Rejection emails are hell. You don’t have to be an aspiring artist to understand that.
I mostly keep it to myself, which is a lie. I keep it to myself for a day or an hour and then I stand near someone looking like a cut puppy until they ask me what’s wrong.
And then I explain – I just got the email (I got it yesterday morning), my work just wasn’t for them (it is shit and so am I), the competition was very tough (don’t kill yourself over this), please apply next year (don’t quit your day job)
and as I’m going through it, reasonably pleased with myself for being able to share this soul-destroying information with a cool, collected composition, out of nowhere, I start tearing up.
It’s the sort of tears I can only suppress by pulling an amazingly unattractive face, like I’m straining a poo or i’m auditioning to play the older version of myself in the tragic but compelling adaptation of my life.
I turn away so no one sees, which makes it instantly more obvious and embarrassing so I start furiously wiping my face, like that also helps.
Everyone is reasonable and kind. (Christ!)
Everyone says the same thing:
- It’ll come!
- This just wasn’t for you.
- Fuck them!
- Oh baby 🙁
- Don’t cry.
- I know it’s shit but that’s the business, right? Rejection is part of the deal.
And they’re right.
I know, they’re right.
But what you have to understand is that I thought that this type of shit wouldn’t happen to me! No, of course, it would, but in a quick montage, in a timelapse sequence, lasting no more than 10 seconds, ending in the final, golden email, blindsiding me at the end of it, that would launch me into a secure sense of success.
Uni didn’t help.
It did but not the false surety it gave me.
It might have been that very cut puppy face that makes colleagues and strangers alike, cock their hand and ask ‘how are you doing?’ with so much sincerity it makes me terrified that I had been absentmindedly weeping.
Or maybe they really believed it,
but at uni, much to my sadomasochist despair, I never found anyone who would tell me I wasn’t good.
It seemed like everyone, prompted to or not, implored me to understand that I was talented, that I could write, that I had a good eye for beauty, that I was clever, and pretty and someone really worth knowing. It almost made me uncomfortable, as if they’d all been given the same script, developed by the team living in my walls, crafted to adhere to each insecurity I thought I had buried from people.
So many good, honest people told me I should believe in myself and I believed in them, so why shouldn’t I?
And why don’t I?
And when will it ever end?
And if, them believing in me, and I, believing in myself, it all proves to be wrong, where does that leave us? Is it enough that we thought I could be something, even if I am not, does that matter more than actually doing something?
Can’t I take the win, that the people I truly care about like my work and me, and perhaps no one else?
Why doesn’t that sate me? What will?
If not that, then what?
If not now, then when?