How To Handle Rejection: By Getting Even

I know a lot of people are struggling these days with the whole concept of rejection. An invitation to grab a coffee with a cute member of the opposite sex is rudely declined, and you’re left feeling all alone in the world with nobody to console you. An offer to dance is declined because they’re “too tired”; and yet suddenly have a mysterious burst of energy when the next potential suitor comes along straight after. You send an SMS or leave a voicemail, and your so-called “friend” never gets back to you. Some days it’s just one rejection after another.

Rejection stings because it reminds you just how much you hate yourself. Someone else affirms the negative beliefs about yourself that you’ve got stashed away deep down in your unconscious, and suddenly you’re flooded with all the feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy that you’ve been avoiding ever since your earliest childhood experiences when you just weren’t good enough to make the grade.

But hang on a minute… who are they to put you in touch with such repressed inner pain by discarding your generous offer like that? You don’t deserve it. You’ve spent a lifetime avoiding that pain, and you’re certainly not about to go delving into it now. What’s all this “taking responsibility for your own feelings” bullshit anyway?

Fuck that.

So here’s how to really handle rejection; by getting even:

Step 1: Take It Personally

Now you may think that you’ve already mastered this step, but don’t be too quick to gloss over it. Remember, rejection isn’t about them. It’s not about their personal preferences, the mental state of their damaged psyche, their irrational moods, their foolish inability to see how great you are, or the other fifteen things that they had already booked at lunchtime on Friday.

It’s about you.

Rejection is all about you not being good enough. Inadequate and unacceptable the way you are. So suck it down and really take the rejection personally. Developing a truly paranoid state of delusional narcissistic thinking is necessary in order to generate the intense feelings of self-righteous outrage that you’re going to need to motivate you to carry out the remaining steps. They will liberate you from the pain of this particular rejection, so that you can move on to the next one life has to offer.

Step 2: Get Angry

Hurt and sadness have their place; but really, who wants to feel disempowering emotions like those?

Yuck. Talk about a victim mentality. Screw sadness and pain: get angry instead. That jerk who should have known better turned down your kind offer and that’s just plain wrong. So get as angry as you can. Beats the hell out of feeling sad. Anger gets your adrenaline pumping and prepares you to stand up for yourself. Once you’re full of rage at the appalling injustice that has been handed out to you through no fault of your own, you’re ready to really get even.

Step 3: Firebomb Their Letterbox

This juvenile prank isn’t just the providence of junior high-school boys with too much testosterone flooding their adolescent brain for the first time. It’s also a legitimate remedy available to adult you.

If you really want to go hard core on this, you’ll need some copper tubing, a small drill, gunpowder, matches, some explosives fuse, and a bench-mounted vice. I’m not going to go into all the details since I don’t want you to blow your fingers off, but suffice to say that any teenage boy can probably fill you in on them. Just check that the one you ask has all his fingers intact before following their advice.

But to be honest, that’s not really necessary. A bunch of off-the-shelf firecrackers will do the job quite adequately. All you really need to do is turn up when nobody else is around, preferably sometime between when the postman delivers the mail and when the object of your affection turns up to clear the letter box. Light your incendiary device(s) with the matches, offload it/them into said letterbox and make a run for it.

Christmas is the ideal time of year for this, as charred Christmas cards will make a nice keepsake to remind your victim not to be so hasty in rejecting you next time. But you don’t have to wait until Christmas to get this off your chest; a destroyed electricity bill can be equally effective in teaching them a lesson which will be hammered home nicely when the utility company comes along and cuts their power for non-payment of its indecipherable smoking remains.

I recommend you only do this on free-standing letterboxes, and only on days when there isn’t a total fire ban. You don’t want to end up burning a building down and ending up in prison for arson, as that will make the next step much more difficult.

Step 4: Start Stalking

Now we’ve all heard that “No means No!”, and that’s fair enough. But some people have become so jaded that rejection has become their habitual first response to any good thing that comes into their life… like you. In cases like these, don’t take “no” for an answer! If you just keep giving up at the first sign of difficulty, you’ll get nowhere in life. Life rewards persistence.

Some people just don’t know what’s good for them. In order to endow them with your healing presence, you may have to get past an initial “no” long enough to turn it into a “yes”. If they are particularly stubborn about maintaining their flawed belief that their life is better without you in it, then you really have no alternative than to prove them wrong by becoming a stalker.

When they appear to get angry at all the loving attention that you’re lavishing on them, just remind yourself that they’ll be thanking you when they finally learn to accept love from other people into their cold, dark heart. Most particularly from you. Be prepared for the long haul though as it could take quite some time, and several prison sentences on your part, before they come around to see everything that you have to offer.

Becoming a stalker is relatively easy. Obviously the first step is tracking down their home address, but that’s a sinch these days, what with Internet search and all. I’m not going to go into all the details lest my first girlfriend from high school decides she wants her come-uppance, but suffice to say that you’re more than smart enough to work it out. Which is why you’re such an asset to them in the first place, right? That and your great sense of humour, which I’m sure they’ll appreciate when you disable their home security system and turn up unannounced in their bedroom at midnight, just to spend some quality time together.

Step 5: Let It Go

After a few year of educating your victim on the benefits of your company, eventually it will be time to move on. By this time you will have caused them way more pain and annoyance than they ever caused you, meaning that the overall karmic flow between you and the universe is headed in the right direction.

It’s normal to feel a little sad at this point; this is a time for letting go. Dismantle the shrine that you have built in your bedroom towards the person in order to make space for someone else in your heart. You’re now ready to move on. Rejection is still about you, so it’s relatively easy to transfer your hurt feelings onto the next person who fails to engage with you.

Repeat as often as necessary until you decide it’s time to deal with those hurts within yourself so that you can stop taking rejection so personally. There… don’t you feel so much better now?

Note: Nothing in this post should be misconstrued as using or advocating violence.