I'm Just Coping With Rejection

Hey, it’s been a while. There’s a reason why when I started this newsletter, I never gave a specific time for updates. I promised I would write as frequently as I could and as much as my mental health would allow and I think I am keeping to that particular promise. The funny thing is that I can write weekly if I want to, but I don’t want writing this newsletter to feel like a job. When I worked at the last place where I wrote newsletters, they always had comments to make and things to say; insert this here, shorten this paragraph, etc. I’m not a fan of being told what to do with something personal to me. It makes me feel detached from the process, and I don’t want to feel detached from this newsletter. When I started writing it, I had things I wanted to achieve and the most important one was to be honest and helpful. I wanted this to be like an online personal diary because I have nothing to be ashamed of and I wanted to help more people reject shame. I hope I am doing that.

Now, if you’ve been paying attention to all the newsletters past you might think to yourself “OMG, not another Itohan relationship dilemma”. Fortunately or unfortunately for you, it is not. I mean, sure, we might discuss my love life at a later point, but let’s focus on the important thing at hand. A couple of weeks ago, I saw a call for submissions for a nonfiction writing thing and I decided to try to brave my fears (so many of them might I add) and submit. I wrote a story that was so personal to me and even though I tried to prepare myself for not getting it, it felt like someone had slammed a pile of bricks on my chest when I got the “we regret to inform you” email. I didn’t even read anything else they had to say, I had seen enough. Also, who sends a rejection email at 3 am on the 1st of December? Safe to say, it ruined my entire day and by extension, there are very few things that can salvage the month of December for me.

After crying my eyes out and informing the people who knew I submitted about the rejection, I went to Twitter and removed everything relating to me being a writer from my bio. Heck, I was two seconds away from deleting the account, but T stopped me. In a way, maybe I was being dramatic, but I didn’t know how not to be. I don’t submit for things because I don’t like rejection. I don’t move to certain people because I don’t like being told no. I like getting my way and rejection seems like a denial of my abilities. I will question everything I had ever thought was solid and concrete because of a single rejection. This one in particular was because it was a very personal story so it felt like not only my writing was being rejected, but also me as an individual. 40 days 40 nights did I anguish. I promised to never write again no matter who in Heaven or on Earth pleaded with me to.

However, Hassan told me to write about it and they gave me such a banging title I could not use, but I decided I would write about it. I just didn’t know how. Then, one day, while I took a shower, I remembered a time someone sent me a message because they told me I had written something so beautifully they had almost cried. Then for once, my brain did a good thing. I started replaying all the times people had reached out to me to tell me how much they enjoyed something I had written. The emotions they had felt and how they were able to connect with a story. That’s when I started unravelling why rejection hurts so much. It is because I have a brain that chooses to highlight only negative things as proof of ability or inability. Even with all of the positive comments I had received, I never told myself I was the best writer since the beginning of the world, why is one rejection making me want to kill myself?

There’s something I used to tell my best friend and it’s that “one rejection is not the total sum of your worth” and it’s because it is true. There are a million and one factors that can influence why you got a rejection and not all of it has to do with your abilities. Sure, there’s that, but there’s also a lot of other things. I’ve written better, and I’m an okay storyteller for the most part and one rejection is not going to change that. I may never want to apply for anything anymore in the near future, but it will not be because I am not as good as I think. It is because I am lazy and content with being where I am. I like being Itohan the girl that writes newsletters for fun. I like this version of me and she is not reliant on positives or negatives from contests. She’s doing what she loves.

Now, on to the romance part because is it an Itohan newsletter if I am not saying something about my love life? Exactly. The love life realisation of the month is that it hurts when you realise a person has fallen in love with a version of you that is not real or at least not completely true. There’s this person I love and sometime last week, she was telling me some of the reasons she fell in love with me. I’ve read it like fifteen times because it is seared in my memory. I keep asking myself “Who is this person she is talking about?” At first, I wondered if it was because I had not shown her the totality of myself. Like, is it because in a way I had built a small wall preventing her from seeing who I am? Then, I sat down with my feelings and realised that was not it. On various occasions, I had opened myself up to this person so they could maybe understand me as a person, but they didn’t. It felt like the version of myself that was true was not enough like the version they had conjured up was somehow better. I felt rejected, but because I love them, I kept up with the charade. Unfortunately, I spent more time with them and talked to them more often and it took all of my energy to keep a mask but home is a place where you are the truest version of yourself and having to perform made me realise it was not home. Now, how do I move on from someone who never really loved all of me? I don’t know, but when I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

I’ve learnt a lot since the last time I wrote to you and I’ll probably learn a lot more by the time I’m writing the next one. Today’s musings were put together on my bed in my grandma’s house while I ate Haribos and plantain chips and Pheelz played on my speakers.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Anime)

I want to start this by saying that I am not watching this because there is someone I am in love with who has this as their favourite anime. However, if you see me talking about Jujutsu Kaisen, then it’s because T loves it and I love T so I’m going to sit my ass down and understand who the fuck Nanami is and why we’re dragging the position of “most loved by T”. Anyways, this is not about JJK.

I started watching anime because one of my Twitter mutuals told me I should cosplay as Mitsuri because my breast is big. Now, I was intrigued so I decided to watch and see who this babe is. What I was not prepared for was the fact that I would start crying from episode 1. Jess Christ. I hate when shows give us villains with sad backstories because even though these demons are supposed to be the villains, I feel so bad for them. Tanjiro is just like me and I too will do proper burials for them and treat them like humans because, in a way, they are.

I haven’t finished watching the first season because anime gets too emotional for me and after receiving rejection I can only take so much. Also, as I watch, I’m realising how maybe I want to cosplay as Nezuko instead. Anyways, knowing how lazy I am, I may never cosplay as any of them. Is that not how I wanted to dress as Velma for Halloween? I ended up not even attending any Halloween party at all.

Anyways, watch Demon Slayer because it’s about love and honour and duty and friendship and they be fighting. One thing I’m learning in my journey to becoming a serious anime watcher is that there’s always one technique or something. In HunterxHunter it was Nen and in Demon Slayer we have Breathing Techniques. It is well.