Rejections a Bitch
Why does being rejected by Veronica, a girl that I hardly new and wasn't that attracted to get me so crazy that I am calling her ten , fifteen times a day? Why did Louise’s drunken rejections at the bar hurt so much that I had to email her twenty times in one day?
In the third grade Ms. Gibson had a board that she would use to tack on a star for all the kids good deeds a well as good test scores. It was my first year ever in this suburban catholic English only school, before then my folks had send me to this Haitian "French & English" school in Queens where basically all I did all day was jump around the play ground and sleep all day. So now that I was in a white neighborhood with real teachers like Ms. Gibson I was expected to know my ABC's and my Multiplication tables down pat. Well needless to say I knew nothing, nada, Zipo, zip. For all the good deeds I did like playing well with other kids and helping Ms. Gibson with what ever she asked I still always had the least number of stars on that damn board.
Everyone else was getting stars for their good math, English and history scores and all I'd get was a star once a week for good behavior. Well Ms. Gibson had a special meeting with my parents on Monday morning in the middle of the first quarter of the school year to talk about my performance. I didn't know what all the fuss was about. After the meeting Ms. Gibson told me I would be demoted to the second grade as of that moment I would no longer be a third grader but a second grader. I was besides myself I really didn't know what I did so wrong to be demoted so quickly in the school year, I had done my best and it still wasn't good enough for her, she had judged me to be unworthy of her class after all the stars I had worked so hard for, I cried and cried that whole day, I never remember crying that much for anything, not even for an undeserved beating from my Papi.
From that day on something inside me broke and I could never feel like I had done enough or worked hard enough for anything, every situation I confronted with a huge amount of self doubt, even when I knew logically I had done everything right I could never feel it was enough, I did not trust myself anymore. It was not until a stint in summer school before I started the Fifth grade did I finally catch up academically with the other kids. I eventually ended up the Valedictorian of my Junior High Class (My school was from K through 8th). But still this self doubt has plagued me constantly, and it manifests itself most profoundly when I am trying to court a woman and she rejects me. Really I should have to feel so terrible about being rejected by women I hardly know, they have every right as well as do I of moving on when ever they please without rhyme or reason, we are all free being and sometimes we follow our intuition and it may have nothing to do with the person sitting across from the dinner table. Its just that I still have this huge feeling of helplessness, a need to do everything right, to be perfect, to never hurt or make a mistake, because I have not confidence that I am at all adequate for them. This is why I work so hard for closure and bother so much with someone I hardly know, I want perfection and sometimes I loose sight that it might have nothing to do with me, that the relationship just wasn't there in the first place.