I'm in Love: A Follow Up to My Treatise

-
Hello!

I'm back and this time, I will attempt to be less melodramatic and more reflective (or in the very least, inject melodrama into my reflections or vice verse). 

Clearly, when I, last, wrote about my failures, I was hurting. Truth be told, I've never been rejected from anything before. Like Ariana Grande, "I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it." Not because I was spoiled though. Some of it was sheer dumb luck. Some of it was using my belief that if someone told me why they said no, we could work on the objections together to propel me towards the eventual 'yes'. But, truthfully, most of it was cowardice. I never asked for anything or tried anything that even hinted at failure. As such, I never learned how to believe in myself, never learned to back myself and, relevantly here, never learned how to pick myself back up. A perfect example of this would be my past romantic entanglements; I never, explicitly, showed interest in a potential partner unless I was sure they would reciprocate. While it saved me some heartache, this also robbed me of two things; (1) the aforementioned lessons above and (2); to this day, I never know if I truly like the partner or I liked the acceptance. The result is a frustrating and odd (like taking a sip of coffee only to find out it's warm) familiarity with the uncertainty of my feelings and the fact that they are rooted in a conditional foundation.

Suffice it to say, my love of the word "yes" has robbed me of important life functions which, substantially, impact my capacity to function in the real world. It would be nice to say that now life is forcing me to learn these lessons by handing me rejection after rejection. Much like a child being forced to down fish oil when they're sick and, unfortunately, I have to take it. Unfortunately, I must break up with my first love  Like many first loves, it was explosive and defining. It will define my future relationships and nothing can quite shine a candle to them. 

Does this mean that I will suddenly become more accepting of rejection? No! That shit hurts! Does it mean I won't cry? No! Again *clap* THAT. *clap* SHIT. *clap* HURTS! But will I see rejection for the role it plays in life? Eventually. Will I stop viewing rejection one-dimensionally, as the bringer of death, and start to view it as part of my come up? Eventually. In order for me to do all this, I need to learn to believe in myself and in order to do that, I must learn to, in the very least, tolerate myself. It's a long road ahead and I am terrified. To be honest, I wish I could just skip to the end of the book (like I do sometimes when I read) to know how it turns out. But life doesn't work that way.

Goodbye, yes. 

Hello, rejection

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Mothers' Day

-
To be, or not to be. That is the eternal question. Should I become a mother?  When I look at the world around me, the answer is no. No matter how much I yearn to be privileged with the care of another human being, I do not want to raise them in an environment that consistently limits their capacity for success. I do not want to raise them in a world that is dying and burden them with the responsibility of saving it – of being better. I do not want to raise them in a world that does not care about who they are, but what they can do.  Yes, there are a lot of 'I's in that paragraph. And yes , I recognise that parenting is not an, exclusively, maternal responsibility. Yet we live in a world where I will be held to greater account for my child's successes and failures than my partners. When this is coupled with my inability to indulge in the possibility of, truly, having a partner, I struggle to envision motherhood as something accessible for me . This is, even, before I conside...
Read more

So, England is Weird

-
I know, I know.  England is only weird to me because my reference point is home (otherwise known as not  England). But still, England is weird. Everything here is so, cultivated. No, that's not it. Manufactured? Artificial . Deliberate. Conscious. Ordinarily, intentionality is not a bad thing. Often, that's the difference between success and failure. But intentionality also highlights the things that are missing. For example, when you become aware that your partner isn't feeling assured, you show them how much they mean to you. When you become aware that your knees are crackling like an open fire while you squat, you introduce mobility and strengthening exercises into your routine. Likewise, when you become aware that people are lonely, alienated and disconnected, you create spaces that foster that connection across the entire community. And, in so doing, you realise how little the concept of community figured in your life.  By community, I suppose I mean people coming ...
Read more

Illegitimate Anger

-
I don't think of myself as an "angry person."  I can barely remember instances of pure unadulterated anger at a situation or a person. I struggle to maintain anger as an emotion - as it often turns into sadness. I set the threshold for my anger far too high (i.e. anger is only acceptable if someone I care about is hurt, or dies etc.) Above all else, I have never, ever, felt that I was allowed to be angry .  When my dad died, my anger was chastised and excised out of me, and replaced with fantastic petulance. When I was wronged, I was always reminded to be more empathetic and reserve judgement until I could speak to the other person. When I saw individuals using their class or race privilege in Africa, I was simply told it's not worth it. You could look at these anecdotes and think that the people around me were trying to teach me to let go of my anger and empathise with the recipient of that anger (an oft-ignored aspect of criminal justice, in my opinion). I don'...
Read more