Rejection and the King of Masks Part 2

Continued from Part 1

I believe that rejection is at the heart of these dilemmas. There's an inkling that something is about to turn its back on us, through the losses that come with being fired, being ignored, being insulted, being pushed away or trifled with. Sometimes we try to be the first one to beat rejection at the pass and behave as if we don't really want what we want and didn't really mean it when we tried to get it.  We minimize it, and may even scorn it and ourselves. We can participate in firing ourselves, ignoring ourselves, insulting ourselves, and trifling with our own potential and significance. We take our marbles and go home, before all of the other players have even arrived. Carrying that bag of marbles becomes burdensome, and its weight is a stinging reminder that we are feeling unlovable and cast out.

Edvard Munch Separation

Grief, by contrast, is a state that requires our consent. We can avoid grief for quite a while as we try to keep it away by staying in the mode of avoiding rejection, with the masks and mirrors. We can get even and play with our power by rejecting others, just to feel in control. We are rejecting the universe on its terms and trying to reinstate our own. It may feel small, but also kind of good, like a last flailing slap at the wind.

I've often thought that the Kubler-Ross stages of grief is an unhelpful model. Grief is all-encompassing and so are emotions as they cycle through us. There aren't stages, which implies we move from only one state to the next, until we reach acceptance and a final peace. Grief is a state that involves the whole self and it can feel chaotic and piercing. To try to order it into a "model" seems like the folly of a sophisticated system applied to something that can never be systematized.

When we put our best out into the world and it is not accepted or valued, sent back to us, or worse, lost with no response at all, that experience of indifference can threaten to overwhelm and snuff out the spark that dared to be seen in the first place.

The only way that I know to heal the individual wounds of rejection is to consent to grieve. Unlike rejection that we had no control over, grief is something that has a malleability to it. We do have a certain amount of creative control over it. We can decide at times-- not always-- but at times, what form it will take. It has range and borders and material and performance and stillness and ritual.

Rejection can happen as we find ourselves before a boss, a teacher, a spouse, a co-worker, a friend, a stranger, an institution, a social circle, a family, or a mirror. We are turned away, and we find somewhere safe to to mourn and cope. A while ago, one of the ways that I dealt with a rejection was to form part of my grief into a poem. It can apply to many situations, and gives a voice and an image to my experience of it. I didn't write it intending for it to be seen, but it wanted to emerge, anyway. I'm letting it.

Hush

Now,
Even now, if I

appeared before you

white winged, incandescent with hope

eyes shining in the hallways with love

vibrating a hum through my veins

singing wordless carols of triumph

would you call to me even then?

Or would you avert your heart's gaze

and turn it all down, close your lids,

laugh, and tell me to go home

or to unfurl somewhere else,

to beat my heart on a corner

for a passing breeze

or to curl inward

like a leaf

stung to a

hush

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