Some hurts you never outgrow

By MARY JANE HOLT
Contributing Writer

I cried myself to sleep last night. Like a baby, I did. Worst timing in the world for such action. Here I am, less than 48 hours away from a high school class reunion, and I awake with swollen sinuses, puffy eyes, red face, and scratchy throat.

You would think I would have known better. I mean women know how to save up a good cry. We are experts at it. We can do it for weeks, months, even years. We can, with great precision, pick the time and place when and where we will let it all out.

So, you would think with a high school reunion so close, that I would have had the self-control to hold it. Well, I didn't. And to make matters worse, one friend and my husband laughed at me.

Now, here it is on Thursday morning, and I'm about to make a chocolate fudge/praline cake to take to the weekend event. Even the prospect of creating some chocolate masterpiece does not eradicate my need to cry some more …

Therefore I am doing what never fails me. I'm telling you guys what's wrong. For 18 years, you have been the best listeners to heart thoughts in the world! You may laugh at me, but at least I don't hear it!

You see, I started planning this reunion in February. I have worked fervently, putting my heart and soul into every detail. At first, we were going to rent the entire hotel for the weekend, but, by early summer, I knew we were not going to have enough attendees to do that. So I had to settle for one wing of the hotel, (top and bottom floors) and the conference room. Early in August, I went to the hotel and put down a hefty deposit. Got a receipt. Got a written layout of all the rooms that were to be ours.

All was set for the big weekend. Or so I thought. Until yesterday when a woman from the hotel called my home and asked for Marget Holt. They had my name wrong. But that's nothing!

They just had a note in the system that I had reserved a large number of rooms this weekend. Nothing more. Seems the management person, with whom I had met on several occasions, and upon whose word and paperwork I had relied as a bond, was gone. The person I believed in and trusted is no longer there, so her word and her agreement with me mean nothing.

This meant since the hotel has rented out two of my reserved rooms in recent weeks to two long-stay guests, I had to choose two classmates to place on the other side of the hotel. Take them out from among us. Separate them from the class, the group to which they belong, and place them among strangers.

Now this might not have been a big deal for somebody who never has known what it feels like to be separated from the crowd, set apart, and made to feel like she does not belong.

Yes, it was a long time ago when that happened, and when it hurt. Strangely, today, I relish such apartness. But for a few hours yesterday, I was a kid again, remembering how damaging it can be to not get chosen for a team or a group or a project. To not become homecoming queen. To not even be in the running. To stand off alone to myself while others were having all the fun.

I fought yesterday with all my might to get those two long-stay guests moved to the other side of the hotel, so we could all be together once more and have the perfect reunion. I lost.

The moment when I realized I had lost will stay with me forever. I had called corporate, that is the customer service department for the hotel chain. Yeah, I was going to "tell on them."

Tell on them I did, to several sympathetic, but impotent ears. In the end, the last customer service spokesperson to whom I spoke informed me that "unfortunately, a person's word and modern technology" do not always work together in today's world.

So, some time after midnight, in fact, it was well into the wee hours of the morning, I began to cry. Here I am, at 55 years old and well into the 21st century, still believing that a person's word means everything. I also thought if I worked really hard that I could create a setting where there was no chance that anyone could feel left out, alienated, or even the least bit set apart.

I was wrong on both counts, and so I cried.