Rejection of a Father

Rejection knows no boundaries. Rejection doesn’t care if you cut yourself, drink bleach, turpentine, alcohol or take drugs to soothe your pain. Rejection could care less if you are poor or rich or what ethnicity or religion you are. It lures you to fill the hole in your heart in ways you never dreamed. It convinces you you are the problem. It tempts you to fix the mess in all the wrong ways. Rejection doesn’t see what side of the tracks you live on because it’s running over you as you pick up speed with your personal despair. The fragmented glass shards distort your true reflection while the deceit of the rejection stings your wound and convinces you that you are the only one going through this. No one will understand. It will twist your mind to believe that if you cut yourself, punch yourself, drug yourself, whore yourself, somehow you will splice back the broken pieces of your shattered life with your blood, bruises and tears. Somehow this will make you feel better. You may for a moment or twice, maybe three times, but then you cry anyway. After you scream and bleed out your rejected fragments of loss and lies of disregard, your heart aches for the truth of your story to matter. You want to die, but not really because you long for someone to know you are real and to know you simply hurt. Rejection knows no boundaries. Only pain.

The cry of a girls rejection, especially by her father, looks around her farmhouse apartment for something to throw. Something to break. She stands with her back stiff against the old plaster wall and pounds her fists backwards, screaming groans inside her long strands of strawberry hair now sopping up the tears streaming down her face.

In the middle of her despair, she remembers she is a thin wall away from the apartment on the other side. Her pity party pauses for a moment as she realizes she’s not alone. She doesn’t want her neighbor to hear her pain. But he probably already did. “Shit what if he thinks I’m insane? Well, who cares, I feel insane right now.” So she sobs more … only this time quietly with no release.

I wanted to punch a hole in the wall to replace the one in my heart. But in the middle of my fit I grew conscious that I was renting so I thought I couldn’t damage anything because I’d have to pay for repairs. Seriously? God I hate it when that happens. It only fueled my frustration more because now I felt trapped farther inside of me. After slapping the wall I wanted to punch something. Anything! So I clawed and gripped my arms with my nails, then pummeled my thighs numerous times while I sobbed. I didn’t care how much it hurt … because it hurt.

After I finished punching myself, my body became tense and arms robotic, my fingers stretched taught in the air because I didn’t know what else to claw.

My father rejected me most my life. My last attempt for repair was Father’s Day weekend (link). I called him one more time to remind him I was moving and getting married to who would be his future son-in-law. With the all too familiar cold set jaw he said, “Have a nice life.” I never saw or spoke with him again. After two-years of marriage my husband divorced me. I wasn’t sure anymore what a nice life should look like.

One rainy night as I drove down a back road on route 302 in Newtown, Connecticut, tears streamed down my face when I came to a bend with a big tree. Rather than turn into the driveway of my farmhouse apartment, I entertained if it would be easier to drive off the road into the dark rain. Would anybody really care? I thought if I was gone the problem would be solved. No more trouble for anyone. Like at a dress rehearsal, I relaxed into the mental check-out zone to see what it would take. Well…thank God the dress rehearsal didn’t work, that I didn’t slip or make a  mistake. No do overs. I turned the steering wheel and stayed on the road. Deep down I didn’t want to execute the plan, I just didn’t know what else to do and how to find relief from the hole in my heart.

Rejected by my dad, estranged from my mom, separated from my brother and now a divorce statistic, I felt like a discarded failure. I wanted to be released from my grief. From me. 

I don’t know about you, but in the middle of distraught, it is the worst time to make a life altering decision. I have found that the enemy dangles bait when I am at my lowest place of existence. He convinces me that my worth has no value, I am damaged goods, fat and ugly, everything is my fault, the divorce, the abuse, the rejection were because of me. Infertility was even my fault. The voice mocks I am stupid and I don’t matter as he convinces me that whatever this is will never change, I will never change, and for sure no one will want me.

And then while his drool drizzles on my broken pile he whispers as his comforting lies echo, “and you know Tammy Sue, no one in the world could possibly understand your pain like you do.”

But the punch, the cut, the drug, the food, the shopping, the obsessive cleaning, the chaotic mess and filth, the obsessive order of your life, or the empty intimacy won’t fill the hole in your aching heart. Something deep in you knows that something doesn’t make sense in your life.  In the middle of the pain, you innately know something is a lie so you cry out seeking answers to make sense of what was done to you. 

When you are in the rawness of your pain, it is okay to cry, because you will. It’s way normal. There are many losses to grieve. But I urge you to believe that you are not the sum of the rejection poured on you. You have worth and value beyond how you feel today. Keep seeking the light of truth.

You may not have been able to choose the outcome of the rejection, but you can choose how the outcome defines who you are.

Do not believe the lies of the enemy … especially on your worst day. That’s when he dangles tantalizing bait. Resist from letting your darkest day of despair convince you that your abuser, the neglect, the rejection is who you are. 

In the dark, thieves break into houses, but by day they shut themselves in; they want nothing to do with the light. link

You are a valuable human being who is uniquely designed for a purpose that only you can fulfill. We need you because no one but you can shine your light from within. Don’t let the thievery voices rob you of your light.

Your light is more powerful than your darkest day!

The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness has not overcome it. link