Here’s the thing about heartbreak:

People will be careless. They will be self involved and they will be oblivious. But I have found that rarely are people purposefully cruel. Which is actually worse, if you ask me. See, if someone mistreats you with that express goal in mind, well then, that makes them a bad person and you have every right to be angry, feel hateful or spend your life savings paying Guido and Co. to break the bastard’s legs on his way to work one cold, Wednesday morning.

Totally justified.

But when it is simply a matter of circumstance, timing or geography, your disappointment is really just a nasty byproduct of someone else’s prerogative. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Well, that’s not completely true. You can have a good cry. Or two. Or three. It really all depends on your level of disbelief. Some of us can go on for quite a while insisting that there must be some mistake (those being the same of us who read too many fairy tales or watched too many Disney movies), getting some pretty decent mileage off of what should have been one relatively small let-down.

It may have only been the icing on the cake.

You may be inclined to agree with Paul and say that had it been bigger, it would have been easier to handle. Had it been one of the many other walloping defeats of 2003, then I could have chalked it up to yet another experience in no longer leading a charmed life. But when it was such an unexpected belly-flop… when he didn’t intend to break my heart and I didn’t intend to let him, but it happened just the same, and it all came as such a complete shock that I got dizzy and had to sit down on a stool in the middle of a strange bar in a strange part of town just to make my head stop spinning… well, that’s when something snaps.

(And run-on sentences become the norm.)

But even the “snap” phase has to have its statute of limitations. Because you don’t want to get fired for being a complete space case and you don’t want to see that pile of laundry swallow your kitten whole, you decide to stop feeling sorry for yourself for at least a few hours every day until that becomes the norm and you get your real life back.

It’s not a huge victory, by any means. More like a Stuart Smalley moment. And then again, an unexpected Stuart Smalley moment can become the icing on the cake. But,you know, in a good way this time.

I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone it…

Well, you understand.