On Being Rejected

How low can I go?

Photo by Tomoe Steineck on Unsplash

Monday, my therapist issued me some homework. Now, I was not a student who necessarily hated homework during all those years/decades when I was in school. I saw homework as a necessary evil sometimes; at other times — especially when I had to read/study a classic novel — this wasn’t homework or even work at all.

It was fun, but more than that: it was both inspirational in the sense that I was slowly coming around to the idea that I might want to teach such work myself one day, and aesthetically pleasing in that increasingly more often, I’d read a novel or maybe just one passage that would help me understand why I wanted to teach and why I wanted to write.

It likely wasn’t the first passage to move me in such a way, but the ending of James Joyce’s finest short story, “The Dead,” fits exactly into Aristotle’s definition of why art exists: to please and to instruct. Sometimes it takes failure, abject failure, to make a person aware of what love or fulfillment could mean. I hate that it might come to this, but I love how literature like this can open us to self-understanding and can help us better appreciate the experiences and epiphanies of others.

We learn from others’ insights and from their mistakes, and we also find joy in how intentional connections and patterns of words get to the heart of our own fears and our own appreciation of worlds we might not have known to appreciate, or that we could appreciate, before reading such connected, patterned words.

Thanks for indulging my momentary avoidance of the homework I was given.

A few weeks ago, I hit another valley of shame, embarrassment, and rejection. Such valleys are usually carved out of grief, and this one was no exception. I was already feeling vulnerable due to a health concern and the still raw emotions from losing my precious Max. Sometimes we don’t realize that we’re on the precipice of severe depression; we know only that we can’t tolerate the way the world looks at us in that moment. That we want to hide, get under the covers, and stay there.

In that moment, maybe the most frightening thing is that we can’t see a moment when we might want to uncover ourselves, expose ourselves to the vulnerability of life again.

I assume you’re okay with my giving some details.

In the days leading to this downward slope, I still hadn’t gotten past seeing places I used to go with Max — old and new places where I’d walk him so as to give him exercise and to keep him from getting bored. The worst day occurred when I was walking my neighbor’s dog, Maggie, a dog I adore. We walked to a nearby park, and as we rounded one corner of it, it hit me that the last time I had been in this park was also the last time I walked Max.

The very last time I walked Max.

I couldn’t have known it would be the last time. His passing on the following day was sudden and mercifully quick, most likely, a massive stroke.

Maggie is a big white lab mix, and she exerts a gravitational pull that could be concerning for a man my age. It’s extra concerning when, whike she’s pulling so hard, I’m holding on with two hands which means that as the tears begin falling, I have no way of wiping them and so my vision is now blurry and I don’t know when it will clear up.

Clearly it did, but in the moment….

In those days, I also made the mistake of believing that sexual intimacy could be used or substituted for a feeling of well-being and actual comforting. As my therapist said, making love should be a celebration, not a measure that one person employs just to feel better, or be taken care of.

I would be thrown off if my wife ever asked me to make love so that she would feel less depressed about her life. Isn’t it fun, isn’t it strange, and isn’t it enlightening to see yourself through others’ eyes?

In the moment, however, rejection is rejection, no matter how softly it was said, no matter how loving in so many other ways the rejector is to the rejectee.

In the moment, the covers on the bed seem to be the most comforting details of this world.

When you’re in severe depression, still feeling enormous grief, you don’t always see why you aren’t so desirable. You don’t always realize that what you need isn’t what you think you need or want. Your perspective on almost everything is off, distorted, but you can’t see the distortion because everything about you is so distorted.

In that moment of rejection, the one being I wanted most was the one being who was lost to me. So.

And then, in the midst of trying to sort this out, or at least understanding that it might be a good idea to schedule therapy, I got two letters of rejection from literary journals whom I had really wanted to be accepted by, both because being published in the journals themselves would have elevated me to places and statuses I thought/and perhaps still think I deserve and surely, badly, want. Or at least I think I badly deserve/want these places.

This rejection hurt even more deeply because one of these sites had been recommended to me by my closest friend. Being rejected by this site meant, to me, that I had let my friend down— an embarrassing and shaming reality.

In my balanced moments, I understand that rejection is part of the game, and god knows I’ve been rejected enough that I shouldn’t take any more rejection personally, mainly because these rejections are especially impersonal. These last two, I hate to say, were truly impersonal. Perhaps you’ve gotten such as this before:

“Thank you for trusting us with your work. We know how difficult it is to be a writer and to carefully create and then submit your work. We’re sorry we have to pass on this piece, but please try us again in the future.”

Maybe that sounds personal to you, and maybe it even was, but this last time almost did me in because all I could see from this rejection was further and colder affirmation that while by most measures I am a successful writer, I am not successful enough to be published in The Oxford American, just to pull out an arbitrary example.

Sure, I know my problems cannot match those of so many millions of people suffering from untold horror. My grief and depression don’t know this, however, and so in that moment, those days of feeling down in the valley, I felt unwanted, unappreciated, and in some ways, unloved. I couldn’t think of anyone to talk to — still avoiding my therapist, in that moment— and I couldn’t think of any place I wanted to be.

There was at least one other factor here that I am not at liberty to discuss. Let’s just say that my chosen profession — being a college professor — was depressing me, too.

Even I understand that what I was experiencing in these days could be termed “wallowing in self pity.” To an extent, I would even agree with this diagnosis. Except, self-pity and depression aren’t the same. To the self-pitying person, invalidation is another excuse to quit the hard work of trying to be, in this case, a writer whose work validates his subject and his reason for wanting to write.

To the depressed person, all of this — though right now I’ll focus only on the writing and rejection — is too much, and he/I can’t think of a subject worth writing about. And he/I simply do not feel worthy, worthwhile, or of any worth to his profession, to his loved ones, or to himself.

So call it what you will, but trust me: in those days I felt like I was falling, only I didn’t/couldn’t see from where or to where. For a few moments or hours, I wasn’t sure I ever would.

You probably get that my homework was to write about the experience of those concentrated points of rejection — how they felt and what, if anything, I learned from it. And upon reflection then, how I might choose to react in the future when rejection most assuredly will come again.

It feels good to write all of this, and not just because I want my therapist — as I did all my teachers — to be pleased that I’ve done my homework. It feels good because I know I’m a writer — I keep writing despite the fears and worries about acceptance. It feels good because I know I love Max and Maggie, and now my brother’s dog, Blue, who, with my brother, have moved down here.

My heart is ready once again to accept the vulnerability of loving.

I’m also trying to love myself more, to speak out about who I am, what I consider myself to be — to celebrate all that I have including the times of intimacy to come, because they will.

I still have fears, because to fear is also to live, but I believe, fully, that I am capable of handling those fears and any realities that accompany or validate them.

Walking intentionally into the depths of this valley has shown me, once again, that I am stronger and more resilient than I believed. I’m looking up now though I understand that doing so does not mean that the grief and loss I’ve experienced are no longer in sight.

The reality is that I wouldn’t want to lose sight of them. Acknowledging them, I think, allows me to see all the other parts of my world, of me — all the parts and words and patterns that make up the larger picture of me — a picture, like all good art, that now and for the forseeable future both pleases and instructs me.

Thanks to Age of Empathy for publishing.