David McElroy

Those of you who have been with me since this site started more than seven years ago know that I used to work in politics. I made a lot of money as a successful political consultant years ago, but my conscience eventually forced me to get out — for reasons I’ve explained before.

For the last five or six years, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s next for me — and it’s been a serious financial struggle. I had done well in the past as a newspaper editor and publisher, but newspapers are dying. Politics was now out for me, too. So what made sense? I knew some things I wanted in the long term, but I haven’t had any idea how to get there. Now it’s time to let you know what I’ve settled on — for those who are interested.

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled with the need to be perfect.

I didn’t always call it that, though. Others accused me of being a perfectionist and I was honestly confused by the label. My life was anything but perfect, so how could anyone accuse me of that?

Eventually, I came to understand that my life was horribly imperfect — in an unhealthy way — because I felt such guilt about not being perfect. I allowed major chunks of my life to become wrecks simply because I was so afraid of not being perfect that something in me went in the opposite direction. If I couldn’t be perfect at something, I didn’t do it. The perverse inner logic seemed to be that if I didn’t even try, I hadn’t failed. I simply hadn’t cared enough to try.

I understand now where that guilt about being imperfect came from, but that’s not my concern here. I’m more interested in something I’ve seen in myself lately — some indications that maybe I’m starting to get past this lifelong struggle.

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She was a young college student. He was a lawyer who worked in the office of the state attorney general in Montgomery, Ala. They met at a college-related function and he immediately started showering her with attention.

Although she was very attractive, she wasn’t accustomed to this kind of attention from a man in the “adult world,” especially someone with his sort of position and power. She was flattered to have someone like that notice her and think she was worth taking seriously.

He asked her on a date and ended up taking her to his apartment. Very soon, he was trying to sexually force himself on her. It wasn’t just a request. He was physically trying to take her clothes off against her will. She realized that this important man was trying to rape her.

She was able to escape that night and find another way home.

Afterward, she felt shame and humiliation. She didn’t tell a soul, because it felt shameful that such a thing could happen to her and she couldn’t imagine trying to make someone believe her word against the word of such an “important man.”

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