David McElroy

I enjoy being alone. There are plenty of times when silence is my friend and other humans around me feel like an intrusion.

But there are times — such as right now for me — when I feel lonely enough that the silence is deafening and the empty space around me feels like a dark and dangerous pit into which I could fall.

There are people I could be with tonight. I could join groups in public. I could spend time with other people in private. But there’s nothing available to me that can put a dent into this terrible emptiness. And that’s hard to explain to others.

There are at least three kinds of loneliness — and I’m not certain which one applies to me tonight. I don’t know whether I can be honest with myself. Or with you.

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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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