Thank You For Walking Out On Me

Because although you dented my confidence that night, I met three perfect strangers who made me feel more alive than you could have ever done.

It was maybe my third tinder date yet this year and so far they’d all been pretty crap. So I was hoping that you might be different, interesting at least.

You arrived twenty minutes late and the rest of the date followed in the same disappointing fashion, with you calling me ‘conceited’ when I said I was hoping to build a big bookcase in my living room, because I must be wanting to ‘show off about how many books I have’. An hour into our date and two Negroni’s down, you made me laugh and I wondered if perhaps I had misjudged you. We left and headed to another bar for a beer, but as I listened to you tell me about a project you’d done at work. You stopped in your tracks. mid conversation.

You turned on your heel and said ‘Nah actually I don’t want to get another drink with you.’

Without so much as eye contact you were gone, practically running up Park Street, and I stood there in my new boots and the cute outfit I’d picked out and you made me feel so worthless and so embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say. I smoked a cigarette and bought a beer, and walked home- swearing off men for another month.

and then.

Three guys in a basement apartment smoking a joint asked if I was okay. Usually I would have just waved and laughed and carried on, but I’d had two negroni’s and I was so angry at you for making me feel small I went down to their basement garden and told these three strangers about the evening.

They told me I was lucky you’d left because I didn’t have to waste any more time with you on a crappy date and that I’d had a lucky escape. They were definitely right.

Thank you to the strangers who invited me into their home and drank beer and showed me trippy documentaries, who talked about art and meditation and travel – who were interesting and in turn interested. Thank you for the knowledge and insight you gave me that night that stopped me going home and wondering what was wrong with me, how I’d managed to fuck up yet another date.

It is these perfect collisions of disappointment and pure happiness where we can establish ourselves and press reset. I woke up feeling happy, happy you’d run away and happy that I was richer for the experience, and I now believe in fate.

To all the other girls who’ve been ditched on dates, who’ve been stood up and have felt embarrassed and had their confidence knocked. I am so sorry- but you should know that you are better off without these cowardly husks. You are worth being listened too.

Whether your fairy godmother moment comes in the form of a smile from a friendly bartender or the knowing look of a stranger when you’ve been stood up, embrace it, try and laugh about it and realise you are not alone, and you are no less of who you are when you went into the date.

Be a hedonist and fall in love with experiences, not only people.