What I wish I knew about rejection

Advise never received by EmoGirl91

In the summer of 2007 I was 16 years old and about to move out of my parent’s house to start high school in a city on the mainland. I had achieved my only two life goals: to leave the godforsaken island my parents had chosen as our home and to witness a Good Charlotte concert at a summer festival in Stockholm.

I felt that this monumental change in my circumstances, in my outer life, had to be accompanied by an equally big change in me, in my inner life. I had to find a way to shed my baby skin like a snake and step into a new veil that would be better suited for my new life as a free and independent... woman. I still hadn’t developed the more dramatic and neurotic sides of my personality, and fear of failure was as unfamiliar to me as the Chinese language. But with independence came vulnerability, and with vulnerability came a sense of loneliness I couldn’t shake for years. 

I wish someone would have told this 16-year-old me – so ready to go out into the world to become my own person – that I would inevitably be rejected. Multiple times. Over and over. By members of the opposite sex, by newspapers looking for interns, even by random people’s grandmothers on the simple basis of not being genetically Swedish. So why was the art of “not taking it personal” lacking from my list of classes despite being a skill essential to the survival of the fittest?

I wish someone would have told me that in most cases, it wasn’t a rejection of me as a person per se, but the result of external factors such as other people’s shitty values (racists), immature guys (boys), and insecure idiots (narcissists). 

Back then, most of the rejecteers were boys aged between 16 and 23. They had quite a few things in common: a musky smell of teenage sweat, an interest in my boobs that had gotten bigger since I started “cooking” for myself, and a passion for finding a reliable alcohol smuggler to buy cheap vodka from. Most of them were also my good friend David’s friends – something he still likes to bring up, alongside that guy in Costa Rica who he still insists looked like Ross in the tv-show Friends. He didn’t.

These boys, and their behavior, made little sense to me – if I slept with them, they’d ignore my texts asking if they wanted to hang out. Or I should rather say “text” because I only asked once. At least I had a lot of self-respect, my sense of pride predating the concepts of double texting and ghosting. I didn’t even want a boyfriend – that was probably the last thing that I wanted. I just wanted some respect, and maybe to go to the beach and make out a little after eating ice cream (I was not yet lactose intolerant).

After several instances of post-coitus ghosting, I decided to change my strategy to see if “playing hard to get” would yield other results. It didn’t. They mostly stopped responding on MSN Messenger after a few failed attempts of getting into my pants. For those of you who don’t know that platform, think of it as the granddaddy of Facebook (which makes me feel old but in a good way.)

If I slept with them – rejection. If I didn’t sleep with them – rejection. It was just an impossible equation to crack for my adolescent mind which wasn’t very good at maths to begin with. If X raised by two equals zero, but if zero raised by zero STILL equals zero, then what the hell is Y? This was the first time I started questioning the myth of women being more complicated than men and originating from venus versus mars and all that crap.

The rejection that stung the most was by the guy who took my virginity (he didn’t know, I was too ashamed to tell). Just when I was about to leave the small wooden cottage where the act had taken place, he took my head in both his hands and instead of kissing me, turned my head from side to side and looked at the acne scars that had become visible with my makeup rubbing off. He did not look pleased. I felt terrible. But then seduced Simon – who was a total babe and a massive upgrade from Nick – one week later. The sweet rush of approval becoming the only antidote to previous rejections.

You know how you always come up with the perfect comeback, that one perfect, penetrative line that will disarm your enemy in an instant, only when it’s way too late?

Well let me tell you Nick, your face was rather horse-looking. That hairstyle wasn’t cool, it only accentuated the horse:like features of your face. The only thing you had going for you was that you smelled kind of nice, but guess what, any 16-year-old can walk into a drugstore and buy a cheap cologne. Not to mention your personality. You were rather stupid and only talked about football (although you weren’t good enough to play professionally, it turned out) and you completely lacked a sense of humor. All my jokes, wasted.

I just stalked you on Facebook and your profile picture is from 2012 (not because you don’t use it, a sad amount of people congratulated you on your birthday two months ago) but because you’ve probably already lost all your hair, completing your transformation to full-on horse face. There it is, I said it – horse face.

I could probably have come up with that 17 years ago, although my adolescent self would have been too considerate to intentionally hurt someone and cause what might be a life-long trauma and sense of rejection. Thank me later, Nick.

Over the years, I’ve distilled these rejections into a sort of theory in an attempt to understand why they happened – e.g. what part of me did they reject? Why? Was it even a rejection? Or was it my own insecurities masking whatever behavior as rejection? To my surprise, I discovered that the rejections were mostly about the rejectee, rather than myself (that is not to say I’m unrejectable and fantastic, okay?) 

1) Most people are deeply insecure

Looking back, most of the people who rejected me were deeply insecure themselves. If I was insecure as an adolescent, weren’t most of us? Probably. In these cases, their inner lives (sad) were mirrored in their actions (their rejection of me) but they were, however, not a reflection of me as a person.  Just a product of their own insecurity.

2) Sometimes, you don’t align with their worldview

Take my primary school teacher Jan as an example. He would repeatedly call me out for being too loud and disruptive in class and tell me to keep quiet while Amanda and Louise just sat there smirking stupidly.

Fine, I didn’t fit in with his narrow worldview in which all kids should have last names ending in “son” rather than “vic”. (My dad changed my name to Donback when I was 15 in order to avoid me facing “discrimination”). These people are simply not worthy of your time and energy, and most importantly, they rarely change. So you’re better of ditching them in the faraway land of the past. May they rest in a pile of shit.

This is the perfect comeback I wish my 8-year old self would have thrown in his face: Jan, you’re a sad middle-aged man who pretends to be cultured and artsy. Yet, you do not comprehend that diversity is a prerequisite for the richness of the “art world” you think you understand. Which you absolutely don’t. You will die a frustrated teacher without having contributed absolutely anything to the lives of the hundreds of Swedish (and occasionally non-Swedish) children who passed through your classroom. That being said, your entire life has been nothing but an utter waste of time and space and you will die even more insignificant than you were born.

3) Maybe he’s not that into you and just too much of a pussy to tell you

During my first year at university, I remember going to an after-party at the socialist student club and meeting a moderately handsome and skinny guy with a mainstream Swedish name. He came back with me to my one-bedroom apartment and asked if I wanted to have breakfast at a café the next day, which, in comparison to other similar situations, seemed rather civilized. We ran into his mom on our way to the café (it was a rather small university town) and I shook her hand, too hungover to realize the awkwardness of the situation.

He ate a cheese sandwich while telling me he was going to Spain for two weeks over Easter break but that he would text me when he got back. He never did. Perhaps he had a passionate love affair with Penelope Cruz – in which case I absolutely wouldn’t blame him for not upholding his promise – but I think just a general lack of interest in me as a person was a more likely scenario.

A few months later, my mom came to visit and we went to the supermarket across the train station to pick up some food for dinner. Guess who we ran into? Yeah, the guy with a mainstream Swedish name. My mom asked me who it was and I responded it was some idiot I had met at a party. She did not shake his hand.