Some Rejections
Why do some rejections cut so deep, and others not at all? I wonder because I think I'm getting ghosted by a prospective client that would have been extremely lucrative. They've stopped returning emails. And I realized, my career is materially very important to my life, it's fundamental, but it doesn't bother me that much. It must a little, because I'm hesitant to follow up on the unreturned emails with a phone call, I have to admit part of me is afraid I'll hear something that will engage my obsessive tendencies. (That's not unusual-depending on how well you know me, dear reader, it might or might not be surprising to you how much of my life has been spent avoiding doing things because I'm afraid they'll provoke a reaction that engages my obsessive tendencies. Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm working on it.) But overall it's not a big deal to me, the rejection hasn't got its teeth in me. Hell, I've even gone down it total flames once or twice, had in-progress projects fall apart and been fired ignominiously. It's not always the greatest, but it doesn't dissuade me from going after the next project in any way.
On the musical front, I've by and large always been soundly rejected as a collaborator by the majority of musician peers who I respect most. And yet, so completely confident am I that it's a lack of taste on every one of their parts rather than a failing on mine that the rational part of my mind forces me to contemplate whether or not I might be delusional. (Probably not. The only evidence for it is circumstantial.)
And yet, it took me decades to learn how to deal with disinterest from women without getting completely destroyed, every time. Eventually I retreated completely rather than deal with it anymore-well, truthfully, that sounds unhealthier than it really was. I just realized I'd be much happier keeping all the energy I was expending trying to make up for a lack of romance or sex and learning instead to be happy without... learning to see the glass as half-full. And it worked. God, did it work. Life is about 1000% better without focusing on imaginary notions of what I might have but don't. But, I'd be lying if part of the satisfaction wasn't just being safely insulated from one particular thing that has a singular ability to make me doubt my intrinsic self-worth like, really, nothing else does.
Before I learned to deal with it somewhat healthily, "engaging my obsessive streak" didn't even begin to cover it. I pegged an incredible amount of self-worth on women how women responded to me. It'd be fair to say when I was younger a rejection from someone who didn't reciprocate my feelings towards them could send me into a tailspin for weeks or months. On rare occasion, years. Even the minor ones had a profound cumulative effect, enough to make avoidant behavior ingrained, when so little else in my life can even make a dent in my self-image.
Why is that?
Judging from the amount of time I see people on TV chasing relationships, the sheer number of wish-fulfillment fantasies I see in our entertainment that consist solely of attaining sex/marriage/children, I'm guessing I'm far from alone in this, too. My god, so many people act like being unloved is the worst thing in the world that most people, near as I can tell, never even question it. I didn't, either, for decades. And that's one demon that still occasionally manages to get a whisper through, sotto voce, through the thick barrier wall of well-learned life lessons.