You know that song, I Want You to Want Me by Cheap Trick? Sure you do.
The chorus goes:
I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I'd love you to love me
I'm begging you to beg me
I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I'd love you to love me
If there was ever a song that was the anthem of my life - it would be this one. My desire to be wanted and needed has been a catalyst for so many decisions in my life. I'm a chronic people pleaser but also with a twinge of rebellion.
What I mean is, while I've always wanted to be wanted, I want to be wanted for exactly who I am. I grew up over compensating for my insecurities with confidence. If my parents gave me nothing else, they gave me a very clear understanding of just how awesome I was. I learned quickly that pretending to be confident got you a lot farther in life than admitting just how scared you were.
I told you all in an episode on The Drawn Podcast about my miserable fail of an audition for the Hobbit when I was about 13. As embarrassing as that was in the moment when I got home and hung out with our neighbors, I had no problem confidently proclaiming that “even if I got the part I wouldn’t want it because the drive was too long.”
I rejected them before they rejected me.
The same is true in relationships. Whether it was friend-zoning every crush I ever had or letting friendships fade before they ditched me for a new BFF - I hid hurt behind the lie that it was my choice.
This pattern of my life continued all the way through college and after when really for the first time I ever, I was beaten to the punch in several incidences back to back.
Incident #1: I didn't make it into the department's theater program.
Have you ever been told you're not very good at the thing you love doing? Some of us learn that lesson early. We finger painted portraits for our parents fridges and then eventually mom and dad stopped display them or we found them in the trash one day. I guess our masterpieces weren’t quite the works of art we thought they were so we moved on.
Theater for me was something that even though I was never the lead, I always got a part. That’s community theater for you. Even if it's the chorus and you’re in the back, you still get the thrill of the performance and the opportunity to improve. You never get flat out rejected. And because I’d moved around so much in my life, I almost always left before I could be passed up for a role I really wanted and thought I’d put in enough time to earn.
So imagine my shock when in college at the end of my sophomore year after two years of working behind the scenes on numerous plays and musicals, I didn’t pass my Sophomore Hearing to get into the department’s upper level classes.
What stings even more? I’d already done the rejecting and yet was still rejected anyway.
See there are two paths in theater - performance and production. I went to college with the intention of coming out a Broadway star. But after two years of auditioning and not landing any roles (not even in the chorus), I rejected my dream before it could reject me any more and switched to being a production major. I could organize a prop shelf and move furniture on stage as well as anyone. And eventually I thought I could stage manage which I thought I'd be pretty good at so Plan B should be easy.
But it wasn’t. I prepped for three month creating an entire book on a play as if I was to direct it. I researched themes, costumes, created prop lists and cast lists, I designed the set and picked the music and created light sheets. Everything I was told to do and when I presented it to the board, I walked out feeling confident.
That’s why the rejection hurt so badly I think. Because I’d been rejected for Plan B which in my mind was easier and less prestigious than Plan A. So the thought that kept swirling in my mind as I cried in the McDonald’s parking lot was “If I wasn’t even good enough for Plan B then what makes me think I would ever be good enough for Plan A?”
However, Plan C ended up being God’s plan for me all along and now looking back, I’m so so grateful that I found broadcasting because it has been the absolute most perfect thing for me. There are so many similarities between theater and broadcasting with one common difference: There was no pass/fail test to become an upperclassman. Cha-ching!
Incident #2: I got passed up for reporting opportunities a lot during college.
There was still a major similarity though that I got caught up in. Broadcasting also had production and performance. They weren’t different college majors but at sporting events there were always folks who ran the cameras and folks who held the microphones. More than anything I wanted to hold the microphone, but instead I stayed behind the scenes.
“It’s better to earn my opportunity than get it handed to me,” I told myself.
“I’ll earn the crews respect if I work my way up.”
“I’m not flirting, kissing ass, or sleeping with anyone to get my chance on air so at least there’s that.”
“My time will come, I just have to be patient.”
And while all of these things were true, deep down in my heart I knew I was trying to temper that feeling of rejection every time someone else was crewed to be the sideline reporter.
