I received another rejection today.
I thought after 36 years I would be used to it by now, that it wouldn’t phase me as much as it used to, but it does.
It hurts. It stings. Rejection tugs at the deepest wounds we carry, pulls at our lowest stories of worth. It’s not easy, and it doesn’t get easier. Not the initial moment, at least.
Rejection causes an acute reaction in me (in all of us, yes?) My mind immediately begins weaving familiar lore: I’m not good enough, it wasn’t good enough, I will never be or make anything good enough.
I tried to hold myself tenderly today, and did a better job of it than I have in the past. Truthfully, the sting didn’t last as long. The acuteness turned chronic faster than usual. The initial burn simmered into a quiet ember, and I nursed it as best I could.
As I did, I couldn’t help but see the little flame a little differently.
Because rejection shows us how much we care, how attached we are to an outcome, but it can also show us the opposite. Sometimes it carries a level of apathy that surprises us. A detachment we weren’t expecting. Sometimes it brings relief.
Sometimes it brings up all of the above. At once, or in waves.
Today, I was the latter.
My partner and I both submitted poetry for a literary magazine competition. We both didn’t win. Our poetry was good. Really good. His was astoundingly better, he’s a stronger poet than me. I don’t say this to belittle myself, it’s something I know and feel – knowing and feeling it doesn’t lessen my confidence in my own work.
We have different ways of shining, him and I, and we both very much shine when we write from the heart.
After recovering from the initial sting, I got defensive. Duh. Classic M.O. I wondered how one actually goes about judging poetry, something so unbelievably personal and subjective. How do they decide who are winners and who are not? What’s the metric? What’s the measurement?
It doesn’t matter.
As they said in their letter, their metric bears no merit. It does not and should not undermine our talent and efforts. It simply wasn’t the right fit.
Totally fair.
I’ve been submitting my writing since 2021. Five years. I haven’t sent a mountain of them, but I’ve made a pretty tall hill. I’ve only received one acceptance: my first submission.
I’m eternally grateful for that yes. So early on in my journey, it boosted my confidence in a necessary way. It kept me moving, going, writing. It made the no’s more bearable, and it has been no’s ever since.
And while I was in the throes of pitying myself with the why not me’s and the why can’t I catch a break’s, there was something else underneath it all. Something quieter, yet more potent.
Why am I waiting for them? Who is them, and why am I waiting for their approval?
So much of my birth chart points to being an outsider. I’m in my nodal return right now, with the South Node in Leo. This is something I’m releasing, transforming, and alchemizing. We all are, in our own way, for the next few years.
That’s what the South node is – complicatedly – there for. To help us move through old and ancient and, perhaps, karmic choices, motivations, gifts, and comforts.
In past lives, I grew used to the spotlight. To being seen. Not authentically, mind you. I think I was exceptionally good at performing. Performing other’s work, performing other’s roles, performing other’s choices.
This isn’t a bad thing, actors do this everyday and we love it and need it. We, ourselves, need to do it to survive, whether that’s code-switching, masking, or downright hiding.
I’ve done it. Many lifetimes over. I still do it. But I’m not meant to. Not in this one.
But I keep chasing external rewards and recognition. I keep waiting for someone to tell me I’m worthy of shining. I keep waiting for someone with authority or hierarchy to give me permission to be my brightest and to share both my light and my darkness.
It’s how I was raised, within my family and within oppressive systems. Needing external validation runs so deeply within all of us, through generational trauma and ancestral wounds. Through capitalist bullshit and colonial extraction.
These systems want us to believe, and keep believing, that who we are and what we do and what we create are only worthy if the powers that be say so. If corporate institutions deem it worthy of distribution, if you have a high enough follower count, or if your family has already chiseled out fame in the field.
But there are billions of people on this planet. Billions of creators. And the internet allows us to share with all of them. There’s absolutely no guarantee every person will see it (what a lofty and extraneous goal), but we are not as restricted as the ones who came before us.
We can make our own website, publish our own book, build our own shop, and post our own poetry. We have platforms like Substack, and Patreon, and (begrudgingly) Instagram, and we can use them all.
If we have access to wifi, that is. Which not everyone does.
But we can also do this work via analogue too. We can make zines and jewellery and art and poetry and sell them at markets or on the street or in a cafe or a community centre. We can share them at meet ups and book clubs and open mic nights or even just family gatherings.
We know how to do this. Humans have been doing it forever.
And listen, none of this is to bypass the absolute shit kick in the heart that rejection is. It’s brutal. It will always be brutal.
But there is a sweetness to it. There can be.
There’s that classic saying: rejection is protection. An absolutely true statement for all of us with exes, estranged family, ghosted friends, and missed opportunities. Deep down we know if we weren’t wanted in a heart or a home or a place than we had no businesses staying there.
It still fucking hurts. God damn, it hurts. And some rejections will never stop hurting. We know this too. We feel it, in some way or another, everyday.
But I wonder if rejection can’t also be an invitation. An initiation. A welcome party to something or someone or somewhere else. This is not a new concept, many have said it before me, I guess I’m just starting to truly wonder at it. To believe in it.
I spend so much of my time in the past, regretting and yearning and ruminating and pining. I do. So much of my energy, especially these last five years, has been gazing in the rearview mirror. Turning over every no, every goodbye, every let down, over and over again, from different angles, from different sides, fucking regretting all the damn time.
If. If. If. If…
It takes so much of my energy. It zaps so much of my strength. It wastes so much of my time. Not the looking back itself, just how often and how long I do it. The narratives I create that pull me down, dull my shine, ache my bones, and pummel my heart.
I’ll always look back. I know this. I will never stop turning my head to gaze behind me, pilfering through details that don’t actually exist because I’m not living them anymore.
But today, I’m wondering. Wondering at the sweetness that could be offered. The something else being held in front of me, if I have the grit and passion and heart to take it.
I have ideas of what that could look like. I’ve been thinking about them for nearly three years. They’re right there, ready to be snatched if I just reach. If I stop looking back for a second and look ahead. Or look at now.
But I’m slow. Slow to grow. Slow to see. Slow to choose. Slow to act. I take my damn time, maybe too much, but I won’t rush. I will not be rushed. I have too much earth in me, probably.
But I am wondering, and that wondering is turning into something. Something else. Something other than the bite, and tug, and twist of regret. Tending to a little flame that’s been dampened and dowsed many times over yet still will not go out.
I’m tending to that wondering, and I think – no, I know – it’s leading me somewhere sweet.
And my hope is, after reading this, you might find a bit of sweetness too.
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