Rejection or ??

Friday night was one of the worst, if not THE worst night I've had in a long time. I don't care who knows but I cried most of the night. I had the most overwhelming feeling of rejection that I've ever felt. I'm not sure I'd ever realized how much rejection can affect you.

It fills every cell in your body. It's actually a physical pain but one that you can't pinpoint - it's everywhere and nowhere. It felt alternately like every cell in my body was going to swell up and burst or shrivel down to nothing. At one point I couldn't catch my breath. I'm not sure I even cared. The pain in your heart of being rejected by someone whom you love so much, who means so much to you is indescribeable and I hope you never, ever have the misfortune to experience it. It is far worse than I can ever explain. And no matter how vivid you may be able to make it out to be in your imagination, it's far, far worse.

There's the physical pain. There's emotional pain. There's mental pain. Unlike "normal" pain experienced by your body, the physical pain of rejection doesn't change, you don't get used to it, don't get acclimated to a certain level or intensity of pain. It's always there, in full force.

The mental pain is bad but not nearly the same. It comes more in the form of self-criticism, derision over things you've done or not done, a laundry list of things you've done that got you to here.

The emotional pain is the worst though. It grabs you in that place inside we think of as our heart and just squeezes, clamps down on it, crushing your emotions. It overflows what you can bear inside and manifests itself physically as an incredible tightness in your chest. Your heart races and you feel like you can't breathe. It might seem like that'd be punishment enough but there's so much more.

I kind of picture "self" as the image of myself that resides inside my body, just below skin level, as though the physical self were just a covering over the real self. It's your mental insides, this emotional self, that suffers the most. It feels as though you're on fire, that your skin is being ripped away, that you're being crushed under tremendous weight all at once. It comes in waves, crashing over you. You get smashed, crushed, injected with anguish and just as it starts to recede just the tiniest bit, it happens all over again. And again. And again.

It's like waves and the tide. The waves of pain and recrimination and hurt and anguish and loss just keep coming. Crash - another, then just a slight bit of respite and then crash, another. All along, the tide keeps coming in, raising the baseline of pain ever higher. Higher. Higher. Until finally you're just completely submerged and drowning. Struggling for air, needing desperately to have just a few seconds of breath but unable to get above the surface of despair for even a second, and all the while still feeling the waves pounding on top of you.

At the height of pain, at the depths of despair, your mental processes break down. Coherent, reasonable, linear thought becomes impossible. Your entire sphere of consciousness consists of images of, in my case, her. Memories of the sound of her voice. Written words that have gone between us, fragments of emails whirling through your head. Pictures. Memories of daydreams of her, fantasies of what could have been. Recriminations for things you've done wrong. Her face smiling, now lost to you. Her face crying, looming impossibly large in front of you, the pain you've caused her amplified and burning through you. The sound of her tears, so quiet in real life, thundering over and over in your head. When you reach this point, there is no thought. There's only loss and pain and sorrow. Disbelief that you could be there.

When you can take no more, if you're lucky, sleep comes. Fitful sleep. Fifteen minutes maybe, or an hour and then it's all on you again. You wake tired and emotionally exhausted. Numb.

Just as with real physical pain, the memory of the pain stays with you but the intensity of it, the experience of it fades. But it never leaves.

And now it's Monday morning and we've talked. And she's far away and distant and closed off. She sounds so tired, so beaten. Resigned perhaps.

And while she doesn't say the words, I think I hear in her voice that this is ending. I tell her that it doesn't need to, that this relationship can survive. But I don't think she hears me. Maybe she doesn't want to hear me.

And so I cry again.

I'd finished the weekend thinking positively of her again. Last week I placed an ad in a newspaper - small, short, just for her. A message of hope and support from her friend. I'd pictured her smiling and feeling warm and wanted and loved and liked and cherished as her reaction to my message.

And then we talked. She didn't mention it, nor did I. But I knew from her voice and her distance that even if my message had had -some- positive effect on her it wasn't enough, that in the long run it didn't matter.

And so I cry again.