"You Suck, Better Luck Next Time."

How does someone live their life when they fear failure and rejection? The answer is you kinda don’t. I speak from experience, so you can trust me.

I would like to begin by clarifying that rejection and failure are two different things and in my case they do not necessarily correlate. I am not afraid to fall and if I do I get right the fuck back up. If you know me, then you know how literal this statement is.

Being turned down? Now that is a punch straight into my ego that I struggle to handle. I hate to admit it but I am a somewhat arrogant individual, which means I do not like being told no. I am self-aware enough to know that this is very bad and I am working through it in therapy but in the meantime I thought I should share some insight.

I think it is due to the ADHD, and many people may be confused by that, but let me explain: ADHD has blessed me with a superpower that allows me to learn to do anything I put my mind to. HOWEVER, my stupid little wrinkly brain fails to digest the concept that some things are not reliant on my ability to do it, but rather a second entity granting me access to what I want. To add the cherry on top, I am also the youngest child and I learned at a very young age that people found me adorable and that if I batted my eyelashes I could virtually get anything I wanted. I was spoiled, what can I say except I blame my mother, father, sister, and grandma for being weak and not resisting the puppy eyes.

Anyway, I digress. ADHD has conditioned me to literally not be able to handle the shame that comes with rejection. It is a common symptom of ADHD and it is called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria which refers to a prolonged emotional reaction to anything that I perceive as rejection. Basically, I am the crash out of crash outs.

So, how does this affect me in my everyday life? The answer is as follows:

- Academia/Profession

- Dating

The dating aspect is pretty self-explanatory in my opinion. I am afraid of rejection so I miss literally every single shot. The irony of it all is that I am the relationship advice person and literally the only single one of my friends. I am also the one to tell people all the time to shoot their shot because you miss every shot you don’t take and yet…. I am not so quick to follow my own advice. I basically just have to hope the other person likes me and will make the first move but not to worry I am working through this in therapy.

Academia and my professional life are a whole other ballpark. You see, I was rejected from my original major’s program, which meant I could not advance with that degree unless I reapplied the following year. I could have and maybe should have reapplied. I was originally studying Creative Writing and ASU has a competitive program and at some point in the semester leading up to applying for the continuation of the program it clicked in my brain that I was not gonna make the cut. There were some amazing writers in my class and I am not a short-story or prose writer and that was required for the application or you could apply for a concentration in poetry but I didn’t want that and I have never considered myself a poet. I put off my application for too long and had to submit an excerpt of a story that is actually part of a book I have been writing for the past 5 years. If you have ever read a prologue that is basically what I submitted. Why? Because I felt I would get rejected either way so why even try that hard.

I didn’t try a second time because I couldn’t handle the second rejection and I didn’t want to waste time on something that might not be when I knew I could finish with my Literature degree fast.

After I graduated and was teaching, I had also started therapy and I began to imagine the possibility of grad school to become a therapist. It took me two years of circling back to it and losing my freelance contract to finally push me to take action. Even then it took me two weeks after I finished my application and essay to actually submit it. I was and am scared of being told I won’t be allowed to do something because I am not good enough.

The most rejection I have ever handled is from job applications to publishing houses that clearly don’t want me. I have tried year after year and after hundreds of applications I have decided to take a hiatus from that career path for a bit.

Oh, also I guess this is my announcement as well that I have been accepted into grad school for a Master’s of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and part of the reason for my hiatus.