Tag: Rejection

Sonnet of Unrequited Love

Twas mine own proclamation of emancipation
When I didst tell thee of passionate affection,
Which didst proceed from an opened heart
That cared not how thou might play thy part,
But for sake of my tender soul ye wert kind,
And in thine eyes some honest pity I didst find,
And thou didst not reprimand me nor demand
That I should take my leave to ever be banned
From seeing thee again in some fondly way,
And thus, though sadly, did I await that day;
Nay, thou even granted a kiss upon my cheek
But ye also implored me another love to seek;
Ah! I have found such, yet thou art mournful,
But o’er my fortune why now be so scornful?

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Will Weeping Sound and Love be Given?

Cast down, rejected, born one lonely,
Surrounded by crowds bathed in love
Never touching sordid soul so unholy,
Encoffined in dark, no light from above.

This prison is mine, and I despair alone,
And comes no mercy on wings of wind,
Nor calls my beloved in passion’s tone
To loose my bonds and heart remend.

Will weeping sound and love be given
To the life-gone man who lies in state;
Affection enfold the cursed of heaven,
And on cold lips offered kiss too late?

Note: First published in May 2012 

Building My Hovels of Rejection

As I walked through the bottom at our home in the country in southeast Alabama, the shards of another broken dream stabbed my heart. With walking stick in hand, hot sun beating down, two dogs romping around in the distance, I rolled it over in my mind … again and again, picking up the pieces to construct yet another hovel in my soul squarely built on the foundation of rejection.

Two weeks and she hadn’t written me back. By then, of course, I knew she wouldn’t and I was angry. And hurt, discouraged, depressed and I hated myself and her, too. And I was right… Right? Still, the thought of receiving some missive in the mail kept the slightest hope flickering. Long-distance relationships were at best difficult — we had no Internet access then … in fact, no Internet and not even a computer — but she was so beautiful.

So naturally I moved her into my fantastical world and had her fall in love with me. At 14-years-old, it would have been nearly impossible for us to do everything we easily managed in my daydreams. And forget sex for the moment. Meeting up for a movie would have been impossible … well, at least not without some adults going to an awful lot of time, trouble and expense.

Even so, long-distance relationships were not unheard of, I told myself. And she could at least have written me back. After all, it’s not as if we hadn’t met and talked. She was a good friend of the family … just a part of my family that happened to live hundreds of miles away. But that’s how we met in the first place, and we got along just fine, and they’d put in a good word for me, and what was wrong with me anyway???

And so another rejection hovel was completed, surrounded by plenty of others in what had become a virtual shanty town in my soul. But that’s another problem with high, and ultimately unrealistic, expectations that spring from the soil of the self-centered fantastical. I not only constantly fell from that precipice in disappointment, frustration and anger. Ultimately and profoundly, I felt rejected, and rejected more each time.

Not surprisingly, ever deepening root of rejection carried over into my spiritual life. Not only did God disappoint by not answering so many of my specific, carefully worded, well-reasoned prayers, he also rejected me, over and over again, or so I thought: God is God, right? He can do anything without even blinking an eye, right? And I’m not really asking for anything bad, right? So if God keeps saying “no” to what’s most important to me even though it’s good, then what else could it be except rejection?

And to be rejected by God … but for some reason, deep down inside, I questioned that feeling.

No, I didn’t understand why the Almighty for whom nothing is impossible wouldn’t answer, ever. No, I didn’t understand why reality wouldn’t, couldn’t conform to the fantastical, to any extent. No, I didn’t understand why I seemed, felt invisible and so damn inconsequential to everybody, especially girls (later women). And no, I didn’t even begin to know how to change, what to change, if I needed to change. But deep down inside, I think I did know God was not rejecting me … right?

But that realization didn’t break through to the fore of my mind then — it was still but the whisper seed of the Voice of Love — so with walking stick in hand, I stepped up from the bottom to the dirt road leading to my Grandpa’s house a couple of miles away. No letter would come, and the rejection hovel would remain in my soul with all the others for many more years to come… Some still have to be cleared away.