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I went to a new client's house the other day. I hadn't met her before. I'd talked to her on the phone, though, and had summed her up as a tough lady with a grating accent. I pictured her as an older woman, chubby, with badly bleached hair with 2" roots. You know how you form a picture of someone before you see them? Come to think of it, I wonder what you might see ME as.

Anyway, I got to her house, and there she was: petite, cute, with short pretty blond hair - chainsmoking like a fiend. She was wearing tight denim jeans and a cut-off black biker shirt and boots. I get along with almost anyone, so she told me a lot while I was spending a couple hours with her. I have always been a 'father confessor'. People end up telling me everything, for some reason.

"Yeah," she said (honestly), "I'm a tramp. I love sleeping around. If my boyfriend's outta town, I'd better not end up at the local bar or I'll be in someone else's bed. But I'm a mean drunk and I carry a switchblade. We got into a fight the other day, and my boyfriend called me a c*nt. I've never been called that before in my life. So, I cut him."

"You CUT him?" I asked, clarifying this.

"Yup," she said, taking a long cool drag off her cigarette. "Sliced him about two inches along on his side. Taught him a lesson." She indicated how long the cut was with her fingers spread apart.

Interesting. People like this intrigue me. I always dig as deep as I can to see what is at the root of their dysfunction. Call it a keen interest with the psychology of the mind, or call it just plain unwholesome fascination.

"Hmm," I said non-committedly. I do counseling, and I've learned how to hmm with the best of them.

By the end of it, she told me that she was a born-again Christian who was very backslidden, an alcoholic, drug-user, violent, molested repeatedly as a child and had been raped multiple times throughout her life. If I had more time with her, I could tell her exactly what was motivating her to lead the life she was living, and I'd be able to tell her what she would need to do to change it. But that was not what I was there for and I had not been asked for help.

How much of her story was true? I'd say about 80% of it. I've encountered women like this before. It's a typical personality profile for a prostitute, for instance. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that she turned tricks at one time, and may have served time in jail. That would likely be when she 'became' a born-again Christian. Prison 'conversions' are common and last usually between 30-90 days after the convict is released (except for sporadic returns to it when in need).

Most people who want to help women like this have no true understanding of what they're dealing with. They think that if you take the woman out of the situation she's in, she'll be fine.

What they don't realize is that you can take the woman out of the ghettos, but you can't usually take the ghettos out of the woman.

This type of woman will be busy repeating her problems until she keels over or is killed by someone. Why? Because she lacks the motivation to control herself. Until she takes responsibility for her own actions, she will never conquer them.

I will never say anything conclusively. But I will say objectively that this woman stands an excellent chance of being dead within 10 years. 20, if she's lucky. She is a ticking time-bomb, and there are a lot of people out there that can light her fuse.

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