swing the bat

i spent yesterday (monday) and today with A. yesterday we had lunch and then coffee and then looked around in some stores and then i took her home and we hung out there a little. today wasn't as fun - i was supposed to help her finish packing up her apartment, and her boyfriend D came to help, but he was in a bad mood and i felt uncomfortable being there.

A tells me a lot of things about D that i'm not sure what to think about. for example, when he's angry with her, he'll sometimes kick her out of the house. she says usually he'll order her to pack her things so he can take her back to the city she lived in before she lived here. (for a while, she didn't know anyone here and had no job, so if they did break up, she really would have had to move back to her hometown. these days this is an odd threat, since she knows people here and could coast quite comfortably until she was able to get her own place.) but then he'll come up with an excuse not to drive her home, and in the morning he'll want to make up. sometimes he'd just tell her to get out and she'd just have to hang out outside until he let her back in. these days, she says, when he tries to kick her out, she just says no and stays where she is, and then sometimes he'll throw a sort of tantrum. she made him promise not to throw her out of the new house.

she says he does things like this because he's mentally ill and not really handling it. he takes meds but they don't work. he's in therapy but he doesn't take it very seriously. and she loves him and wants to help him. and of course i don't mind listening to her talk about him and trying to help as much as i can. but i feel a bit odd when she spends hours talking about his emotional issues and then he comes in the door and i have to interact with him as though i don't know any of it.

today he was angry because he misplaced some kind of important paperwork he'd gotten in the mail. that's understandable, but he continued to be angry even after we found it, and while we made two trips from the apartment to the new house (most of the "helping" i did was allowing them to use my car, which is bigger than theirs, to move stuff. of course it was, since it's not like i can or will carry anything especially heavy), and then after that when we went to dinner he calmed down a little but he was clearly still annoyed. he took me back to their house and normally i come in and hang out in their kitchen until they go to bed, but this time i bolted right away. it was just so unpleasant.

yesterday, though, was so good. partly because i had a good time with A, but also because i mentioned to her that there's someone i'm interested in, and she asked who, and i started to describe them, and because our city is so so small, she knew who i meant immediately because they have three mutual friends on facebook and she talked to them on okcupid.

i should probably just move.

but she went through their okcupid questions and we concluded that this person and i are probably pretty compatible. most importantly, they aren't dating anyone, but they would like to be. (on the other hand, if i ask them out and they try to spare my feelings by saying they're already with someone, i'll know they're lying.) so i feel more confident about talking to this person, should i run into them, which i will, because: small city.

i'm still so anxious about it though, because obviously. but i want to act on my feelings this time. i guess you miss all the shots you don't take. i like this saying, because i am very bad at sports, and i also miss all of the shots i do take. but perhaps if i practiced sports and made more of an effort, i might someday make a shot. it's a nice saying.