Rejection
Denial.
Of course this isn’t happening, you love
them too much! And they love you too
much! Once you’ve been rejected the
first step is often to deny the rejection.
It is too cruel, too unbelievable.
So you refuse to believe it. Soon
though, you realize that you’re fooling yourself and clinging to a hope that
has vanished.
Anger
How could they do this to you? You trusted them, you loved them! But trust is a funny thing – once it's given
it's often abused. You become angry at
them for denying all that you’ve given, angry at yourself for giving so
much.
Sadness
All that you had hoped for is gone. With their words, they’ve shattered your hopes
and plans. You offered up your heart, and they snatched
it from your grasp and threw it in the dirt.
Oh sure, they might have disguised their rejection of you within pretty
little lies, but the truth was heard loud and clear. Sometimes they don’t even have the decency to
use lies to soften their blow – sometimes they just tell you the bold and
blatant truth. The truth being that you
were a fool to hope so high and wish so hard.
Sadness is an easy pool to drown in.
Bitterness
If someone you thought loved you can betray
you so harshly, then how can you have faith in anyone? If giving your heart to someone else to
handle hurts so badly, then why give it away at all? You become pretty sure that the world is full
of selfish people, just waiting for a chance to beat your already-broken heart.
Healing
Healing will come, in time. But while time will soften their words and
ease your pain, it can never erase what has been said. It’s hard to be rejected, harder to live keep
on living around that person, and hardest to try to pretend like it didn’t happen. Still, healing will come. You’ll give in eventually, and replace that
person who rejected you with others who promise to love you. You’ll decide to always stay busy to help you
forget. But even if your pain can be
pushed to the very back of your head, that seed of rejection will always be
there. You see, rejection is a truly faithful
friend.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEven though you write far too well to ever go too far astray, I don't really think you can pour this wine into this bottle. The form here is too mechanical and arbitrary to contain the somber material you ask it to hold.
ReplyDeletePut it another way: that readymade taxonomy of grief and rejection can never support and can never really explain someone's pain. To imagine it can is to fail the seriousness of the material.
"...is to fail to fully grapple with the seriousness of the material."
ReplyDeleteSo the form of "5 stages" doesn't fit the gravity of the material?
ReplyDeleteI hate systems; I hate wise folks like Erick Erickson talking about the necessary stages of a child's development or like Elisabeth Kubler-Ross defining the stages of grief. I hate most deductive thinking, most thinking that starts with a blueprint and then fits reality into some pre-determined scheme.
ReplyDeleteThose are my prejudices and biases. I think they are good biases for a writer to have because a writer has to see things fresh every day and not see them as he has been told to see them. If he follows the conventional and the schematic, what has he got to write about!
So, I'm the last person to ask to judge this piece. I said "seriousness of the material" to try to say something that was not simply a rant, something that might hint at my objections. But, honestly, my objections were there almost before I read a word--which, if you think about it, is an example of me thinking deductively: I have my template ('no templates' is my template) and I insisted on squeezing your material into it!
If I were you and knowing as I do how good your instincts are, if the remarks of a teacher don't match your sense of things, I'd trust my instincts over the teacher.
The piece sort of wrote itself once I had my topic - the "5 stages" only came after I read the example piece on your blog about understanding women. It seemed to be a guide, a schematic, a system of things. I liked it and thought that maybe that was a good was of doing this week's material, so I tweaked my piece and put those stages in.
ReplyDeleteThe stages were sort of already there, but in a looser way (more of a continuation, or succession).
But perhaps my material is too personal or non-ficioney to be fit into this week? Maybe I'm losing a part of my topic by trying to apply it so widely? Or maybe there is a way to reconcile this piece with this week's theme without getting broad and vague?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI guess I think that 5 Stages or Top 10 sorts of pieces are only suitable for humor. If used for humor, the framework around the material is a way of pointing out how ridiculous it is to reduce human variety to a set plan.
ReplyDeleteI could be wrong. As I said this morning, I'm not especially trusting of my own reactions to this kind of piece. You shouldn't be either!
I'd love to be able to provide answers to your three questions, but...I can't seem to settle on what I want to say, if anything.
Alright.
ReplyDeleteYes, I do see what you mean about stages being used for humor. I've seen that other places as well, and it works effectively for that.
I feel like in this case I'm doing a similar thing that I did with my funeral piece. Before I whipped it into shape, it was in the form of a recipe, which didn't fit the content.
If I were writing this piece just for me, then I would probably take out the stages. I would tell more of a story perhaps, or maybe just make it more personal. But that doesn't fit the week, so perhaps someday I'll come back to it on my own, but for now I'll leave it as it is. Personally inadequate, but I feel like any changes would change it away from the week's purpose.
Aw, Danielle, you're about done with 162 'weeks.' I'm a thousand times more interested in what a student is writing than in whether the student is jumping through my hoops.
ReplyDeleteHere's a teacher's secret, however: sometimes when a student piece doesn't work and I can't quite say why or think that saying why would be destructive, I fall back on 'this piece doesn't really fit the week's assignment.' Not always--because sometimes I really do want to see the student grappling with the week--but sometimes. But the inverse, and the case with DV, is that the 'week' is usually much less important than the writing.
You are very complementary. And also a very good teacher to want the writing to succeed on it's own, instead of wanting the writer to become a mini-teacher.
ReplyDeleteGood students make good teachers--ideally the reverse would be true too, but, alas, not always.
ReplyDelete