On Disappointment

"Hard not to feel just a little bit disappointed and passed over."

I don't handle rejection well.  Something I'm going to have to get over if I really intend to finish writing my novel and then seek to publish it.  I take it too personally, whether it's professionally or romantically.  It just breaks my heart. Every. Single. Time.  I can't seem to separate myself from the disappointment of not being perfect for everything I attempt.

So I don't.  I don't put myself out there often, because the very notion of rejection is crippling.

I applied for a job that I'm qualified to do in my sleep.  Overall, the hiring supervisor advised that the job would be given to either me or a former teammate of mine.  She got the job.  I'm in no way angry about her getting it, she deserves it.  I'm really happy that she's getting out of the service center.  I just feel stuck, and I have for a very long time.

So, not getting this job was a massive, crushing blow.  Oh, and they haven't even bothered to tell me that I'm not the one getting the job.  I learned from asking her if she had heard anything yet.  They were supposed to tell us three days ago.

This is a fresh wound for me.  Seriously, I wrote most of this between calls on scraps of paper shortly after learning that I'd been passed over.  Fuck. Me.

It's been a whole-Misfits-catalog kind of day.

When I started my job four years ago, it was an entirely different life that I was leading.  I had the intention to move to Portland, OR with a job waiting for me at the center there.  About a year later, that center closed.  Two moves, several job rejections, and one terrible break up later, here I am. I've let go of the idea that move to Portland is at all a possibility or would make a difference in my life. Disappointment would follow.

I just feel stuck.  Really, really stuck.  I feel like I'm going to live and die in the same small city that I was born in.  The town that I both love and despise.  I do see the melodrama in taking a job rejection to rejection from the rest of the world.  That's how I handle disappointment. 

A cloud so dark and thick and ominous, that I don't see how the sun will ever shine again.  Disappointment apocalypse.

Today, I am the embodiment of Forever Alone.  I get the guts to say how I feel, but that hanging shadow of disappointment is never too far way.  I chicken out.  I want to say everything, but I can't.  Because I can't take another disappointment just yet.