Revalation.....

E called Wednesday when I was on my way home from work. Unusual on her part to be so timely and forward, and as it turns out she needed to use my computer since hers was broken. I obliged and she came and we hung out while she posted to some job sites as her store is looking to hire. By the time she was done A-hole was home. She hung out for a while longer until another of my friends showed up and she realized that the guys were coming over to watch the baseball game.

"You're more than welcome to hang if you want, but you'll definitely be the only girl."
"No it's cool. I was thinking about meeting up with someone later anyway so I'll just do that."

She leaves. The guys and I drink some beers, have some pizza and watch playoff baseball. (Side Note: The difference between a real Red Sox fan and any other sports fan? Me. When they have a playoff game on the west coast, that starts at 10PM, I am so wound up by the time the game ends that I need to drink a 6 pack if I want to fall asleep within the next hour. And we're talkin 130AM here.)

At about 1030 I get a text from E that says her friend blew her off (karma?) I say I'm sorry that happened to her, and she is more than welcome to come back and watch the rest of the baseball game with us.

She responds 10 minutes later that perhaps she hasn't been blown off.
I respond, ok well, whatever. I'll be here. Let me know if you're coming over.

15 minutes later she texts again "I did get blown off."
I tell her to come over. She says sure, but I just ordered wings at the bar, so I'll be there after.
This is at approximately 1145. Around 120 the game ends and there's no news from E. I'm on my way to try to lay down and get some sleep, so I call. No answer. I send a text "What the hell happened?"

As I'm climbing into bed I'm pretty pissed off. I say fuck it, I'm calling one more time. If this girl doesn't answer I'm done. She picks up, clearly still at the bar.

"Hello?"
"Uuuum hi? Weren't you supposed to be coming to my house?"
"I think I'm just going to go to bed."
"Ok, how many times do you think you can blow me off before I tell you to go fuck yourself?"
"What?"
"I think you heard me."
"I didn't say I was coming over."
"Read your text messages." (Side note: she's clearly shit faced)
"I can't."
"Go outside of the bar so I don't have to yell for you to hear me. I need to talk to you."
"I can't leave. They won't let me back in."
"It's 130. If you don't leave that bar right now so I can talk to you don't bother calling me again."
"Ok. I'm coming over."

She comes to my house and I meet her outside. I show her the text message chain that led me to believe she was coming over. She gets it now.

"I'm sorry"
"I told you I can't deal with this. I asked you to do 2 things for me and this was one of them, and you can't do it."
"I'm sorry" She is literally stumbling drunk. I can't let her walk home alone like this so I bring her upstairs. We go out to the deck to have a butt.

"Am I wasting my time?"
"No. No."
"Well it really seems to my like I am. Look, I understand you keeping me at a distance because of the shit that has happened to you in your past, but ya know what? You need to decide if you want this to go any further because how it is now, it's not."
"I'm sorry. You've been nothing but the sweetest guy to me since the moment I met you. Quite frankly you're probably the best thing in my life right now."
"So why are you always pushing me away?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"Yes. Obviously."
"When I was 20 I was raped by my boyfriend. And when I was younger my father was physically abusive to me and my brothers."

...What. The. Fuck. Again? You can NOT be serious!!??

So. I always kind of had an inkling that there was more to her aloofness than just cheating exes. But I didn't know what. And this does explain the "My head is too fucked up" comment from last weekend. But what the fuck am I supposed to do here?

My immediate reaction is rage. I want to find this piece of shit and cave in his skull with a 9-iron. But obviously my next emotion is compassion for this poor girl. She's fucked up from this shit. It's this shit that makes her the way she is. So I'm left with this. What do I do? Can she be changed? Can she ever trust me and open up to me? I mean, this obviously was a pretty big step, so maybe?

I told my friend Becky about it and her advice was to get out. She doesn't lack compassion for the situation, but she doesn't think I need this kind of relationship based on the last one I had with someone so emotionally unstable.

I was telling Ham the story, and got halfway through when he said, "Wait let me guess, she got raped." He was totally joking because he knew the Russian story too, but when I told him that she had indeed he was dumbfounded. "How the fuck do you do it man?"
"I wish I knew....so I could stop."
Ham and I have decided that the next couple of weeks will be very telling as far as whether or not I should continue this relationship. My thought is that if she starts to open up to me and trust me more then maybe there is something there. If not, I'll have my answer.

We hung out last night and I finally met one of her friends. It was a good time and the girl we hung out with seemed very nice. Her friend told me that E flakes out on her all the time so I shouldn't take it personally. I told her that doesn't make it ok. E went home instead of staying at my place, and I can't blame her because she had today off, and I obviously had to get up for work. I'm out of town all weekend.

Next week begins her grace period, for lack of a better term. Some serious steps need to be taken between the two of us in the next 15 days or this is going no where. I wonder if I should tell her that, or just see what happens.

I'm starting to feel like God is testing me. I was less than gracious with the last damaged soul He sent my way, but that was a completely different situation. I haven't been great with this one either, but had I known these things before last weekend things may have been different. I feel like this is a challenge, and I don't want to run away from it, but at the same time I can't escape the feeling of hopelessness that surrounds it. Its a battle in my head. I need a sailboat and some time to be alone and reflect, unfortunately I don't have that luxury.

Thank you all so much for reading and for your comments. It's good to have some perspective.

Till next time.