Rejection

I failed.  I didn’t get accepted or even acknowledged in the most recent contest I entered.  I had high hopes.  I allowed myself to put a tremendous amount of

stock in winning, or at least placing in that contest.  This achievement would fuel my difficult journey.  It would provide me the validation I desperately require at this critical juncture, the oil necessary to keep going.  It would be my small reward for such hard work, for the sacrifices made and all the sacrifices planned.  I had convinced myself I deserved it, that I earned it.  The timing and circumstances aligned so perfectly it was surely divined by the writing gods of kismet.  If this were a book or a movie, the heroine would of course win this contest – the whole prologue had been set up perfectly to that moment.

But I didn’t win.  I didn’t even get a nod from Them – this all-knowing

“anonymous” group of judges.  For all I know, and what I of course assume at this point, They laughed at my entry.  They threw it across the room, didn’t even bother reading past the opening.  Maybe They now hold the knowledge of just how very bad I am, yet will never tell me.  And I don’t even know who They are. 

I’m taken aback by just how ludicrously hard I took this.  I want to ask “Why?”  Why not me?  What was wrong with my story that I worked so hard to

complete, that took all my nerve to submit?  I want to know precise details, what didn’t work, what made them not like it, what sentence, what word didn’t work.  I want them to tell me if I should just give up once and for all.

Rejection is hard enough for anybody, but rejection in an absolute vacuum, never knowing or meeting your judge, is a singularly helpless experience.  The thought that some unknown person has secret information about me, that they

know the truth about me that I will never know is agonizing.  Strangers judged and compared me and found me wanting.  It’s a sign.  I should just quit now before enacting my drastic plans.  All my ideas and schemes are unrealistic, ridiculous.  That’s why they never come to fruition, why my life is pervasively pending.  I should turn back now while I still can before I get on that single lane of hairpin curves through the mountains with no way to turn around.

I wonder how long I’ll stay feeling sorry for myself like this, licking my pathetic wounds, stewing in a fetid and toxic concoction of my own making.   Or – is this really the truth and the rest some sort of delusion?  Who knows which is real; the truth?  I don’t anymore.  I look for signs to reinforce my decisions, my actions, like this contest.  Something to help me test each step – will this

hold?  Is it safe?  Is it the right way to go?  But the answers are always random, meaningless in the end.  There are in fact no road signs. 

I could throw in the towel.  Accept my utter failure, eventually write it all off to just another mere delusional

period in my life that I ultimately got through.  I’ll bury myself in manual labor projects, where I can fight to get results, where I can at least physically see something I did mattered.  I’ve struggled with why in the world I keep throwing more logs into the log jam.  I’ve believed something had to work eventually, that I’d get to see a crack in the jam, a ray of light finding its way through somehow.  I need that visible verification, to prove to myself that something I do has impact, that I can build and create something from nothing.  There is a perverse vindication in doing projects.  “See?!”  I tell myself, “Look how much I accomplish if I don’t write”. 

If I were my friend, instead of my own worst enemy, I would easily be able to

offer guidance and objective support.  This isn’t personal; it has nothing to do with “you”.  You just weren’t right for this competition.  This wasn’t the forum for a more experimental piece perhaps.  All writers get rejection slips.  All of them, even your heroes – you know this.  This was good practice.  You must grow a thicker, less sensitive skin to handle the climate where you are heading, where you say you want to live.  This is an inevitable and necessary part of the process.

There are no “signs”, no map to follow that will get you to the treasure.  It gets

down to sheer hard work.  Perseverance.  Stubbornness perhaps.  And yes – holding on to the delusion.  After all, it’s only a delusion if it turns out not to be true.  Right?