"NO MEANS NO"- A Constant.
“Was I bitter? Absolutely. Hurt? You bet your sweet ass I was hurt. Who doesn't feel a part of their heartbreak at rejection? You ask yourself every question you can think of, what, why, how come, an
A few months back, a friend once asked me, how to handle rejections, and I didn’t have an answer, except forcing myself to sleep, drowning in sad songs or even deleting the memory from my mind, but over the next few months I learnt an important lesson on this and I want to share with you. I hope you also learn something from this, although you have permission to go out of context too.
The first time, my friend Femi, got a rejection was from, Amarachi the prettiest girl in our class, he had simply written a terrific love letter, explaining why he wanted her to be his date, for our high-school prom, but even after accompanying with it an amazing gift, she had rejected his offer, she also adequately took her time to return both his letter and gift, enclosed in it a written note, giving a large view of the words in it, “NO”. If my memory served me correctly, Femi had wept for days, the rest of us, including myself, felt bad for our dear friend, and in solidarity, our teenage minds had vowed to hate Amarachi, for the rest of our lives, we wore the badge proudly, “What audacity, how could she have the mind to reject our dear friend” we openly grumbled. Femi on the other hand, still shy from the rejection avoided her, as long as he could vanish, although she tried reaching out to him severally to explain why she said “No”, the rest of us, who proudly saw ourselves as “Femi’s lieutenants”, blocked every form of reasonable conversations they could have, to the very extent our young immature, teenage minds could fathom. We basically, weren’t used to rejections and our friend Femi was likewise not introduced to such rejections too, we mostly got everything we wanted out of life. The next time, Femi became introduced to rejection was after his mother died, slowly life began dishing him, a variety of rejections, at some point it got to the breaking point where he wanted to end his life because he felt life was unfair to him, “if he couldn’t handle something as simple as a lady’s rejection, why should he handle any larger rejections?” he simply thought to himself, while he went over to the closest pharmacy to get the drugs to end things, as fate would have it, after his purchase, he bumped into a figure by the entrance and it turned out to be his old childhood crush, Amarachi, the very lady that introduced his virgin mind to rejection. He couldn’t contain his rage, as he still had not forgotten, her. But the moment she spoke, he knew immediately why he still hasn’t forgotten about her all those years, he found himself, speaking to her again much calmer, while they found a better place to talk, her first question was, “Femi, how are you ?”, well, he couldn’t hide all his problems anymore, since they had all been on his mind for years, eating deep in his mind, in between tears, he began narrating all his ordeals with her, by the time he stopped, he had let out a long sigh and a sarcastic laugh, he felt lighter again. She suddenly, told him she understood his grief because she had also been in such a situation a few years ago, and that was the major reason she had rejected his advances back then, as a matter of fact, she also fancied him, but couldn’t emotionally and mentally deal with that aspect of her life till she felt it was the right time for her, and she also didn’t want to drag him along in all honesty. She explained that she had found his actions towards her, insensitive, but didn’t judge him, because she felt he might understand someday, and today was that day God chose. It was funny how all the grudges of several years can be dissolved by just one open and honest conversation. They both exchanged contacts, promised to keep in touch with one another, they went their separate ways, he tossed the drugs he got to kill himself into the trash-can, she kept her word, reached out to him, introduced him to God, he found salvation, he began to see life from a matured point of view, understanding life was full of rejections and we don’t necessarily, need to be selfish about them, he started seeing certain “NOs” as stepping stones into a “Yes”, miraculously, his life turned around positively. The next time Amarachi and Femi met again, was on the altar when they both tied the knot. I still vividly recollect the night he told us, about getting married, we had all eagerly, screamed “Who are you getting married to?”, he gave a bit of suspense, asking us to guess, when we failed horribly he then blurted out excitedly, “Amarachi” I could still recollect all our faces, confused and disgusted, “What Amarachi?”, we blurted out, he didn’t say more than that, because we all understood perfectly but was confused at the same exact moment, a lot of questions running through our minds, we had sworn to faithfully and stupidly hate her, “then why is our friend betraying our loyalty by getting married to our sworn enemy”, our immature minds still spoke, at that very moment, Femi bailed us out of our confused state, giving us a summary about all the events of the past months, by the time he was done, each one of us, simply bowed our heads in shame, we felt really stupid, we had judged her unfairly, while she didn’t even owe us any explanations we had not been fair to request for one. But then it began to make sense because life already gave each one of us, our share of rejections, we suddenly saw everything much clearer, one of us simply blurted out in exhaustion, “NO means NO, in any language”, I simply said to myself, “Life wasn’t supposed to be easy, that’s why rejections existed, they’re simply supposed to toughen us up”. On the wedding day, we all queued up, each one of us, apologizing and asking for forgiveness from Amarachi, she simply smiled and told each one of us, “I accept all your apologies”. We all learnt a big lesson after all those years of blind loyalty and grudges, “for every rejection faced, there is a reason, you might not understand it at the very moment, but with the time you’d be able to fully grasp the reason for the rejection, we just have to create an open-minded approach towards rejections and on the other hand, we have to be honest about why we are rejecting a person, by providing an objective reason if the person requests for an explanation, but we are not obligated to provide any explanations” and finally before I draw the curtain, rejections are a part of life, how you handle them, will determine how mature we are, sometimes we get so attached to the things we love, either a relationship, career or even a “material thing” that when we are unable to acquire them, we begin to rage and kill ourselves. Life isn’t supposed to be fair towards us, or go according to our plans, and God in his infinite mercies doesn’t owe us anything in life, we are just bound by his awful grace. “Then why sulk, when rejected?”
This is a wonderful piece. It has reminded and encouraged me. Thank you.
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾...very encouraging.welldone