David McElroy

Dreams don’t have to make sense, do they?

It was still pitch dark when I opened my eyes. I was coming out of a dream that had been a grand and confusing opera. There were snippets of obscure music. There were scenes from my real life. There were flashes of people from the past. And they were all mixed into something surreal by a frenzied film director in my head.

But what did it all mean?

I was walking through a long and dark tunnel, where I saw different people along the way, like different scenes and lessons from my life. But why these people? Why these scenes?

There was an unhappy young woman — someone I barely know in real life — and she was alone in a round iron cage. She was crying bitterly. She wasn’t begging for someone to let her out of the cage. She was begging for someone to simply listen to her heart.

I tried to speak to her — to say that I would listen — but she didn’t know I was there. She couldn’t see or hear anyone. She was dying from loneliness and unhappiness. And I felt guilt and doubt about myself that I couldn’t save her.

Then she was gone.

After I walked on in the tunnel’s darkness, I came to something which looked like a glass cylinder. Inside was what appeared to be a woman I used to know. Someone who used to love me. Her face was dull with pain and disappointment, nothing like what I’ve ever seen from her.

As I watched her silent and anguished face move, I heard words from an old song — and I knew it was about her.

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I was 21 years old and working as managing editor of a weekly newspaper. I had just gotten out of a three-year relationship and I wasn’t dating anyone. As I worked alone at my office on a Sunday afternoon, a young woman dropped by to see me.

She was on her way back to her college after a weekend visit home. We had had a flirtatious relationship but it hadn’t been anything serious. Now that I wasn’t dating anyone, though, she had come to see whether I’d be interested in turning our flirtation into something serious.

I felt conflicted. I was attracted to her, but I knew I wasn’t going to date her. Maybe I wasn’t really completely over the relationship that had just ended, I told her. She understood. I kissed her as she left and we remained friends.

We both moved on to other relationships and I didn’t think any more about the conversation. I assumed she hadn’t thought about it for years, either. About a month ago, I realized that I lied to her that day — but only because I had lied to myself.

I decided it was time to call her — after all these years — and explain what had really happened.

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Amelia has been married for the four years I’ve known her, but she usually has a boyfriend, too.

Her marriage is unhappy and her husband travels for work. She keeps telling me about her latest boyfriend — the one who’s going to change everything and make her happy. I don’t remember how many of these have come along in the years I’ve known her.

Amelia saw me at dinner tonight and came over to talk for a few minutes. The man she told me two weeks ago was going to make her happy is now history. She changed her mind about him. There’s nobody new for the moment — and she was in an introspective mood.

“I don’t know what happens,” she told me. “When I first get to know a guy, I think I’ve finally found what I need. I’ve finally found someone who can really love me in a way that [husband] can’t. But after they fall in love with me and want me, too, I completely lose interest. I don’t know why.”

As we talked tonight, something clicked for me. Amelia doesn’t lose interest in these other men because she discovers something wrong with them. She pulls away when they get too close to her — and that’s when she has to find a justification for losing interest.

Amelia’s need for intimacy causes her to go looking for the love she doesn’t have in her marriage, but her fear of real intimacy causes her to run away whenever she thinks she’s found it.

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