Always Thought I'd See You Again

Rejection. Now there's a good word. Well not a good word, maybe. Not for the person feeling it.

Jason had been rejected. Not once, but a whole lot of times. Each time he was rejected, he became dejected. People often said he looked dejected. Apparently, that often happens with someone who's been rejected. He heard them say that too, so many times that aimlessly, in the bar, he often used to ponder words ending with "jection:" subjection, objection, injection, abjection, ejection. As far as he was concerned, they all had negative connotation. But he was comfortable with that. He felt they were his personal words, that, in a way, they summed him up. You might say Jason was a bit negative. That's what the guys in the bar often told him. Was he always negative, they'd ask him, half-jokingly. He didn't know. He couldn't remember a time when he wasn't, but he could clearly remember the first time he felt rejected.

He was four. Not long after his fourth birthday, his mother left. He didn't know why Mommy went. One day at lunchtime, when he came back from kindergarten, she was just not there. Now he's forty, but he still vividly remembers that day. Like most days. Gill Griffin, an older girl in his school, who lived near him, walked him home. That day, his father, looking grey and pale, was waiting outside the hall door. His father worked in town and was never home at this time. But that day, he was standing at the door. Forty years later, Jason can still smell the roast chicken Mrs. Sullivan next door was cooking and hear the song playing on her radio: "Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you." His mom's name was Suzanne. Ever since, Jason couldn't listen to James Taylor.

His first high school romance lasted three months and four days. His second about a month longer. No surprise then, that his one-and-only marriage was doomed to fail. And it did. After less than a year, his one-and-only wife left him. That was fifteen years ago. Since then, more than one counsellor told him that his problem was his fear of rejection. He didn't understand this. He thought everyone feared rejection. No, the analysts said, not everyone. Most people may consider the possibility, but they don't fear it. His problem was pathological, they said. He didn't just fear rejection, he brought it on himself. Because he feared it some much, he expected it. And because he expected it, subconsciously, he courted it. When it happened, as it always did, he felt, well, rejected, but strangely, also comforted, because, the world had worked out as it was supposed to. The counselors had a name for this, but he just called it a pain in the neck, and no big deal.

Problem was, it was a big deal and he knew it. He didn't know he knew it, but he knew it. Being rejected was his trade, his way of life, a sort of perverse comfort. He knew where he stood with rejection. Sure, it was a comfort with cruel sharp edges. But enough booze filed away those edges. So, voila, it was comfort with no cruel edges. And that was fine.