Dear Rejected Me: When Rejection Doesn’t Sound Like “No”

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How many times a day would you say you feel rejected?

Maybe someone tells you no, and you can accept that. No is clear. No gives you an answer.

But sometimes rejection doesn’t sound like no.

Sometimes it is the tone in which someone says yes.

Sometimes it is the joke made at your expense. The comment someone claims you misunderstood. The favor someone agrees to do while making it painfully obvious that they don’t want to do it.

Sometimes rejection is not about the words being said at all. It is about the attitude and spirit in which they are delivered.

Today, I found myself going through some old memories. I realized that some of the moments that made me feel the most rejected were not moments when someone openly told me I wasn’t wanted.

They were moments when someone technically accepted me while making it clear that they wished they didn’t have to.

When Acceptance Still Feels Like Rejection

A long time ago, way back when I was in my twenties, I dated a guy for nearly five years.

At some point, we became engaged.

I remember his dad’s response to the engagement. He said that fifty percent of interracial marriages end in divorce.

He didn’t tell his son not to marry me.

He didn’t say I wasn’t good enough.

He didn’t openly say that my race made me an inappropriate choice.

He simply offered a statistic that he believed was a valid reason to be concerned.

But it felt like rejection.

It was hard to sit with the idea that my race somehow made me less equipped to marry someone. I couldn’t understand what being Black had to do with my ability to love his son, support him, or build a life with him.

I still don’t.

There have been other moments when people have made jokes about me being an “angry Black woman.”

They assume I must yell at my husband. They assume I am aggressive. They assume my husband must be afraid of me.

But I don’t yell at my husband.

I talk to him. He either talks to me or he doesn’t.

People see one part of me and decide that they already know the rest.

That feels like rejection too.

I’m not even approaching this strictly from a racism standpoint. I am talking about how rejecting it feels when someone sees you and immediately decides who you are before taking the time to know you.

You have to be brave, bold, and a little dumb to believe you can understand an entire person based on their race, gender, body, diagnosis, or any other single piece of them.

It Was Supposed to Be a Joke

I once heard someone joke about what they would do to a person who crossed a line with their spouse.

They described themselves as the extremely jealous type. The kind of person who might hurt somebody for talking to the person they loved.

Someone responded by saying they should introduce their spouse to that person’s spouse.

It was supposed to be funny.

But it didn’t feel funny.

It felt like someone was saying their spouse wasn’t important. That they weren’t needed. That they were disposable.

That they were trash.

And naturally, you reject trash.

People make jokes without thinking about what the joke is actually saying. They don’t recognize that underneath the laughter, they may be telling someone:

I don’t value you.

I don’t respect you.

I would be fine if you disappeared.

You are not worth protecting.

Intent does not override impact.

Someone may not intend to reject you, but that does not mean you don’t get to feel rejected.

Rejection Makes You Question Your Worth

We are all familiar with obvious rejection.

You ask someone out, and they say they aren’t interested.

They tell you they are already in a relationship.

They tell you that you aren’t their type.

That is rejection, even when it is delivered respectfully.

People are allowed to have preferences. They are allowed to say no. They are allowed to decide that you are not the person for them.

But just because someone has the right to reject you doesn’t mean you lose the right to feel hurt by it.

Rejection hurts because it often sounds like:

You are not good enough.

You are not attractive enough.

You are not smart enough.

You are not lovable enough.

You are simply not enough.

That is where rejection becomes dangerous. It stops being one person’s decision and becomes evidence in the case you have been building against yourself.

Learning Rejection as a Child

For me, rejection started when I was a little girl.

It is hard to spread your attention evenly across seven children. I understand that now.

But understanding something does not erase how it felt.

Rejection looked like my parents attending my sister’s basketball games religiously but not coming to my track meets.

It looked like my mom coming home excited about going to the movies and asking me to find the showtime.

I would look it up for her.

Then she would tell me she was taking my sister.

I’m not saying her intention was to hurt me. She was trying to do something good for my sister.

But I still felt rejected.

I felt less loved.

Less cared for.

Less important.

Less than.

Intent does not override impact.

Children don’t always have the language to explain what is happening inside them. They simply collect the moments.

They collect every missed event, every comparison, every invitation they didn’t receive, and every time someone else appeared to be chosen over them.

Eventually, those moments begin to tell a story.

The story becomes: Nobody chooses me.

And once you believe that, you begin looking for proof everywhere.

The Fear of Having My Work Rejected

I had my husband read something I wrote today.

He read it. He liked it. He gave me feedback, and his critiques were spot-on. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with what he said.

But my first questions were still:

Did you like it?

