February 20, 2009
Picking up a book called REJECTED: TALES OF THE FAILED, DUMPED, AND CANCELED is a bit like turning to look at a traffic wreck. Are you supposed to feel better that it’s not you? Is it curiosity? Me? — I was feeling down and wanted to see how others can turn that sense of rejection into humor.
REJECTED — edited by Jon Friedman — is genuinely funny at times, and left me wincing at others. Read the introduction — funny — Friedman has annotated it with his own bold-faced editor notes — “cheesy,” “a little too Dr Phil,” and “too serious. Need to end with something light and funny.” Comedians who write for Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, and The Kids in the Hall dish out the self-deprecating humor. Like the comedy writer for Comedy Central who has a hysterical conversation with Standards and Practices at the show about a bit he’d written about a gay dream…and how he couldn’t use certain words. He can’t use “licking my balls” but he can say “touching my private area.” They end up having — what sounds like phone sex — and it’s dead-on funny. There’s the cartoonist showing a guy at stand with a sign that says “Urinade – 25-cents.” Beneath, the caption, “Business was slow.”
Professionally, I am way too much of a lemonade person to believe in rejection. If I get a “no” — or if I get ignored — which, actually, thankfully doesn’t happen often — I chalk it up to the “tall, skinny, blonde chick syndrome.” I made that up. I am petite, muscled, dark-haired, so if someone is looking for a tall, skinny, blonde chick, there’s no way I could get the job, not matter how spot-on my performance is. I get lucky a lot. Some people think it’s my persistence. Or if the “blonde” prevails, I chalk it up to a learning experience, and squeeze all the juice out of that.
But personally….? Oy vey. If you hug the two people near me, and not me? I know you don’t like me. Even if I’ve never met you before. Or this — I got a new haircut, a bob, a lot shorter than my shoulder-length hair. I’m not sure about it yet — and it’s been a month. Tonight, a lady comes up to me, pats my hair and says “oh your hair is so beautiful.” I manage to thank her, but I feel rejected. Huh? If someone rushes over and wraps me in a hug, I wonder if they’ve lost their marbles, and feel rejected anyway. Another vestige of my early programming wherein I “learned” that touch equals sex, that people (like my real dad and grandfather) who love you will leave, and that my stepfather would erupt at any time for any reason.
Hey, I’m having fewer of these moments — I’m working on it. Author Debbie Ford once told me about one stage in her life when she always felt rejected “There could be two-hundred people in a room, and I would be attracted to the one person who didn’t like me.”
So I’m journaling tonight, after I read REJECTED, to sort all this out, and it becomes clear to me that what is missing when I feel rejected, when anyone feels rejected…is a spiritual connection. I breathe deeply, and venture a prayer, and waves of warm, gooey love wash in.
Aaaah, that is magical.
