Could you tell me a time you felt rejection?

Firstly, nobody is immune to the issues of mental health and understanding this has helped me over the last few years to overcome one of my biggest personal issues with regards to the illness – R E J E C T I O N.

The feeling of rejection for me can take two different forms; rational and irrational. When the rejection is rational, I can understand the what, why, when and where’s off the whole situation. Unfortunately, it is the irrational form of rejection that bears the harshest of consequences for me and over the last few years has associated itself with my now least favourite word in the English language – 

U N I V E R S I T Y. And here’s why:

When the time came to sit down and start completing my second university application, so too came my first real taste of harsh irrational rejection. Having lasted an impressive total of four weeks following my first attempt, I found myself in total isolation as the majority of my friends had gone off to university straight from school and managed to stick at it. Yet, here was me back home now in floods of tears at my kitchen table, submerged in what I can only describe as being a prisoner in my own head.

Days started to feel like forever as menial tasks like making breakfast took up more energy and motivation. Here, I think it’s also important to note that mental health problems like the fear of rejection and other symptoms such as anxiety, anger, failure etc are not mutually exclusive. They are strongly intertwined in a network that can seem endless at times. However, with time passing, clarity of thought slowly returned, and I started to focus on the little things that made me smile rather than the silver bullet that was going to fix it overnight. Little things such as old photographs of my brother and I on holiday and chats with my parents helped give me some encouragement that sometimes in life, the path most travelled isn’t necessarily the best path for all and that rejection isn’t something to be feared, but something to acknowledge as progress packaged differently. So, with this in mind, I have achieved things that I never thought I could, let alone would. There are roughly seven billion people on this earth, yet how many people do you know that have eaten warm tinned tuna and slept in a sleeping bag covered in someone else’s urine for three weeks solid? I know two: the person that peed in their sleeping bag next to mine and me.

So, if I had to pass on one piece of advice, think back to one of your best stories you have experienced and acknowledge that sometimes, the worst times make for the best stories. Don’t fear them but embrace them because a step, regardless of the direction, is progress – Or so I am telling myself having just completed my THIRD university application.