It takes some labour to engage with rejection, it takes a lot to admit to it. I’m unlikely to confess to making someone feel unwanted, and I don’t tell anybody when I am made to feel redundant. That sort of thing goes into storage in a black bag, as something too disconcerting to remain distinct. It’s the feeling we’re more likely to keep over the box it comes in– who or what did it is quicker to leave. I’d liken memories of being rejected to a pouch of black stones, life will continue to give you more and more, and you’ll feel inclined to keep them. It is easy to be presumptuous about their significance.
Nobody wants to hear that rejection is ordinary, and people want to hear less about what that could mean. It could mean, for instance, that the depth tied to being rejected is imagined, or worse still, unimportant. It could also be saying that being made to feel unwanted is simply and pragmatically done– that it is only being on the left or the right side of a decision– ‘do I want this or do I want that? Do I want you, or do I want something, anything else?’ If it is those things, and it is, then it would also mean that the depriving of dignity is inconsequential, and must be recovered from as such. Yet none of that makes the pain a lie.
Rejection is one of those things where the severity bears no relation to the frequency, and the frequency does not consider the recovery time. The recovery time exalts the frequency, however, and there is some portion of everyone that knows that, the part that walks into the next phase– the next relationship, the next job, the next stage of the pursuit with our wounds weeping. That same part understands limited recovery time to be no recovery time– that, or we should have to sit out of life for years, which most would consider irresponsible, particularly if you do not know how to heal. The way to healing, because there is a way, is the long walk you do once, so that all of your walks can be short for the remainder of your life. You only need to learn to like yourself the one time, any funny feelings after that are brief, because you are capable of making that so. The methods are not gatekept, if only a little obscure.
The day I made my first vlog was a day I might’ve otherwise slept through. I had just been vaccinated, and felt like I was laying on the edge, meaning I was uncomfortable, very brain-fatigued, and easy to fool. I thought I’d fooled myself, when I watched a video back of me– rambling about something or other with dark circles and a dry face, and only came away from it thinking I was fun. I’d been watching YouTube, and had gotten it into myself that I couldn’t look or sound any stranger than I felt. It was the day I became immune from sounding or looking strange. But more importantly, it was the day I realised that I didn’t have any repulsive angles, only bad ones.
There are ways to discover exactly what it is that people are rejecting when they turn you down, ways of uncovering the revelation– that what is being rebuffed is far more superior than what has ever been said or implied. One sweet day this happens, with conscious effort on your part, when you face what you’re sure will frighten you, then the stones in your pouch become gravel again when you scatter them on the ground.
-Abbie