Anger Overpowers Embarrassment
I don’t date much. I’ve got a good thing going in life and I’m happy on my own to do whatever I like. But, like most people, it can be fun to go out with someone you have any interest in. The guy I’ll be talking about in this story is someone I knew almost 20 years ago in elementary school. We were never friends but we did share the same class at one point and so like a lot of people do, we had been following each other on social media for a while.
About a year ago he started interacting with my content. Something he never did before. I thought he was kinda cute so I did the same to his content. Eventually earlier this year he started up a conversation in my direct messages. He said he’d really like to take me out when I got back home (I was out of the state at the time.) We agreed to meet at this bar/gaming place on a Friday night.
The days leading up to the date we would message each other a little, nothing too personal or long just small talk and funny topics. Then I stopped hearing from him. I didn’t pester or worry because that’s just not what I do. I figured he got busy and we’d just see each other on Friday. Friday comes and I still haven’t heard from him.
My evening workout ended up running later than I planned so I messaged him that I’d be like 30 minutes late. He didn’t respond. As I’m driving there, I got the sinking feeling he wouldn’t be there. I tried to push those thoughts away because maybe he just didn’t have the ability to respond, but he’d be at the date anyways since we had everything planned.
I had to park a little ways from the bar and when I drove past, I didn’t see him anywhere. At this point I was pretty sure he wasn’t there and I’d been stood up, but there was still a chance he’d be there so I pushed on. Walking into the bar, I immediately knew he wasn’t there. But I was too embarrassed to leave right away because it was a very small place and the moment I walked in half the people inside looked at me.
I pretended to walk around looking for him and then I had no idea what to do. What if he was running late too? I figured I should wait a little longer. But I definitely didn’t want to sit at the bar. Most of the people at the bar were men in their 40s-50s and I don’t have a good track record with being respected by that group. I decided to wait outside the front door in case he showed.
People were coming and going and all of them would glance over at me. At first I felt embarrassed because I was clearly waiting for someone and it had been at least ten minutes. Then that completely went away when I realized that I really had been stood up and this guy didn’t have the decency to just cancel on me before I drove to the bar. Never in my life have I done this to someone, not even a total stranger.
So with my head held high, I strutted away to my car and left. The truth is I wasn’t hurt or sad about the turn of events. I was just pissed. I had no need to be embarrassed. Some jerk just stood me up and ghosted me. If anything, that’s embarrassing for him. And boy it really will be if I ever run into him or anyone he knows, because in that situation I would not hold back.