YOU WIN SOME, YOU LOSE SOME

Rejection used to make me shrivel. If some work of mine wasn't wanted, it was entirely possible I would quit working for months. Sometimes, I would bring rejection on myself - in wanting to impress certain people, I would be hyper, aggressive and take up too much room which of course put them off. The memory of trying too hard feels humiliating. Rejection and humiliation are a deadly combination.
     I'm so much better dealing with both than I used to be. When someone I like doesn't like me, I no longer take it as a verdict on my worth. That's just the way it is. It turns out phrases like, "you win some, you lose some," have deep, even profound meanings, which of course is why they become cliches. Learning not to take it personally, knowing that I can let go of bad feelings very soon after they start, understanding that I always have the freedom to choose my own attitude - all of that only slowly became possible for me. Infiltration feels like the right word - the small steps toward freedom infiltrated the black lagoon inside me, little soldiers that embedded themselves in my consciousness until there were so many, they could take over. Consciousness is porous and with experience and insight we can be changed. 
     I think of Alice in Wonderland stepping through the looking glass. She takes a step across the backbone of reality and while she stays the same everything is different. With me, it takes a long line of little steps, working their changes without my realizing it, and then one step comes along and tips me over into what feels like a new reality. My thoughts and feelings, my attitude toward the world and everything in it, is different. I have something like equanimity.
     I wish I hadn't wasted so much time and energy on feeling rejected and humiliated.  But that's wishing I was someone else with some other, fantastically smooth path. Everyone has "stuff" they have to work out; mine is just that, mine. On good days, I'm grateful to have had to struggle toward freedom in my own particular way. And even more grateful to see how far I've come.