I hate the word NO.
As an artist, it's something I should embrace.
But it just stings and leaves a bitter aftertaste.
It's especially difficult when it's coming from a lover.
"NO. I don't like you."
Ouch, right?
It is also rough to take on rejection in your career.
You work and work and work. And then hear you're still not good enough.
At the very least people could show a little empathy.
But empathy and sympathy is a git many forgo.
Redditor Anonymous-Turtle-34 wanted to hear everyone's stories about painful rejection, so they asked:
"What's the most brutal rejection you've ever gotten?"
In Writing
"I was once looking for a job. I had been looking for a long time, and I received yet another rejection email."
"But! I immediately received a follow-up from the organization asking that I disregard the prior message as it was sent in error and that I would receive the correct message shortly!"
"The subsequent email was a differently worded rejection letter."
- paxcincinnatus
Jersey Shore Letter GIF by Jersey Shore Family VacationGiphy
Brutal
"Was told we should just be friends. A week later I was told we should be the type of friends that don’t talk to each other."
"She was my high school sweetheart. She graduated high school 2 years before me. We never kissed. We occasionally hugged. After every date, we shook hands. It was a 2 year relationship. Years later I found out she was a lesbian. Suddenly everything made sense. Also, years later, I found out I’m autistic. Also explains why I never picked up on the clues. Life is funny. It is lived going forward, but understood looking backward."
"I will say, I could make a movie about all the weird things that happened in my life. Knowing I have subpar social skills/social understanding, so much of my life starts to make sense."
- kmart1976
Dodged a Bullet
"Many years ago, after getting divorced at 30, I hit the online dating scene. I had essentially never dated as an adult having met my ex-wife in college. I was not prepared for how brutal online dating was. This was in the match/eharmony days, not the apps. First online date, we meet up at a restaurant. She walks in, sees me, and says "Oh, you are much uglier in person" and walks out. Doesn't even sit down."
"Everything turned out fine, been happily married for 10 years again. But I thought that was pretty unnecessarily brutal and strange. Dodged a bullet there."
- GordonShumway81
Banished
"I had a couple of good friends that I knew and hung out with almost daily since I was six years old just started to ghost me when we were in high school. Despite my asking them what was wrong, they never answered. If we hung out in our small friend group, they would ignore me. One day, they asked me to come over. They had me sit down in my friend's living room, and they flat out told me that they didn't want to be friends anymore, but they also didn't want to be enemies."
"No explanation they just didn't want me to exist to them anymore. I, to this day, have no idea why. The f**ked up thing was is they tried to drag my other friends away from me too. If my other friends were hanging out at my house, they would call my house. Ask to speak to my friends and try to get them to leave to come hang out with them. Luckily, my other friends were much more mature and called that bulls**t out, and they're still my best friends to this day."
- WeenisPeiner
Middle School Days
"Back in the days of MSN messenger, I got blindly set up with this girl by a friend. We hit it off, exchanged selfies, all of that jazz. Being in middle school it was obviously nothing serious or explicit, just dumb little flirty stuff. We decided to meet in person at a dance that we’d both be attending with our respective friend groups."
"I didn’t see her for most of the night, when I finally did and a slow song came on, I went over and asked her to dance with me. She winced and shook her head, I just said okay and walked away defeated. Later, online, I asked her why she’d turned me down. Her response was 'Oh, that was you? I don’t like ugly and fat people.'"
- Slumer1can
Kinda Busy
"I had a really close friend who I had known for about ten years, since childhood. We spoke every day over text, giving each other constant life updates and discussing all kinds of topics. We also spent time together in person at least once a week. Then one day... he just ghosted me with no explanation."
"He left my messages on read and then eventually blocked me. Didn't take any calls. I ran into him in public and greeted him and he hid from me in a bathroom. When he got out, he told me that he was 'kinda busy' and couldn't talk, then power walked to his car with a really stressed out look on his face while I begged him for any kind of communication and just drove away. That was the last time I ever saw or heard from him."
"I still don't know why he did it. He genuinely f**ked up my ability to trust people even six years after it happened. It's hard because I have a lot of fond memories of hanging out with him and sharing a lot of really personal stuff, but the memories are tainted by the way our friendship ended. Now I think that everyone is going to ghost me."
