction suddenly become quite loud and the demons are eager to come out and play.

I got glimpses of some of my old demons earlier tonight. I felt like running away. And even though it’s been an hour since I escaped the presence of the people involved, I still feel the effects in my body.

My heart rate is still slightly elevated. Some of my muscles feel clenched. And I feel something vague and terrible in the pit of my stomach.

It adds up to echoes of the ways I learned to feel as a child — when I was small and powerless, when I felt terrified of the narcissist who ruthlessly ruled my life.

I felt afraid tonight. And none of it made sense to my conscious mind, because there was nothing rational to be afraid of.

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For the first time in my life, I’m happy. At least some of the time.

That’s not exactly the right word — when I say “happy” — but it’s the best way I know to describe it. Have I ever experienced happiness before? Yes, of course. But when I’ve been happy in the past, it’s always been that I’ve felt happy about something in particular.

I was happy that a woman loved me. I was happy that I’d solved a major problem. Or gotten something new. Achieved something that made me feel good for a moment.

But there was always an expiration date on those things, even if I often didn’t understand that. If I felt happy that a particular woman loved me — someone who I had wanted, for instance — I typically felt as though this was the one thing that would make me happy for life.

But there was always something missing. Something was wrong.

Once the relationship died — or the shiny new object lost its shine — I always grew restless. Something inside me was always looking for the next big thing that would make me happy.

Slowly — without me consciously noticing it — something changed. A miracle happened.

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