Leave me alone!

I dated a guy from the time I was 14 until 21. Not all 7 years straight through, but off and on. I can divide it up into a couple of set times - the catholic school years which involved a lot of sneaking out of the house at 3 AM, plotting how we would run off together while listening to the Cure and talking about how no one understood us. The drop out years - he dropped out of high school and my parents moved far enough away that it was hard for us to see each other. This consisted of me taking the train a lot and us fighting. The post high school years- I was half heartedly going to college, but mostly majoring in drinking - he was was well on his way to becoming a full fledged alcoholic. We split up with a whimper. One morning after a particularly booze filled evening we were sitting in Denny's, trying to decide when we would move to Vegas. He looked over at me and said "you know I'll always take care of you". Coming from a guy that I spent the better part of every night picking up after when he got bombed - I knew it wasn't true. He had cheated on me numerous times in the past and I was just so fucking sick of it and him. I told him I was going home to pack and I just never spoke to him again. To be fair he didn't really chase me down - by then we both kind of knew that it was the end of us.

We didn't talk for a long time. The internet is a dangerous thing sometimes. You can find just about anyone - even when it's not such a good idea. I sent a Christmas card. He called. We struck up an uneasy friendship.

He would call erratically, late at night - drunk and argumentative. Then the calls started coming from jail. Then rehab. Then jail. Then home. Where he'd be drunk and argumentative. Then jail. Then rehab. About 11 months ago they just stopped coming. He was in jail at the time - but he just stopped calling and writing. I didn't really mind.

Over the weekend I was talking to Violet about how I was going to purge all the letters he had ever sent me over the last 18 years. I didn't want to take that baggage with me to a new home - although I did debate (actually still going on) transcribing some of those letters on to here.

So imagine by surpise yesterday when I was getting out of the shower and I heard this on the machine I kinda freaked:
"I know you don't want to talk to me." [Correctamundo]. "I have to apologize to you for how I treated you in the past." [No you don't]. "I can't believe how I let myself get wrapped up with her [his crazy baby mama] again". See up until that sentence I thought maybe he was working his way up the steps and felt like he needed to actually apologize... Not that he wanted to bitch about his girlfriend. So I went back in to dry my hair. And in the 15 minutes it took me to do that he called 4 times and left more rambling messages including an odd "I'm coming to visit you in 2 weeks [no you're not].

I drove up to deliver my nephew's birthday gift and came home to a bunch of hang ups on the machine from his number.

So now I question - do I engage or not? I'm thinking he's drinking again - and I really don't have anything to say to him. Everything has been going so well - the job, the house, etc... I just don't want to deal with craziness right now.