Rejection
I replayed the scene over and over in my head. How I'll tell my friend about the news. While I was busy on my phone with the locker door opened, she popped up behind me and said my name with excitement. I turned around and saw the person I could confide in. The one person I'll tell everything to and this time she'll be the first to know. With sympathy she asked, "What's wrong?" She must have known that something was off about me. Well, I wasn't doing my best to mask it. The moment she asked, I slowly felt the tears making its way up. I swallow the pain down as my voice begins to shake. I close my locker door while trying to calm myself down but my throat feels tense and hoarse. "Can we go upstairs," I asked. She nodded and we both walked up the stairs. As we got closer to the top of the staircase I slowly began to say, "I got rejected." I followed that with, "I found out this morning." Now that I've said it. The pain of it cut deeper than a knife. Telling yourself what happened seems a lot easier than telling someone else what happened because now I accepted that I got rejected. Accepting it is a lot harder. Then I found myself ranting about all the bad news I've received throughout the morning and it wasn't even 9am yet. To be honest, I've already accepted that this day would be a bad one. I thought to myself. "Why did I check my mail for the acceptance letter? Why couldn't I wait until the day was almost over?" The bell rang and stopped my train of self punishing questions. I walked down the stairs and this time I let the tears flow. I couldn't have pent up anger and sadness inside. I walked down the halls with my head up and told myself, rejection closes a door to one path but opens another to a different path.

















