Rejection; it doesn’t happen all at once, unlike the way people fall in love.
Getting rejected doesn’t despairingly come as quickly as that, or as blithely, no matter how much I’d wish it would. My breaths can’t help but contract and expand, contract and expand, contract and expand. My heart seemed to be pounding faster, hand getting clammier by the minute.
In spite of the fear of rejection, the human heart does want what it wants. In spite of everything, it tries; so that’s how I began to prepare for UWC – with hope in my heart and an unwavering desire for studying the IB abroad.
I was incompetent in every sense of the word. And yet, that didn’t stop me from thinking that I could try.
At that point in my life, I kept losing the strength to do anything as days went by, because I kept thinking that my efforts were better spent on other substantial things, like talking, walking and eating. All the monotonous things that everyone seemed to do with ease required extensive effort from my end. It wasn’t always like this. I was capable of so much before.
Two years I had spent perfecting my transcript.
Everything I did was for the sake of getting into a good college by the end of tenth grade. Everything.
I was void of anything else but the stress and frustration coiling around me like tight wires, ready to suffocate me any moment – what if you don’t get in, what if you don’t get in, what if you don’t get in?
I tried not to think too much about it, but these application processes can turn even the nicest of people into savages – leaving you out to rot just to save their own lives. They’re really just like me – trying to find a place in the world. A purpose.
But nights like these, I wonder if all this competition is worth it.
If I didn’t get in, my classmates would say it’s because I didn’t try my best (oh, but I did, I did, I did), my teachers would say its because I am incompetent, and all that I would really like to say is that its because I was tired and wasn’t sure how long I could keep going. I was infamous for being average, mediocre, and at that time, it was taking all my strength to get to that same level of average – to get on my level.
Some of the other applicants were close friends of mine; I didn’t think any of them had the same problems I did; it was not reflected in the kind of confidence that they walked with. The smiles on their faces showed that they had achieved everything I had been trying to and failing. I could just imagine all the success stories that were gushed about at their dinner tables. Everything on them was better than anything I had on me – even their postures. Especially their postures.
“What do you consider your best qualities?” I would say something to fill in the blanks if only I was capable. The words wanted to come out; they were struggling to. But it was the fear of judgement, the fear of rejection – that stopped me. At the very least, the portrait I have made of myself is one where I’ve sketched myself with incompetence, failure and rejection. I’ve got that slightly diminishing wonder in my eyes, coupled with the aftertaste of ineptitude on my lips. There’s a hunch in my shoulder, limp in the way I commuted, but I could wipe away all these images and be left with three letters that sum up the entirety of my being: T.R.Y.
I try. I try my best, even if the world does not acknowledge it that much. Even though everyone but me cannot see it much, if at all.
I couldn’t speculate whether I would get in, so I thought instead. I thought about grades and accolades and recognitions that weren’t enough for anyone – not even myself. About the broken pieces of my future and the dimness of my present and the fading bits of my past – all a boring grayscale that just worsens with every new beginning in my life.
After the deadline passed, and I didn’t put in my application, I realized I wasn’t perfect, and that maybe I never will be, but that was okay.
It took me a lot of time to realize that we are all hopeless and human. We don’t put the right foot forward or hold out the less clammy hand. We don’t say the right things, think the nice thoughts, or feel the right emotions. Instead of perfect, we are human.
Maybe I would have gotten in, maybe I wouldn’t have. For now, in this moment, in this time, all I can hope is that sometime in the future, I have the courage to believe in myself, and move past hurdles that life throw my way without the fear of rejection.