The way in which my faith in humanity was crushed

Now that enough time has passed for me to move through the different stages of grief, I think it is appropriate to share something that happened to me this week and has almost competely broken my spirit. Where I was once a happy-go-lucky girl who trusted easily and sought out the good in strangers I have now become a cold, suspicious introvert who can only associate with people I've known for quite some time.

You may be asking yourself, "how was this complete 180 paradigm shift occur to such a fun and innocent young girl?"

Well, I'm here to tell the grisly tale.

Tuesday was the day that marked my 2 year anniversary with my sweetheart. The entire week previous to this day I'd been planning my surprise for him. I was SO excited. I knew that he would love it.

I'd decided that I would put love letters and little presents in long, clean white envelopes and hide them in special places for him to find...Scavenger hunt style. I wrote down a list of places all over town that meant something to us. Our special inside joke locations. I had it all set up and organized. The first letter would give him the clue to the second and so on.

Tuesday morning I woke up at 5 am to set up the course the he would follow. I attached a small, round blue balloon and white ribbon to each envelope and tucked them away.

As I attached the two clues to the places on campus I had a momentary hesitation. What if some punk ripped them down and spoiled everything. Not only would the ear doctor not get his little letter and gift, but the rest of the route would be ruined. I immediately pushed this worry out of my head because, well, what kind of jerk would do that? If I saw something that clearly wasn't meant for me, and might be something special for someone else I would smile at it and leave it there for them. That is the normal response.

After a couple of hours of setting everything up for him, I had to go to class. After my class (at around 9:15 am) I glanced out the window toward the location that one of the balloon markers should have been.

Gone.

I hit the roof.

I spent the next hour and a half canvassing Boulder to see what other clues had been rudely ripped from their not-so-safe hiding spots.

Two in the course were ripped and not a trace left behind to mark that they were ever there.

I'm still a little pissed.

What kind of person would rip something like that down, read a very personal love letter written to someone else, steal a present and throw the letter away?!?!?

Someone with a dark, black, evil soul.

(clearly I'm still working on that forgiveness thing)