Maybe You Don’t Have To Be ‘Cool’, Maybe It’s Okay To Fear Rejection

Being attracted to cool, easygoing people but still knowing that I’m not as cool, made me grow a sensation of fear of rejection.

By

God&Man

This always gets me nostalgic to the cool I may have always longed to be and probably always failed to be. I remember that during my school years, every year I’d tell myself this year is my year, I’m going to be cool. Play, act and look cool. But this never actually happened and eventually I gave up to the idea that I’m a nerd and I can’t change the fact that I’m always worried about the stupidest shit and about What people would think of me, overthinking at night about “what do you think he thought about you when you cursed”  or “did she hear my compliment or was my voice not so loud”  or “was it okay that I didn’t speak much or sometimes that I spoke too much”. In the end, this all lead me to the fact that I’m overthoughtful I guess and I can’t help it, I can’t be cool.

Out of this I guess grew a sensation of fear of rejection, for normally I myself am attracted to cool, easy going people and for i know that I really am not as cool, I fear being rejected consequently.

I feared rejection to a great extent that made me an introvert for a whole long time as a child. But also with time, age, experience and of course the bless of true friends chosen regardless of being cool or not you kind of move on from the trap of such feelings. But do these feelings completely go away?

I asked myself aiming to detect my progress. If these years are over, how confident are you now. I found there’s a progress I must admit in the fact that when I see someone whom I feel Is better,prettier, cooler, my inner secret feeling of insecurity and fear of rejection (which is now not secret at all)  doesn’t make me go hide somewhere, however, it doesn’t stop me from wishing to hide.

But again you grow older and more wise and the fear of rejection that you know  you wouldn’t have had if you haven’t seen how the ones who are accepted, socially, emotionally or any other way, just accepted are like and compared yourself to them, that feeling gradually decreases. Most probably after you learn to not compare yourself.

People say don’t compare your chapter one with someone else’s chapter twenty. I say don’t compare your chapter one with someone else’s chapter one, every one has his own story, why compare at all!?

There’s something we can understand about life. There’s not a single thing that can define a certain person. No, it’s not all about what we do when we are alone. And no, not everything we do in public is considered hypocrisy. We do wrong things.

We make mistakes but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re bad people.

We do right things too, great things at times but they don’t make us saints either.

We can’t be defined by something as changeable as our minds or as how we react to life.

We change because sometimes it’s the right thing to do but sometimes it’s only because we think it’s and it turns out to be our biggest regret, should we then consider ourselves the biggest failures alive. I don’t think so. In a way not being so cool became the most accepted fact in my life. I don’t have to be like everyone. I don’t have to be born with the greatest communication skills or with the ability to say all the right things at all the right times because maybe I’ll have to learn this through experience. I don’t have to get certain things done right from the first time. Not everyone can do that you know and it’s okay it makes you no less great than the ones who do Because even those who do have failed to get other things done right from the first time, things that you might have excelled at the moment you knew them. It’s okay I guess because it’s all like the circle of life.

We may all learn the same lessons in the end but we won’t all have to learn it the same way.

I guess that this belief somehow got me to learn to accept myself, the pounds I gain , the freckled hair, the stupid humor sometimes and the childish clumsiness because if I didn’t do that, with time I’m going to be afraid of rejection from myself more than from people and no one should be distant from himself, your own self should be the closest to your heart. Thought Catalog Logo Mark


About the author

Mariem Sherif

An Egyptian medical student who believes that words can heal a wound and that good food and good books can fix two thirds of our problems.