rejection is redirection
I've always hated rejection in all its forms. I don't take it well, nor turn it into motivation overnight. I'm not qualified to offer neat, actionable advice on overcoming it, either. It's amusing, how the very thing I avoid most became the recurring theme of this period of my life (unemployment, anyone?).
I've been trying to meet rejection with some grace. A sort of exposure therapy, perhaps, introspectively documented on Bear in the name of "growth." Yet, I won't pretend it's not making me fall apart, exposing the weakest seam in my self-worth. Still, this isn't how easily I let external outcomes dictate my self-perception. I know that story too damn well. What I want to explore is a reframing of why rejection happens, after years of internalizing it as a verdict of my value.
These days, I've been wondering if rejection isn't always a dismissal but a redirection. What if rejection isn't automatically no but not this? What if it's nudging me from places I was never meant to stay, despite its brutal means of conveying so?
(Note: I'm not particularly spiritual, but I do believe in the notion of predestined paths meant for each of us. I think it's why some life events, like a relationship or a career move, feel inexplicably "right," as if we were always meant to arrive there.)
That doesn't make rejection any less triggering, for me at least. It still bruises my ego, dreadfully lingering like an accusation. Even when I intellectualize it, my body absorbs it as a loss before it ever resembles meaning. But framing rejection as a redirection, rather than evidence of "failure" or "worthlessness," gives me something to hungrily cling onto when life feels uncertain.
I don't know where the hell I am being redirected. I only know that calibrating my worth with closed doors and dead ends has never done me good. I tell myself this isn't the end, just an unsparing redraft of where life is headed. One day the narrative might all make sense, but for now I'll let it hurt.