Entry 26 - The Rejection Compass and the Internal Cosmological Constant

Sluts. Girls who are feminine. Girls who go after what they want. Who are comfortable with intimacy. So confident and beautiful. It’s a kind of power that’s so alien to me, it’s fascinating. I can’t understand it, but maybe can finally read people a little better. I can finally see patterns of behavior in people’s actions and choices. I like that. With that kind of character knowledge, it’s easier to control or manipulate the interaction. Not for anything bad, but I’m just so sick of being ostracized and hated for my nature. Manipulating someone’s reactions to tolerate me a little is all I can hope for. Otherwise, I never fit. I can’t be part of anything social. No teamwork, no friendship, just the empty white room all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I like being alone, but that’s not how you get a job or get promoted. Social relationships govern all success and all acceptance. Being able to manipulate the situation to obtain relationship outcomes is really important. It matters to pay attention to the quality of observation and subtlety, attention to detail that can give you that control. I’m not great at it, but I can finally see it. And, occasionally, someone can talk to me without disgust, confusion, dislike which is what I see on most people’s faces around me.

It’s easy to become a bottomless pit of need or emotion when this happens. Something in me is so confused why no one feels the way I do, sees what I see, wants what I want. It makes me mad and opens up this consuming hole that requires validation from others to keep me breathing. It’s no good. For me or those around me. And I know that even though it hurts somehow, I have to believe that it’s okay to be smart. That I’m not disgusting. Even though I see it on the faces of those around me. I have to lie to myself to not want to disappear. I keep lying to say, yes, I am smart. I am pretty. I am strong enough. I know they aren’t true and I see the lie reflected all around me. It tastes false. But the lie is more important than reality. I have to remember a fake confidence to pretend that I’m worth existing. Otherwise, I’m not. Without arrogance, without the lie, I lose my ability to take the line without fear. I am, in the end, controlled by the fear of others. Doubting myself until I’m incapable of doing anything. I lose the very things that make me societally valuable. Because I’m hated and cold, I can be a leader. I can be arrogant. I can be right. Because I already have been rejected. And even when confronted with so many people better than me. Male. Athletic. Intelligent. Respected. Liked. People want them around, I try to remember that rejection makes me more powerful. Pretty people, loved people can be trapped by the opinions of others. I’ve already been cast out. The worst has already happened. I’m free to make the best choices I can. And while I still try to make good choices to protect the people that hate me, it’s just a small gesture of kindness I can make. Not only can they hate me and feel better than me, hold contempt like something precious against me, but I can still offer safety and wisdom, if anyone wants to be protected.

No one does. Not by someone like me. But it’s still there, if anyone needs it. If they want my kind of gentleness and care. No one does, but maybe someday it will be used.

It’s so easy to look for constant validation. We define ourselves by how people define us. When you see your parents and your friends and your loved ones actively dislike you, actively turn away, it can leave deep marks. It makes you want to be better for them, only to realize that you can’t. They’re never going to love you or even like you. They appreciate the obedience and the service, but that’s it. You have to look in yourself and ask if that’s enough. If that validates your existence or not.

It didn’t, for me. So I have to lie to myself. Accept the rejection. Accept the image and lie to myself in my heart that I am all the things I had hoped others would see me as, even as I accept that I’m not. I do know who I am, but only in pieces. Only in the bits that people can reflect back to me with a little less disgust. Learning the rules from what constitutes contempt, moment by moment. I am ashamed of myself, like the people I see around me, ashamed of me. But it gives me a gift. Freedom. Freedom to experiment, to change and grow. People already dislike me. People already want me gone. Leaving is no hardship. Letting go is a relief to not see the disappointment and discomfort on my friends’ faces. So yes, I can see my flaws, but I can also see the rest of my identity flowing out, rich and complex because it’s not limited to what other’s see. It’s a spiritual symmetry of loss. The translations of the sand, of the clouds, of the motion of the wind are regular and perfect except for tiny areas where something changes, interrupts the flow. This allows growth, niche habitats. Uniqueness. A fingerprint is valued only for the sake of its imperfections, without them, there’s no uniqueness, no separate feeling of person. I tell myself that it’s okay to be unwanted and unloved. That I can fill up the difference from the cosmological wonder in my own understandings and that being rejected lets me see those mysteries more clearly.

It’s a lie, but one worth having. It closes up the void that keeps reaching for someone else’s understanding, attention, love. And, while it’s hard to let go of the idea, it’s better to understand that there’s never going to be anyone there and hatred and rejection are not so bad. They are survivable. Regardless of how it feels at first.