And now for something REALLY neat...!!!

There are at least four people who are going to want to discuss this with me at great length, and all I have to say to them is "FUCK YOU!!!"

I just got a "Dear John" VOICEMAIL from a woman I am NOT dating, who I haven't seen in SIX YEARS!!! I didn't know that was remotely possible. Well, at least I have never conceived of it.

There's a lot of story behind this but to give the short version, Prospective Cancer Girl, who I am now calling PCG for ease and because the "prospectiveness" of the cancer is gone, was gone for two weeks on business and vacation, and we hadn't talked. She apparently got back and left me several messages, which, thanks to Sprint PCS sucking, I didn't get for more than two weeks. So I left a somewhat irritated message for her, which she responded to with an irritated message. On Thursday I got her messages and we talked, and she told me up front she was having a rough week, so I tried to do the teddy bear thing - which I am not good at, you might be able to tell. I also have had a tough few weeks, so I was in a generally unpleasant mood. I thought I was handling it pretty well.

She was all preoccupied with her having some sort of psychological problem, and I informed her that I think she has no problems and is generally well-envied. This would usually be a good thing to say, right? I explained my theory that people these days just have a lower threshhold for discomfort, and so they bail when things get a little unpleasant, and this explains the divorce rate, abortion, alienation, etc. So then she started telling me that she was going to see a therapist, and I did some more "there's nothing wrong with you" talk. All of a sudden she started crying. This is nothing new. What happens usually is she tells me she's going to go, and I keep her on the phone until she calms down. That's what happened with the cancer conversation in fact. This time, she hung up on me. She's NEVER hung up on me before. EVER. We didn't talk for five years because of some horrible things I said to her, and she didn't hang up on me that time.

I figured she didn't want me to call her back, so I sent her some emails with jokes and things, general expressions of concern, and left a voicemail at her apartment while I knew she was at work the next day.

Today she left me a voicemail (when she knew I would not answer) telling me that we're "developing a pattern where [I] hurt [her] and apologize later" and she's "not a fan" (a phrase borrowed from my lexicon) of that. She also said that's one of the reasons we didn't talk for five years. Then there was some junk about "sorry to leave this in a voicemail" and "enjoying my three days off without being on call [her job puts her on call], may not call [me], this weekend," and her voice was choking up.

I'm a little confused by all this. We weren't dating. In fact, we had joked about how we weren't dating, and never would, before she went on vacation. One of the things we talked about on Thursday was some new guy she likes, and I joked she meets a new guy every two weeks, which she challenged, so I listed them. Hanging up was uncool. Leaving me a voicemail accusing me of ... whatever the hell I'm being accused of is just thoughtless and inconsiderate. Can't you just not call someone back? That's what I would do.

I'm sort of caught here. Do you call the person you weren't dating who dumped you in a voicemail back? I'm a little worried about the convergence of things going on with her right now, and she's got all those medical issues, and that whole bizarre "my father died when I was young" thing, as well as a few other things that I won't mention here. I also think that, while I like associating with her, and I think she's very good for ME, if I'm not good for HER, I'm the one in the best position to bear a burden here, and we can go another 5 years without talking. I'm also a little surprised (shocked), angry, sad, confused (bewildered), and ... frankly, AMUSED. Who gets dumped by friends? In a VOICEMAIL? I'm waiting to hear on CNN about some crazy suicide attempt in LA.

She is such a train-wreck. Don't they just make pills that cause people to not be train-wrecks? Can we jolt her with some electricity or hit her in the head or something and just fix her already?