Are you sure you liked it?

Was the writing good?

He had already answered me, but I needed him to answer again.

My biggest fear was that he would reject it.

When I share something I have written, I am not just sharing words. I am sharing a piece of myself. If someone rejects the writing, it can feel like they are rejecting me.

I become so focused on whether other people will accept me—or a piece of me—that I struggle to trust acceptance when it is offered.

Even when someone says yes, a part of me waits for the no.

The Ways I Fear Being Rejected

I live with depression, anxiety, and OCD.

I often worry that those parts of me will become the reason someone decides not to like me.

I worry that my mental health will be viewed as a character flaw.

I prepare myself to be rejected for being too emotional, too anxious, too complicated, or too much.

I don’t always prepare myself to be rejected because of my race or gender.

And yet, it happens far more often than it should.

Sometimes people reject who they have decided you are without ever taking the time to learn who you actually are.

But the hardest rejection is not always the rejection that comes from other people.

Sometimes the hardest rejection comes from me.

I Reject Myself First

I think I reject myself more than anyone else rejects me.

While recording the episode that inspired this blog post, I could see my reflection. I barely looked at it because I didn’t like what I saw.

My hair looked messy, although it was simply my hair.

My arms looked fat.

My dress felt too low, so I kept pulling it up.

I thought I looked like a mess.

I didn’t think I looked professional.

I didn’t think I looked like someone I would take advice from.

There was nothing inherently wrong with how I looked.

I just didn’t like it.

I rejected myself before anyone else had the opportunity.

How many times have you done that?

How many times have you decided that people won’t like you before they meet you?

How many times have you refused to apply, post the picture, wear the outfit, share your work, or speak up because you already decided the answer would be no?

Sometimes we reject ourselves in an attempt to protect ourselves.

We think it will hurt less if we say no first.

It doesn’t.

What Do We Do With Rejection?

How do you overcome feeling rejected?

How do you convince yourself that you are not less than?

We are told that we are supposed to have confidence. We are supposed to believe we are good enough exactly as we are.

But that is difficult when the mirror being held up to you repeatedly says the opposite.

For me, combating rejection requires intentionally reminding myself of what I do well.

I am good at talking.

I am good at writing.

I am good at singing.

I am creative.

I am extremely intelligent.

I can dress well when I want to.

Those things do not stop being true simply because I am having a bad day or because someone else fails to see them.

The Two-Minute Exercise

I often give my kids an exercise when their headspace tells them to reject everything about themselves.

I give them two minutes to write down everything they like about themselves.

Then I give them one minute to write down everything they don’t like.

It is amazing—and honestly a little heartbreaking—to see how easily we can produce a long list of things we dislike in half the time.

That speaks volumes.

It tells me that something is not showing up the way it should.

We should not be better at identifying everything wrong with us than we are at recognizing everything good.

I completed the exercise with my kids once, and I didn’t like what appeared on my own list.

I’m not a bad person.

I know that.

But my list showed me how quickly I turn against myself.

So I challenge you to make your own list.

Give yourself two minutes to write everything you like about yourself.

Then give yourself one minute to write down the things you don’t.

Look at both lists.

Pay attention to what appears.

Pay attention to whether the things you dislike are truly problems or simply parts of yourself you were taught not to accept.

Growth Is Not the Same as Rejection

There is nothing wrong with having goals.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to grow, learn, heal, or change your behavior.

But growth and self-rejection are not the same thing.

Every time I have completed that exercise, I have placed “wanting to change myself” on the list of things I don’t like.

And I don’t mean changing harmful behavior or learning to communicate better.

I mean changing my hair.

Changing my body.

Changing my appearance.

Changing parts of myself that I should be allowed to accept and love.

I have spent so much time believing I have to become someone else before I am worthy of acceptance that I am no longer entirely sure what accepting myself is supposed to look like.

But I am trying.

And I would like for you to try too.

Don’t Help the World Reject You

Life wasn’t supposed to be this hard.

We weren’t supposed to immediately hate ourselves.

We weren’t supposed to learn that we weren’t good enough.

We were supposed to believe that we could accomplish anything we wanted.

We were supposed to believe we could take on the world.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned differently.

We learned to shrink.

We learned to question ourselves.

We learned to reject ourselves before anyone else had the chance.

So today, look for the good in yourself more often than you look for the bad.

Don’t reject yourself.

There are enough people in the world willing to do that for you.

Don’t help them.

Today is just another page in your story. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

It just has to be written.

Before you close your journal tonight, ask yourself:

What was your bite of pie today?

Until tomorrow,

Love you loud.