The Big R

No, not a terrible new nickname. Rejection.

I used to have this joke that I had never been rejected, except it wasn't I joke. I really had not. I somehow escaped adolescence without the emotional hardship of being turned down (but I was called a fag everyday, so I suppose there's some sort of trade off...). Sure, I've had rough breakups and things of that nature, but I'd never had someone flat out tell me no. Until this week.

The event had an interesting affect on me, mostly because I didn't feel the situation at hand warranted any response, or affirmation, or rejection. It was a bit confusing and became even more so as time went by. It is no secret that I think rather highly of myself, so there was obviously the rather initial shock of disbelief that this could actually be happening to me. Once that passed there were some bigger picture doubts that surfaced and had a far heavier impact. "I'm never going to date again." That is basically all I could think.

As I do in most situations when I'm not sure how to handle my emotions, I started walking. Every couple hours. I walked a lot. I'm still walking a lot. And at first it did absolutely nothing. It made me angrier, if anything. And then slowly, once I stopped thinking about everything so much, I actually started thinking. And this is when I realized that I've never dealt with rejection. I don't know how to process it. And then I became a bit fascinated. "So this is what it feels like?"

I wonder sometimes how human I really am. I wonder just how much I really relate to people. Somehow, when I am able to understand why I feel the way I do, when I unearth the reason, I immediately feel better. And from there begins the game. I'm not really sure, even to this day, what the game is, but I know I've been playing it my entire life. It begins with me feeling something, and then me needing to know how, why, etc... and then it evolves into this process of understanding how other people feel in the same situation, and how they deal with their emotions. And by wrapping myself in this process I eliminate the emotion all together. I make it irrelevant. Or rather, I make it irrelevant to me. I dissociate myself from my own experience.

And then I feel fine.