Dear You,
That's the you reading these words. Whoever you are I wish you love; whether I know you are not.
I didn't have the easiest weekend. If you're reading this there's a strong chance you've been having a harder time too. I don't know who rejected you or in what circumstances. Maybe a boyfriend? A girlfriend? Your dream job? Your friends?
I was rejected. I thought I had a dream job in the bag. The people at the other end of my interview thought otherwise. I traveled several thousand miles and spent money and time all to be told. 'Unfortunately, we can't offer you a position.'
That's an easy thing to type out.
There's nothing easy about absorbing a rejection though. You've experienced it too. You know. And I just want to say to you and me. Don't hate yourself for it.
Often times you see it coming or at the very least, you know it's a real possibility. You know things don't always turn out how you expect them. You know things can go south and that you shouldn't take that personally.
You've heard all the platitudes: 'You only fail if you don't try.' 'Who said life was fair?' Maybe you've heard them from well-meaning loved ones. Often, it comes from the voice in your head trying to reassure you.
You know rejection is to be expected. You know it. You've seen it and chances are, you've felt it before.
Here's the thing though. Rejection is painful, no matter what. And when it attacks, you absorb it and feel all its claw marks. It will inflict pain, no matter how thick your armor. There's no way around it. You shouldn't expect yourself to be immune to it. No one is. It will hurt you and sometimes your spirit will be slashed to strips.
When a lover rebuffs us. When a dream job slips from our grasp. When the school, person, application or career we invested so much of ourselves in vanishes between our fingers and winds up shattered on the floor.
When we try, try and try to be the people we want to be yet despite all our efforts we still get our souls trampled into the muck.
When all that happens. Remember, that's ok. You're human. You fail. You feel shitty because you fail. That's ok.
You're not perfect. I'm not. Neither are the people you imagine to have lives free of the struggles you do.
To be human is to have yourself ravaged by rejection more often than not.
And yet I also want to say, you don't have to let your demon say: 'I was right! I was right all along! You were worthless! You are nothing! I own you! I was right!'
At some point, you will have the strength to reach out grab it's rotting arm and say:
'You are only right if I allow you to be!'
Your wounds can heal. You can clean them. You can sew them up. You can shake until you become unshakable. You can put yourself out there again. You can keep going.
Much Love,
A Fellow Reject
Dear Sir or Madame,
You are a sir and you are a madame. You are a dignified person. I don't want to call you worthless because that is not what you are.
But you think you are and that is why I titled this post 'A Love Letter to the Worthless'.
I needed to get your attention. I hope I hold it.
I have thought myself worthless many times.
Thinking about my supposed worthlessness tonight is what prompted me to punch these words on my keyboard and post them into cyberspace.
We are told, by someone, at a young age that we are not good enough. Years later we can scarcely remember why we were supposedly not good enough. Yet we still think we are worthless.
We drink or smoke ourselves to new worlds. Because we hate our world for not being better. We hate ourselves for not being stronger. We want to feel okay and that intoxicants are often the only way we feel okay.
Or we drive ourselves mad with work. We throw ourselves completely into the pursuit or money and fame. We tell ourselves we can never be enough.
We are enough. We have always been enough. We were enough as children before someone told us we were not enough.
I'm not here to give you a psychological cure for your sense of insecurity. You like me have probably already googled your eyes red night after night searching for self-help articles.
All I want to say is this. You are more than enough. You are beautiful.
You won't believe it and I won't blame you for it. I don't believe it as often as I should either. Yet it's the truth.
You -man, woman, teenager, child, elder- you're not what the shade that infects your head says. You are not. You don't have to be.
Beauty is in you. Greatness is in you. You are a living, breathing, loving, caring passionate human. You are thrust into a world that wants beauty to die for the sake of conformity.
Don't die. Don't die. Don't let your beauty die.
You don't deserve it. You don't deserve it.
You dear one are beautiful. You are extravagant.
Much Love,
A Fellow Sojourner
I've almost always experienced depression from an inside perspective. Apart from, you know debilitating self-loathing, another disadvantage this gives me is that I often have a hard time seeing what depression looks like from an outside perspective.
Still, the great thing about being human is you can put yourself (to an extent) in another person's shoes with some mental effort. Most of us don't do this as often as we should but I don't think anyone would say that trying to grasp another person's perspective is a bad thing.
As a depressive, trying to think of how others perceive me can also help me understand challenges those who don't suffer from depression have when they look at those who do.
One common question I think a lot of people who want to help a loved one with depression face is -What do I say to them?
This is a tough item to advise on even for someone who has regular struggles with depression. Many times, we depressives don't always know what it is we want or need to hear. When I'm in a depressed state I sometimes don't have the mental clarity to know what is I need to hear or need to do to feel better. All that I can really feel and comprehend is misery.
Depression also makes your entire perspective on life skewed. Everything gets filtered and twisted through a negative voice that makes even the most well intended advice come off in a critical light. For me this is especially true with advice such as 'Oh, maybe you should exercise more.' or 'Try and list all the positive things in your life.' While is this very well meaning advice and might help some people, a depressed mind will often process this as 'You see, this is something you could easily fix. You don't have any excuse for why you feel this way. You suck.'
Depression is very clever like that.
Lastly, knowing what to say to a depressed person is hard to know because everyone experiences it differently. Although depression can generally be defined with terms like 'deep and ongoing sadness' and 'crippling despair' people experience it differently from one another. What triggers episodes in one person might not be a big deal for another person. As such, advice, comforting words or activities that might help one person won't necessarily be of benefit to another. I've known some people who use yoga to treat depression. For some that doesn't work mental exercises do.
With all of that said though, and keeping in mind that what works for me might not work for you, I do think there's one message that depressed people need to hear, often multiple times. That is:
'You're okay.'
I think often we, (people) try and give advice to depressed people first without really making it clear first that we recognize the person's pain and still accept them. You may not necessarily understand it but you see that they are struggling and to be in that struggle is okay.
From my own experience and based on what I've shared what other depressives, we very often know that we can take actions to make our lives a little easier. Often we're already in therapy and browsing tons of articles to try and understand and cope with our condition better.
When depressives get into a mood, we often know that our feelings are ridiculous in many cases. I know logically that the negative criticism I'm bombarded with is often not accurate. However, it's so powerful that it overwhelms me.
What we often lack in those dark times is not ways to feel better or a sense that it's okay that we feel this way. That our feelings or lack thereof are real and that the people who matter to us see this and value us nonetheless.
