I don’t deal well with rejection. No one does, but many people seem to bounce back from it quicker than I do. As soon as I feel like any person or entity is not obsessed with me, my sense of self completely disintegrates. I immediately retreat into the despair of questioning what is wrong with me, because if I’m not accepted and adored by every person at every turn it must mean there is something wrong that I can ultimately fix. The idea that I can change the outcome of a situation or change someone’s mind about me gives way to a manic sense of hope that maybe if I work hard enough or make people laugh enough I’ll be universally adored. And nothing short of universal adoration feels like enough. This definitely stems from the delusional idea that I deserve things simply by throwing the full force of my will at them (aka “hard work”). Also the long-standing delusion that being hot and pretty is the same as having life insurance when in fact, my quest to be hot and pretty has left me with extremely thin and porous skin. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to embody an ideal that might make me impossible to reject, which has only conditioned me to react horribly to rejection when it inevitably comes.
I’m not interested in developing a thicker skin, though. The drama of always being offended and heartbroken is too much fun. But, I would like to know how not to internalize every single situation in which I’m not someone’s favorite; how to not immediately give up when I don’t get something I want; how to not interpret rejection as an assassination of my character. I cannot sit with the basic discomfort of not being chosen. I go straight to wallowing in the self-centered cycle of “what did I do wrong/what did I do to deserve this”, breaking my own heart over something that doesn’t exist. I think it takes something like a spiritual awakening to accept the fact that some of the things we want are just not meant for us. It takes a reckoning with one’s ego. As a wise lady in a 12-step group once said, “my ego is not my amigo” and its true. My ego constantly eclipses my better judgement.
There’s another saying in recovery circles that goes something like, “God won’t give you something that isn’t for you” which reminds me of a similar ideology taught in Sunday School, that “God won’t put desire in your heart for what is not for you.” This saying always activated my OCD because I would immediately think, well what if all I want is to get married and all God wants is for me to be a nun? (God wants everyone to be a nun). It gave me the sinking feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting to wake up one morning to realize that all my deepest desires had imperceptibly dulled over time.
I don’t want to be a nun and God cannot make me be one, but I find that desire turns me into a bottomless pit. I think it’s okay to be a bottomless pit that constantly gets filled up—why not fill up the pit if you have the means? What scares me is being an empty, hungry, unsatisfied bottomless pit. Living unfulfilled is the American nightmare and it absolutely haunts me. The scarcity mindset of being an artist under capitalism makes every rejection feel like an ego death. I’m not sure how to get out from under it, but I do know that I never want to stop wanting things, and rejection is part of that.
This is so boring and utterly well-adjusted in a way that repels me, but I think the only tool for dealing with rejection is simply reframing it. A little while ago I listened to this convo between writer/artist Austin Kleon and creativity coach Beth Pickens—which I highly recommend listening to—and their advice is to chase rejection the same way you chase the thing you want. The idea of saving and collecting rejection letters is not new, but the way they spoke about it really illuminated the concept for me. I think the caveat that helps me accept this strategy is the permission to take a day to process a rejection, and then move on. Give yourself a day to feel like shit and wallow in self-pity, and then start pursuing again.
I had a pretty disappointing creative rejection over the summer, and that took about a month of wallowing to get over. But I like the idea of taking a day (more like a week for me) to feel terrible. Give yourself enough time to wallow and you’ll eventually just get bored of it. This is also how I get over exes: I allow myself to be fully insane and fully immersed in the heartache for as long as it takes to forget about it. This is always a totally miserable process for my friends, but it works for me.
When I was struggling with panic a couple weeks ago, my mom was like, “don’t worry, you’ll eventually get desensitized to all your triggers.” She also had panic problems when she was my age, and it appears as though she did, in fact, get desensitized to her triggers over time. I guess the cure for some things is just exposure, and I’m willing to believe that’s true of rejection.