I received another rejection email from a teaching position in Boston just before my run today. I have to say that wasn't the one thing that kept me below spirits when I started on my run today.
Work has been difficult lately. I have been trying to quit but it seems that in this day and age it's impossible to find another job. I have just outgrown camp. I have not been happy about the way things have been run this year. It seems any problem that there has been whether through the campers or the staff that are under me, I never seem to hear about it and the problem is just fixed by the other staff members. I feel that I am no longer significant to this camp and that if I was gone from the job it would not matter at all.
Therefore, I wasn't in what you would call the highest of spirits when I received yet another rejection after not only no offers but no interviews except for one where I didn't make the second round. I decided that I was feeling so much like shit, that I might as well run four miles because I couldn't feel worse and I could use some more time to contemplate. I realize now writing this that I shouldn't taken the more time to contemplate.
I think one form of rejection causes several other forms of rejection and depression to come to the surface. I started the run, running hard thinking about all of the girls that I see on their facebook. I see them smiling at the camera that took that picture while I know they never thought of me that way unless it was by chance that one drunken mistake. They would never say it to my face of course but I know for a fact that is the case. Physical attractiveness rules this world, and the sooner people will just fucking admit to that the better that we will be.
It was after I passed mile one where I realized that the biggest image burned into mind was the back of Ali as she walked up the stairs of the campus parking lot as I was in my car driving away through tear soaked eyes. It was the last time I would see her without the look of disdain. The next time I would see her would be at alumni weekend where she would halfheartedly explain to me that she didn't respond to my letter because there are some things she needed to say in person, and I remember me being dumb enough to fall for it.
Just before Mile 2, I began to think about my friends. I began to think about Tim and Kevin and I began to realize that as much as I was going to see them again, as much as I would keep in touch with them, they are still going to be my college friends. It will never be the same as it was this year and the year before that. Halfway between mile two and three I ran into an empty parking lot and cried my eyes out.
After I composed myself I continued on the run and I saw a perfectly groomed and mowed lawn. Each stripe as even as beautiful as the next. I looked at it.
"Fuck You. What the fuck do you know about life?"
As crazy as it is to talk to a lawn, what the hell did it know about being perfect. It thinks it could be that perfect but that's not life. That lawn will get trampled on, rained on, and it will grow into a deformed mess. That lawn didn't know shit about the real world.
Life isn't perfect. A groomed lawn isn't life.
A rejection from a job is life.
An insignificant job is life.
Being judged on your outer appearance is life
Not being over a girl after a year and a half who was never even your girlfriend is life.
Leaving your friends is life.
An empty parking lot is life.
On the last mile, I raced down a suburb seeing fireflies dances low the ground of each unkempt lawn, and it dawned on me. Life isn't perfect or uniform or ever works out right, but life can be beautiful.
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