My Fear Of Rejection

“Be brave and steadfast; have no fear or dread of them, for it is the Lord, your God, who marches with you; he will never fail you or forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:6) 

I think its safe to say that most of us have had to deal with rejection at some point in our lives. This could be anything from a job opportunity, a serious crush or in my case a very close friend. I have never found it easy to deal with rejection and I am acutely aware that this is the demon that keeps me terrified of change and prevents me allowing full acceptance of myself. I am trapped in my fearful net and this recent rejection has catapulted me back to the small scared girl I never really left at the school gates.

Even since my infant school crush threw the acorn I gave him as a present, over the school fence, I have been aware that rejection was a cruel part of life. This followed me through primary school when no matter how hard I tried, I never fitted in, and into the worst years of my life in comprehensive school. It was here that I suffered the worst forms of rejection that set the pattern for the self abuse and self hatred that I still deal with now. Here at the age of only 12, I had my first real taster of how evil people can be and suffered daily with abuse and taunts about my image that caused me to sink deeper and deeper into myself. It was here that the seed of rejection really came to fruition as I cut myself, forced myself to be sick (for abuse and control, not weight) and wished daily for my death to save me from a world I was never going to be accepted in.

This extreme and brutal experience then turned outwards and I began to seek acceptance in the wrong places. I desperately wanted to fit in and with this, intimacy with boys, drinking and being loud and mouthy became my suit of armour. I became what I thought I needed to be, to get people to like me. Of course, the reality was that my actions only caused further abuse and isolated me more. It was here that I disappeared and my alter ego's came out to play. The scared, frightened girl wrote poems every day, bleeding my heart onto paper in the privacy of my own space. Too scared and disappointed in my inability to fit in, I refused to open up to the people who I loved the most, my family, so I became a problem teen and caused no end of worry.

The rejection continued throughout school and then in a relationship with a man who reminded me often of how worthless and ugly I was. For five years he controlled me and abused me physically, but most of all mentally and destroyed any fragments of hope that I would ever be loved for who I was. My drugs and drink obsession warded off the demon of rejection as I anaesthetised myself from my reality and learnt new ways to hide the broken person that screamed inside of me. Rejection had become my assumed identity and the actions I displayed and choices I made allowed it to take seat in my heart and mind.

I am terrified of people not liking me. I automatically assume that everyone I meet wishes I would go away. Whilst I smile and chat I am thinking of how ugly they must think I am and how they must be desperate to get away from the annoying and useless being in front of them. My loudness is a practised front I wear, guaranteed to fool those who don’t know me. It means you will never guess that I am terrified of you, that I know you don’t like me. I will make you think I do not care, but the mental torture I go through is very real and is secretly killing me. I have been rejected over and over and now I reject myself. I expect you to do the same with me. Which is why, even with my closest friends I fear that they do not really like me at all, in fact I often believe they just put up with me.

In the last few years, after many many years of counselling, I have allowed myself to get closer to people. There have been certain people in my life who have seen through the disguise I wear and who I know would never reject me. Of those people is my family and one friend I have who now lives in Peru, she saw the pain and she helped me heal as much as she could. She is my angel and I know that regardless of what I was doing and who I was trying to be, she saw through it all and loved me. In my life now, I can count the number of true friends I have on one hand. But even with these, the fear of rejection often rears its ugly head and makes me doubt whether they truly want to be around me or are secretly hoping I will leave them alone. My boyfriend, who does honestly love and accept me just as I am, who is a mere miracle of a man, is the one of the only people, aside from my childhood friend and family who I can really take off my mask with and just be...me. He doesn’t always understand, neither do I, but he always reminds me every day how much he loves me and that has helped me start to accept myself more and to accept my friendships more.

The girl who I have been best friends with for the past couple of years is the one I mentioned in yesterdays blog, who chose not to come to the birthday meal that she had made us do on a date she preferred. This girl has always caused the fear of rejection to swell in me. Through being bullied and abused and in part an innate sense, I can usually read people very well without having met them for long. I did it with her and I wasn’t wrong. We all have people in our lives who we continue to put up with even though they drain our energy, they make us feel bad and they gossip all the time about everybody. My pattern in life has been to go from one bully to the next. I was badly bullied in school, I was then badly bullied by my boyfriend and as we split up I met the new bully, my recent best friend. I needed to be around the people I was scared of the most. As I write this, as my soul spills out, my mistake is clear as day. I have allowed myself to stay trapped in the fear of rejection by choosing people who would demonstrate it the best.

I always believed and still often do, that I am worth nothing. So, I stay in relationships and situations that add to that feeling, addicted to the pain and comfortable because I genuinely believe I deserve nothing more. This girl, has been a good friend at times, but it has often been on her terms and as she sees fit. She has destroyed relationships and judged cruelly and I have supported her even though it has gone against my morals. I have allowed the fear of rejection to dictate my relationships, even though the original bullying has long since finished. I have found a way to keep me where I believe I deserve I need to be and on Sunday that bondage was cut free. Since then, I have been feeling worthless and have started questioning whether she is bad mouthing me. I have also assessed what I have possibly done wrong and to be honest, I have been sat with Mr Rejection, agreeing that this is what I deserve - it's because of me and my useless existence.

This is a new moment. I write from my heart with the aid of my King and He is revealing to me the truth as I type. This is meant to be. This is the start of my freedom. I welcomed God into my life and He has promised to save me and this is exactly what He is doing. He is freeing me from the pain of my past and releasing glory so I can walk free in my future as the real me. The me that I covered up, the me that I hated and the me that I continued to compromise. Thank you so much Lord for believing in me, for making me realise that this is not a tragedy, this is not rejection, this is my rebirth, this is my hope. The fear of rejection has kept me locked and bounded to the people who represent everything I am scared of being rejected from. The bully has left and the Lord has picked me up and accepted me, just as I am. Ohhhhhh Thank you. Lord of my heart, Lord of my life, I trust in you completely.

Love Always.xxx