Why It Hurt When You Rejected Me

We were such good friends, and now you don’t share your secrets with me anymore. We were so in love for so long, but then one day you just… weren’t. I put my number in your pocket one day and asked you for a drink, but your response was silence. We had that one, amazing night, and then again in the morning, but you never called me. We dated for a while, and we were having so much fun, but something changed and you wouldn’t tell me what it was. You rejected me, and it hurt.

It hurt because I have too much pride. I was proud that someone like you was enjoying my company, because I thought you were exquisite. I thought that you should be grateful to have me, because I was so good at the things I did for you, to you. When you rejected me, it hurt my ego. It embarrassed me, because however small or large the gesture, I wore my heart on my sleeve for you, and even wagged it in front of your face once or twice. It hurt because it made me feel as though I should have known better, that I shouldn’t have been so rash in my actions. I should have been the one rejecting you.

It hurt because it highlighted all the terrible things I always think about myself. I make a decision every day not to let my insecurities rule me. Everyone has irrational fears about themselves, and I’m determined not to let mine define who I am. But when you rejected me, the ways in which I hate myself became harder to suppress. Maybe you were cruel and you used my weakness to leave me (in which case the hurt will pass as my abhorrence for your meanness outweighs anything I feel about myself) or maybe you were silent (which is worse because gives my over active imagination pretense to fill in the gaps), either way, your rejection made my nose grow, my intelligence wan, and my sanity disappear.

It hurt because it threw my ‘plan’ into chaos. This weekend we were going to go to on that perfect date. Next week we were going to go to that awesome party. We were going to fall in love. I was going to make you moussaka and we were going to eat it on my roof. You were going to meet my parents. We were going to move in together. Everything was going so well that I let my guard down, and I let my brain chatter with my heart. Together they concocted a future for us that your rejection rendered little more than a hopefully mythology I would have to wallow in alone.

It hurt because you didn’t really seem to care. You moved on so easily. Almost instantly, you found someone else to take to dinner, someone else to get too drunk with, someone else to hold in your naked arms in the sweaty early morning hours. I hate that the rotation was so easy for you; that you so effortlessly flicked me off your life and replaced me with someone you obviously deemed ‘better.’ It hurt because while I was crying you were laughing; because I meant as much to you as a story you could tell your friends later.

It hurt because I really liked you. I liked you so much, and I couldn’t even tell you—maybe I knew you were going to reject me? And if I did tell you, you didn’t reciprocate, or you did, but only to rescind later, which hurt even more than the solitary rejection. It hurt because I wanted to be good to you, and I wanted you to be good to me too. I thought that maybe I could stop for you, that I could give up all those other selfish things because you were inching your way into my heart. It hurt because after all the inching, you did find your way into my heart, where you remain, irrevocably.