David McElroy

For the last 10 days, I’ve been struggling to collect about a thousand dollars from a woman for my company. It shouldn’t be that big a deal, but she won’t communicate clearly with me about it.

I’d like to help her work out a solution for whatever’s going on — because I genuinely like her — but she dodges my phone calls and won’t call me back. Some days, she’ll text me a reply. She’ll promise something but when she doesn’t do that — let’s assume she really can’t — she doesn’t call me to explain. I have to pick bits and pieces out of her.

I’ve been left to wonder what’s really going on. How much of what she’s telling me is the truth? I don’t know. I can tell that she’s scared and freaking out about something she can’t control — and that fear and shame have led her to alienate me. And I’m the only one who can help her right now.

Maybe I’ve thought about this so clearly this week because I’ve been thinking about how people damage lots of their relationships by not being clear and honest about their thoughts and feelings. And it makes me realize that we destroy our personal relationships — romantic, friendship and otherwise — because we refuse to be direct and honest.

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For the last 10 days or so, I’ve been obsessed with Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 novel, “Anna Karenina.” I haven’t yet finished the massive book, but it’s been keeping me up late and giving me new things to think about. It’s a literary masterpiece that lives up to its reputation.

For most people — and certainly for movie adaptations — the book is primarily about the affair between the married Anna Karenina of the title and her lover, Count Vronsky. Although that story is filled with drama and pathos, I’ve been taken instead by the subplot involving the relationship between the characters of Konstantin Levin and Princess Katerina (Kitty) Shcherbatsky.

At every turn, I’ve found myself identifying with Levin, so much that it sometimes makes me feel as though the long-dead Tolstoy has been reading my private thoughts and feelings.

In the earliest parts of the book, we discover Levin’s love for Kitty in a scene which evokes my thoughts and feelings when I’m in love to an uncanny degree. Levin is drunk on the ecstasy of his love for Kitty but he’s also sick and terrified that she might reject his offer of marriage.

When a confused Kitty refuses him — believing that Vronsky is planning to propose to her as well — Levin is devastated and humiliated. In hurt and shame, Levin returns to his estate in the country to try to suppress his love for Kitty — and this is when the real story of the book starts for me.

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I met a dead man in a dream a few nights ago. I don’t know who he is, but I have a feeling I’ll meet him when I die.

I’ve had death on my mind a lot recently. I’d like to say that I don’t know why, but that’s not entirely true. I’ve had death on my mind because I’m afraid of dying — and there’s a growing part of me that fears death could be closer than I think.

I’ve never wanted to die, but I’ve always believed I had many decades yet to live. Lately, though, I’ve felt a horrible, gnawing fear of imminent death. This terrifies me, because I don’t want to die. I haven’t lived yet.

I don’t know who the dead man was, but I know he went to a lot of trouble to find me. He somehow asked me to come to a small place — a room which seemed like the waiting room of an old railway station — which was the only place where the dead and the living could talk.

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