Being Sad Sucks: A Reflection on Rejection

Apr 20, 2008

Being Sad Sucks
A reflection on rejection



I know how strange I must look. Lying on the beach in the middle of winter in jeans and a heavy black jacket with my limbs sprawled across the dune like this, but I cannot control it. I swear that my body is acting independently of my brain and has started pulling away from itself so that arm no longer recognizes leg or torso. I feel as though I have abandoned skin and bone; I have been forcibly to be divided into equal parts of anger, loss, and sadness. I’ve been laying like this for hours just rejoicing in the divine monotony of the ocean’s waves rolling forward to carelessly collect the passing joggers’ ambitious steps. The ebbs and swells take turns running up and down chasing their own tails trying each time to get a little further up the shore. It’s comforting to know that despite the events of the last 24 hours there is still some rigid consistency to the universe. Your heart may break, but the waves will still roll and the ocean is still just as vast and grand as it has always been.

How miniscule and insignificant I feel…

Once cherished, beautiful, and unique now suddenly reduced to a loathsome shadow of the person I used to be: Bright, happy, eccentric, witty… all the qualities you were once so ensnared by that slowly became dull and ordinary. You used to look at me like I was something amazing to behold. You would stare at me with a revered caution and humility like you couldn’t hold me in your eyes for too long or you’d drown in the air hanging around my body. You loved me so deeply and with such uncensored fever that I forgot to worry about the day you might leave. I was a fool to believe so unwaveringly in your kisses and indulging words. I was a fool to believe that I would always be enough for you and that there would always be a place for me in your life. It was wonderful to be safely held in the chambers of your heart living amongst your treasured memories and favorite things for as long as you allowed me quarter there. To be evicted so abruptly has cast a great shadow of doubt over so many aspects of my life that I have always thought would be constant. If we weren’t real, what else isn’t real?
When you sat me down at our tiny foldable kitchen table and began to gently explain in your slow and velvety voice why I could no longer be yours, I saw myself reflected in your excuses as the trivial imposter that I always knew I was. Now, I must face the normalcy into which you have cast me and honor your request to vacate our apartment so that you can pack your things and leave without anymore of my shrill abuse.
The beach seemed like the most logical place for me to go because at this particular moment I feel strangely connected to the dismal fate befallen upon the tiny grains of sand matted beneath my body. Once handsome shards of oceanic rock and shell now beaten to bits by the weight of the impressing sea above. How insignificant and miniscule they must feel…. After being reduced to such rubble.
I remember how we met and how I hated you immediately. You told me your name but I refused to call you by it preferring the taunting nickname that everyone else used to address the silly and juvenile boy I thought you were. Arrogant and impertinent as you were, somehow you managed to enmesh me with your beguiling smile and force upon my heart a begrudging acceptance that eventually led to an irresponsible infatuation. How does one move so quickly from repugnance, to mild captivation, to “he’s the love of my life”, to “I’m leaving you”, and then back to lonely revulsion? It has been a thorny conduit that has returned me to this place that very loosely resembles where I began. Except that this world without you in it seems robbed of the strange exuberance which you once afforded it. The sky above my face is a murky mixture of grey clouds and sad atmosphere. The streets are somehow shorter and the trees aren’t as tall. The air rests heedlessly heavy against my tear-streaked cheeks.