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Hey, there, rejection, my old friend.

You look a little different these days. Standing outside of me and not just masquerading as the voice inside my head. You talk a little clearer. You even look clearer in my vision. You stand taller, speaking your truth back to me.

Rejection, how have you been?

It’s been a while. Okay, that’s not true. It has been some time, but you’ve never looked me right in the face and said, “You’re not for me.”

I asked you for those exact words (or even a reason) all those many times you went silent. I pleaded your ghostly presence for it. I prayed to the heavens on high that I could manipulate the unspoken truth and that your absence would miss my presence from your life eventually.

It’s been some time since we’ve talked face-to-face like this. Actually, I don’t think you’ve ever paid me that courtesy. I know, I know. It’s one I asked for. And, I guess I finally got it years later, from a different face, of course.

The faces all start to look the same, though. There I go with my older, less-evolved, melancholy, victim nature. I surprised myself this morning when I got your text message blatantly telling me I wasn’t for you. And though I felt a thud in my chest, I didn’t crumble as I have in the past.

You spoke the truth to me. Your truth. The truth I’ve always asked for. And, this morning, I got it.

I heard it. I felt it. But, I didn’t take it to mean all the bad things my mind tells me could be true. I took it to mean, for once, that rejection doesn’t mean I’m unlovable. It doesn’t mean I am no good. It doesn’t mean I need to be different. It doesn’t even mean you needed to see more of me to realize that for yourself.

Dating these days is weird with the pandemic and all; things are so uncertain and unclear. But, the truth of rejection is always clear. I’ve felt it too. Something, someone, just feels like a mismatch.

I’ve spoken my truth once upon a time. And, today, I am glad you found the courage all the others could never find to speak yours. Thank you for showing me that honesty and communication can exist in the same sentence after all, and not just in my own desire to be clear and direct toward others.

I am learning that rejection still doesn’t feel great. But, it doesn’t set a grenade off in my heart the way it used to. And, I don’t turn on myself the way I used to either. This time, I stood by myself and reminded her of her own truth.

Maybe, that’s what happens when you’ve dated so many short-fused romances it might make other’s heads spin. Or, maybe, when you’re reaching the age of 30, you realize that not everything is really even about you.

It’s about people’s desires. Their likes. Their dislikes. Their preferences. Their turn-ons. Their turn-offs. But rarely is it ever truly, truly, about you.

One of the four agreements in Don Miguel Ruiz’s handy life manual says, “Don’t take anything personally. Nothing anyone says or does is about you; it’s about them.”

I think I am finally getting this one. A lifetime of taking things to heart, to mean something about me personally, of caring what others think of me at all times, of people-pleasing my way into self-betrayal and self-rejection, does that for you.

So, thank you, rejection, thank you for making me see that truth is not always what you want to hear, but on another level, it’s what you know to be true also.

Our intuition knows when something is a match or not also. (Even if the other person speaks it first.)

Take away the personalized attack of it all, and we may even have a shared truth: 

“You’re not for me either.”

And, perhaps in the receiving of the message, we both can be free to make a different choice. To trust that the higher wisdom and guidance of the universe and life itself is coming through you as truth.

Rejection, maybe, you’re teaching me to trust that life has a better plan for me. That life knows who and what will be a match for me, even if my egoic, clamoring-for love-and-connection lens can’t always see it (or doesn’t want to see it).

I think you’re teaching me that my intuition spoke before you did. That I heard her this time even too.

And, it’s okay to have still tried. It doesn’t mean I did something wrong. Maybe I’m getting clearer on what’s for me and what isn’t.

These are all lessons, of course. No mistakes. No taking back what I needed to see and learn face-to-face. So, thank you for allowing me to see that rejection is not a loss of an opportunity but a redirection to what is actually for me. To believe in the abundance of options and that really, there is never any scarcity of options in one not panning out.

To remember my abundant nature. To reclaim my own truth. To deeply claim my worth, even as another chooses a different pathway. To know deeper in my heart that I am worthy. I am lovable. And I am for me. And that is the exact truth I needed to remember for myself.

Thank you for showing me I could still choose me when others don’t. And that my ability to choose me has less to do with another’s approval of me than with my willingness and resolve to keep showing up, heart in my own hands, and tend to the growing love there that belongs to me first. That this love is what I need right now, to remember my magic and invaluable nature doesn’t ever, ever lessen or fade. It just is. Inherent. Whole. Enough.

Thank you for showing me these things. I am learning what I never would have without your presence and your absence in my life. Thank you for showing up and leaving as needed too. I am ready now to claim my fullest self, flawed and all, and be proud of all that I am, human, magic, and all.