This is everything I know about rejection
Ever since I was a lil kid, the concept of rejection hasn’t felt so foreign to me, rather, it’s always within arm’s reach. It’s sitting opposite me. Waiting on the other side of every corner and posy of people I blissfully rip my way through.
Whenever I think of rejection, I don’t find it as isolating as others might. Of course, the name is synonymous with practically stalking an ex-lover or two. I’m not talking about following them in your Nissan Tiida right after you’ve slugged back a pack of Rothman Blues, popped a xaney candy and watched their every move on Snapchat geotag.
I’m rather talking about obsessing over them from afar.
What are they doing? Are they thinking about me? When will they next hit me up? Why the fuck aren’t they talking to me?
I’m not too sure about you, but there have been many different moments in my life when I’ve found myself dreaming if someone’s thinking about me. I’ve stayed up for days. I’ve lost weeks obsessing over people. I’ve let my mind completely strip itself clean of any trace of personality and sanity, and I’ve become completely absorbed with someone who’s treated me like chips in some sloppy midnight poker game – I thought they had a royal flush when all they really had was a handful of flops and a bed without a base. My mum’s always said I fixate on things too much, that I struggle to let things go. And I concur. When I feel rejected, I take it personally. It’s really no longer about you so much as it’s now about me. Lots of things will happen in chronological order when you kick my arse to the curb. First, I’ll block you and your entire family and group of close-knit friends, then I’ll call my five best friends one after the other and talk mad shit about you and finally, once all the lights are off and I’m left alone with my lava lamp and no one else but my thoughts, I’ll stay up trying to piece together the parts of myself that you didn’t like.
When you start to feel that you’re not enough for someone else, it rips open a part of you that maybe you’re not enough for anyone, let alone yourself.
Rejection made me fucking insane. I’ve flown over oceans fleeing rejection and the ensuing emptiness more times than I’ll ever care to count. Who am I to tell you there is no worse feeling than something, but, for me at least, there has been nothing more in life that has royally fucked me up than when the love I’ve felt isn’t reciprocal.
The process has its nuances, but it ends in the same result. Someone figures out a way to slowly but surely dig away at the mountains I’ve built and moats full of oceans. And when I think I am finally ready to allow someone in. When I allow myself the space to let my shoulders relax and drop the facade I put up so easily, like some sad 24/7 circus constantly spinning for your endless entertainment and amusement. When I let someone understand me and see me flawed and buried, I start to believe that maybe I’ve got a good thing going on.
And that’s what I believe the masses think rejection is.
But it’s not so isolated. Your career can reject you. Something you thought you once loved, you spent decades paying off your exorbitant student loan for, doesn’t fit you anymore. You no longer have the purpose. Like keeping a candle lit in the wind in Wellington’s peak shit-storm. When you dedicated your life to an occupation you believed defined you, only to grow out of it. You’re left stripped.
Or when you start rejecting your body. My stomach was prodded when I was a teenager. People used to laugh at me when I ran. People probably still do. My hands are floppy, I used to get anxious to the point of pig-sweating at the thought of shaking other people’s hands (I still despise it), and I’ve always moved differently. I didn’t like my thighs, and slowly but surely, I started to hate my feet.
And all of this is true for me, and some parts might be true for you. But without being left for dead, without a last-minute career exit, without my floppy hands and cushion thighs – without any of it, I would be just a slice of who I am today. There is growth in rejection. There has to be something better around the corner. You don’t deserve someone who makes you want to bite all your nails until they bleed or gaslights you until you’re at the bottom of the bottle. You don’t need to check when they’re last online on Facebook or stay up wondering if you’re strolling through the empty halls of their mind.
If you’re struggling with your career or lack of passion, I just want to gently remind you there is no embarrassment in starting again. Go back to uni. Go back to frozen meals and overdrafts. Go back to the start. Give up. I’d rather start a new journey than be living on a dead-end road.
I wish I could share how I overcame rejecting my body. I don’t have any answers. Zero. I often feel like I want a refund. I try and remember that my body gives me breath, and although I drown it in vape juice and white carbs, I know my bones are my home, and like all homes, sometimes it’s more comfortable at times than others.
We last spoke three months ago. Two months ago, I came to the decision I wanted to stop writing altogether. I haven’t told Zeenat this. But, I had this inkling I couldn’t flick that I was trying to keep something afloat that I thought was better off left to drown. That something was my creativity. So, I decided, in silence, to quit. But I found myself rolling round in the back of Ubers on the way to afters writing paragraphs in my head and writing myself sticky notes at all hours of the morning.
I live in Darlinghurst. It’s nice here. I feel like it’s always sunny in Sydney. I work with a company I love. I smile more here. I dance more here. I signed my first apartment and I couldn’t stop thinking about 21-year-old Liam, and how for the first time in my life, I know I would’ve been truly proud of myself. I have four sunset lamps and two sets of pink sheets. I have a microwave that’s also an oven and an IKEA chest of draws filled with all sorts of potions, serums and elixirs. I live next to an alleyway that hookups go for a sly quickie en route to their separate homes; sometimes I scream at them outside of my window and then quickly slam it shut and giggle to myself like a high school girl who’s just had a toke of her first J. I went to a club the other day, it’s called Club 77 or something, and the bathroom was flooded, and there were seven posters of Sky Ferriera and a model smoking while she was sitting on the bathroom basin wearing what can only be described as a huge piece of boob tape with glitter embellishments. It was all very New York, and although I’m not the same person as I was in New York, it did feel like home while I stood sweating in the middle of a puddle of urine. I’m hanging out with this guy right now; he’s younger than me, and he’s very sweet and he tells me I have a button nose – la cute.
Leaving New Zealand was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Giving myself the space to explore parts of myself I had kept locked for so many years has been liberating. I have zero regrets, albeit stopping doing the writing. I realised that as much as I want to burn all my bridges and keep everything to myself, as much as I dream for my privacy, I’m an oversharer at heart. So, it will all pour out one way or another. I’m really ready to take Sauce somewhere. I want to do this differently this time. On my terms. All editorial. Always. No deadlines. Ever. I just want to write about nothing and everything until all the lights go out and my world stops spinning. I hope you can stick around for a piece or two because I truly believe we’ve got a good thing going on, I have to believe in it.
