Rejection

It’s Rejection that kills me
pain so similar to grief,
it’s like dying,
like being stabbed in the place just between my shoulder blades,
like being punched in the stomach with a lead fist,
like having a hand shoved into my chest, fingers wrapped around my heart
…and squeeeeezed…
slowly at first, because Rejection likes to watch the pain creep up my neck, over my face, into my limbs, my fingertips, so that I can’t move.

Rejection likes to watch me die.

After all, that’s what rejection is: Death.

Both Physically:
Throughout much of history, people being rejected by their community was akin to a death sentence – forcing them into the wilderness, among predators, without food or shelter.

And Spiritually:
One of God’s first recorded declarations: It is not good for people to be alone.
We are mirrors. I see you seeing me and I know I’m alive. I learn who I am.

Rejection destroys me. And it’s a lonely, cold, empty destruction.

Shame me and I hear your words of condemnation over me.
Consume me and I feel your teeth on my flesh.
Murder me and I see the hatred in your eyes.
Shame me. Consume me. Hate me.
And I will die knowing
I am
something, anything,
if even just the object of your rage.

Reject me and I die alone.
Unseen. Unknown.
Dissolving into black as empty as the space between the stars.

Oh to be a star. That BURNS. Hot with flames of fire. That lives in the eyes of you and me. And never dies unseen.

But there are dreams that cannot be. And there are storms we cannot weather.¹

Rejection runs its course, like poison in the veins, decades old
every drop adding to the last,
’til there is nothing left of me.

© Nichole Liza Q.

¹I Dreamed a Dream, from Les Miserables
Music and Lyrics Copyright ©1980 by Editions Musicales Alain Boublil
English Lyrics Copyright ©1986 by Alain Boublil Music Ltd. (ASCAP)