"A couple of times I've tried to contact him through meme pages he runs on Facebook but he never acknowledges me at all."
- theycallmethespork
Sloppy
"I asked someone for a smoke once and he pointed to my stomach and said... Nah, you shouldn't if you're pregnant. Yeah, I was not pregnant, just a sloppy, fat 20-year-old. Who is no longer fat or a smoker, thankfully."
- BoldAndBrash1310
season 2 smoke GIF by BBCGiphy
After Isolation
"Due to health, personal issues and just being in a bad relationship situation I had to move cities. When I got to the new place I tried calling my friends to catch up and they all ghosted me. I figured out a few years later when one of my friends eventually decided to reply that they had made up a whole lot of lies about me and spread them amongst themselves. So basically they just decided to hate me for no reason."
"When I did try to ask what it was I did wrong none of them had a solid or truthful reason and one of them had the nerve to say some horrible things to me that were just not true or justified at all. After 2 years of self-isolation I made real friends and realized the a**holes I used to call my buddies, we're in fact people I wouldn't choose to hang out with if they paid me."
- The-Prospector
Not You
"Oh man… so before I was bartending I also worked in alcohol retail supervising a liquor department. There was this cute redhead who would come in a couple of days a week after she got off work and would literally spend thirty minutes or more talking to me every time. Tons of questions about life in general, shared a bunch of her personal problems, etc. If I was on lunch, I’d always eat my lunch on the bench outside in the shade, and she would even come to sit by me there (literally asking people inside where I was) and talk up a storm."
"After a few months, I figured, what the hell, ask her out. She literally laughed, and said, 'Oh, (more laughing again) Nooooo, not you, no, no way.'"
"The kicker? She kept coming in for about another year trying to chat me up. I was literally the most confused I’d ever been in my life."
- DucksBans
Mr. Glasses
"At a festival, saw two girls hyping each other. Then they said, 'We are doing it tonight.' They turned to me and then turned to each other which looked like they were contemplating then they seemed to agree. Then they turned to me again smiling and started talking to me. Seeing this whole interaction, two dudes just jumped into the whole conversation and started talking to the girls. All was happening too fast and one of the girls said 'You are out Mr. Glasses' and they all walked away. I didn't even start the conversation, but damn, that hurt."
- subtorn
Not You
"I applied for a job, the interview went really well, and I was told to ring in two days for the results. I rang and gave my name and explained why I was calling. His reaction was, and I quote: 'Hahaha, it ain't you,' Then he hung up."
- floydie1962
Happy Eddie Murphy GIF by LaffGiphy
I Do... NOT!
"Going out with my school girlfriend for 4 years. She left for 1 year, came back and we got back together. things were going great. and then I asked her what she thought about us being more than just boyfriend/girlfriend, we were 22 at the time. she laughed, looked at me straight in the eyes, and pierced my heart with a dagger saying 'You thought I would marry you?' while continuing laughing."
"I couldn't live near the thought of her anymore, moved to Paris, and then moved 2000 miles away across the Atlantic."
- i_would_have
"Oh!"
"Wrote poetry to a girl in the grade above me. When I finally admitted it was me who was writing them, all she said was 'Oh.' I was so crushed I stopped."
"Two decades later I found out from someone that the 'Oh' wasn’t disinterest. It was that she knew it was me and didn’t realize I thought I’d kept her in the dark. She’d actually loved getting my little letters in her locker and would read them to the other girls who’d all be jealous. If I’d known she knew I would’ve never stopped."
- tangcameo
At the Festival
"Dated a girl for one month. She started saying and showing she really was into me. Two days later when she went to a festival she fell in love with a new guy and just said: 'Sorry, I met someone else at the festival. It was nice with you. Wish you all the best.'"
- RwX90
Dance Dancing GIF by Red BullGiphy
How can so many people just eschew their humanity so brazenly?
I mean how hard is it to simply state, "I'm just not into you anymore?"
Or "Sorry, you're just not right for the position."
No fuss, no muss.
A lot of these folks sound like being cruel is a fun pastime.
Which of course means that every recipient on this list did, in fact, dodge a bullet.
Oh well, onward and upward.
