David McElroy

When I look into a mirror, I sometimes wonder who’s staring back at me. I especially feel that way tonight.

This is what I look like tonight. I just got home. I’m exhausted. I’m sure I look tired. After I fed Lucy and the cats, I put my iPhone in front of my face to snap this photo. I wanted to see if I look as tired as I feel. And I think I do.

At first, I couldn’t figure out why I’m feeling so negative. Being tired isn’t anything unusual, but this feels different. I feel more like someone who’s been stuck at an airport for years waiting to catch a flight — and I’m always disappointed that it hasn’t arrived.

I started thinking about what a friend told me today. He just found out that he has to have some major surgery in a couple of weeks. If he doesn’t fix the serious problem doctors have found, he would very likely die within a few years. Plenty of people have surgery — and face life-threatening problems — every day. But my friend is the same age I am. Maybe that’s why this feels different.

It’s not that I feel old. I just feel stuck. I’m waiting and waiting for my life to begin. But I’ve lost my way. I’ve never felt so alone. And there’s a part of me which fears this will never change.

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I was listening to an interview today with an Oklahoma teacher who helps women trapped in sex-related work — prostitution, stripping, porn. She mentioned that many of the women want out of that world, but they feel stuck. Then she said something that caught my attention.

“A lot of times, that kind of work is very financially lucrative,” she said. “And so, once you start making that kind of money, it’s very, very hard to walk away from.”

For a moment, I had trouble processing what that must be like. Why wouldn’t someone walk away from something which she had come to see as toxic for her life? And then it hit me that I wasn’t so different from these women.

I once did exactly the same thing — but with politics instead of sex work. I’ve joked many times that I’m a recovering political prostitute. For years, I kept doing things that I thought were disgusting, simply because I didn’t want to give up the huge payoff that came with the work.

Just like those women, I was trapped by my own desire for money and success.

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Cheslie Kryst lived the kind of life that most people can only dream about.

She was a 30-year-old attorney — who held an MBA, too — and she lived in a fancy New York City apartment. Just a couple of years ago, she won the Miss USA pageant. She was followed by more than a quarter of a million people on Instagram. In addition to her law practice, she was also a correspondent for an entertainment news site. She lived a life of glamour that millions of young women envy.

Despite all that, Kryst killed herself Sunday morning. She jumped from the 29th-floor terrace of her Manhattan apartment building.

I have no idea why Kryst wanted to die and I have no judgment about her life or death. But the news of her suicide immediately brought my mind back to a lesson I learned through a 19th century poem when I was in the sixth grade.

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