That hurt

Tonight I got stood up.  Its not like this is the first time it has happened to me in my life.  But it always surprises me when someone purposely hurts another person.  I am always caught off guard because I think everyone is like me.  Scared and a little nervous, but mostly open and honest and trying.  It doesn't appear to be that way anymore. And to be honest it may never have been. Do you remember in the movie You've Got Mail  when cute and innocent, Meg Ryan gets stood up by the savvy and successful Tom Hanks, who played a character, appropriately named "Fox"?  Meg is hurt beyond belief but still finds it in her heart to email the cold and calculating Mr. Fox telling him of her feelings and asking so sweetly "why?".  Trying to understand the subtleties of human nature and the callousness of males in particular.  Their love affair was complicated and all finally came out right in the wash but still I think of how she felt as she walked home that night through the streets of New York; placing a single rose in the garbage, signifying the end of a dream.  Disappointed, sad and hurt.  I didn't walk home or sit in a cafe and wait.  Instead I waited by the phone for a call that did not come and man who did not say "I am sorry".  I don't suspect roses will arrive tomorrow with a note saying his dog died, he had a wreck or a meteorite hit his home just as he was dialing my number.  No, I suspect I will never hear from him.  And I am not Meg Ryan.  I will not email him a kind and loving note wishing to understand.  Instead I will take a long bath and sink under the warm water far enough to hide my tears if not my disappointment.  Tomorrow the sun will shine and I will go to Scott's Antique Mall and shop and laugh with girlfriends and buy something I don't need to fill a house that is full of stuff I don't need but that makes me feel better for having loss so many things that I did need.  With each disappointment in life we look again to see what truly matters, what is real and what makes us whole.  If it a call that doesn't come from a man we don't even know, we are in some deep do-do.  If we know ourselves and the people we love and the God who loves us, we just need a popper-scooper and a good bottle of wine.  I have the wine and can find the scooper at Scott's tomorrow, laughing with some of the people who matter.