A blog by Elena Overfield | Formerly Pepetoe

I think I’ve spent a lot of my life wanting to be chosen. Chosen by friends, by boys, chosen for things. Wanting to be invited, included… simply wanted. For a long time, being chosen felt like evidence, in the way that my brain would go “see? I’m ok. Someone wants me.” On the flip side therefore, this means rejection inevitably became evidence of the opposite.

I think this started much earlier than relationships

When I think about being younger, I remember being the shy one. My siblings seemed to make friends effortlessly. At holiday camps, they’d disappear off and somehow acquire an entire friendship group while I’d be wondering how soon we could go home. When my twin sister and I changed schools, she adapted; I felt left behind. She seemed to become the version of herself that fitted the environment while I became increasingly conscious that I didn’t.

Maybe somewhere along the way I learnt that other people are naturally chosen, whereas I have to “earn it”. Maybe that’s why being wanted has always felt so “intoxicating”, because every invitation, friendship and relationship temporarility contradicts that belief. Look. Somebody chose you.

The problem with letting other people prove your worth is that they can also take it away

If somebody loving me means I’m lovable… What happens when they stop? If somebody wanting me means I’m desirable… What happens when they don’t? If being included means I belong… What happens when I’m left out? That’s an unbelievably fragile system for self-esteem, because my entire opinion of myself becomes dependent on somebody else’s behaviour. And other people’s behaviour is fundamentally outside my control.

Rejection isn’t an objective assessment of me

I’m trying to understand this in a way I don’t think I ever have before. Someone can reject me for a thousand reasons: compatibility, timing, their own shit, different needs, different priorities, different personalities.

Sometimes because I’ve behaved badly, and sometimes because they simply don’t particularly like me. Now that I think about it, maybe that last one is strangely freeing.

The thing is, I don’t particularly like everybody either. There are perfectly lovely people who I don’t want to be friends with. There are attractive people I’m not attracted to. There are good people I don’t click with. I don’t walk away from those interactions thinking: “That person has failed the universal test of human worth.” I think instead, “Maybe that’s not for me.” Maybe sometimes that’s all somebody else’s rejection of me means too.

“That person has failed the universal test of human worth.”I think:

I want to stop auditioning

I don’t want to walk into rooms wondering how I can make everyone like me. I don’t want relationships where I’m constantly performing the version of myself I think will be easiest to keep. I don’t want to treat affection like something I have to continuously earn. I want someone choosing me to feel wonderful. Of course I do.

But, and this is the crux here, I don’t want it to feel like evidence that I’m finally enough. Well, I’ve learnt that I was enough five minutes before they arrived, and I’ll still be enough if they eventually leave. Being chosen is lovely, but it doesn’t create my value. And rejection cannot remove something it never gave me in the first place.

ut it doesn’t create my value.