Eventually, I got my shot at being on air, but it was never a consistent opportunity. And obviously, you know now that it’s actually what I get to do for a living. It all worked out. But not before those months and years and dozens of incidences of rejection made me doubt that any sort of accomplishment or opportunity was deserved. Instead, I constantly felt like REJECTION had been from people who were HONEST and saw the TRUTH about me. Those who offered me opportunities must have been TRICKED into thinking I had what it takes and I was one wrong move from being discovered as a FRAUD. An untalented, not as smart as she acts, FRAUD.
So I worked my ass off harder than I ever have before to keep this secret hidden from everyone. I studied for days before tests. I worked for hours on my video projects. I volunteered for every game and was willing to work any position to earn my spot. But it never landed me a regular reporter gig. Eight out of ten times I stayed behind the scenes. But when I did get my shot to sideline report or turn a story for the sports network, I poured everything I could into it.
And over the next four years as I finished undergrad and then grad school, I started to believe in my own strength and abilities again. I was smart. I was talented. I was everything that confident 10 year old me thought I was. I could get any job I wanted after college- so long as I didn’t shoot too high or dream too big that is.
Which is how I found myself applying to be a web producer at a local station. The job paid next to nothing. It didn’t require a masters degree which I had. It wasn’t an on air position, but I told myself that I’d work up to that just like I had every time before. I came with a dozen recommendations not only from professors but from friends who worked at that TV station and put in a good word for me. I was overqualified for the job and I knew it, which meant that there’s no way it could reject me.
I was wrong.
Incident #3: The job I thought I was an over-qualified shoe-in for hired someone else.
Once again, I’d denied myself going after Plan A which was to be an on-air reporter and settled for Plan B in production so that I wouldn’t have to face being rejected from my dream. And once again Plan B said no, you’re not good enough for me either.
That final rejection came to me in an email the day before I graduated. I wore all my academic accolades over my regalia including the gold medallion I’d earned with my 3.81 GPA as I crossed the platform. I’d been dreaming of this moment for so long and it was finally here, but I was empty. It didn’t help that my mom had been in the hospital the night before and we’d gotten maybe two hours of sleep before showing up just in time for the ceremony. Or that it started to rain right after the final diploma was passed out so everyone scattered and no one was around to bask in our accomplishments one more time. I went home that day with my sick mom and a bad headache feeling like everything I’d worked for the past 6 years in school meant absolutely nothing anymore.
I had no job. No prospects. And now, nowhere to be on Monday.
It was the second major turning point in my life, but this time there was no more school to go back to and try again. I was on my own in the real world and the real world had rejected me before I even stepped foot in it. It knew what I’d forgotten over the last four years. I was a FRAUD and a FAKE and a NOBODY.
I stopped applying for on air jobs after that. If I wasn’t even good enough to be a web producer, there was no way I was ready to be a reporter. Instead, I went for producer positions. Not because producing is necessarily easy, there’s still a lot of responsibility on a producer’s shoulder and it takes a lot of talent to be a good one. But you also don’t have to look a certain way to be a producer. Being on air talent is such a subjective thing- you have to look, dress, talk and act a certain way and when things go wrong it’s your face the audience sees so there’s comfort in being behind the scenes where you can make yourself invisible and just come in, do the job, then leave.
That’s what led me to my first TV job in Illinois. A tiny market in a tiny town. The perfect place to disappear. This is what I deserved. A graveyard shift as a morning producer in a town where no one knew who I was. Any opportunity better than this would have been built on a lie that I must have told someone in the interview process.
So I came in, did my job and left. But always in the back of my mind there was this desire to be on TV. I saw the reporters and anchors and wanted more than anything to be out there with them. You know you want something bad enough when you see someone standing in the middle of downpour with water past their ankles yelling into a microphone over the wind, and you think, “Man I wish I was out there do that.”
So with real TV experience on my resume now, I began to put myself out there for reporter jobs. This time I applied only to places where I had friends and family. I was done living alone. And one day a producer called me and said that he didn’t have an on air job for me, but he had a morning producer spot and it was mine if I wanted it. I could also create a segment for the show that I could front in the studio so that I’d be both a reporter and a producer.
It was an unbelievable win-win opportunity. And I took it. Only to again feel that shadow of doubt when it was time to launch my reporter segment and I worried that as soon as I started to speak, my boss was going to realize he’d made a big mistake and ban me from ever appearing on air again. Gone would be my dream before I’d even had a chance to do it full time.
The agony and distress I felt in the weeks leading up to my debut were some of the most troubled, anxiety ridden days of my life. I remember crying for hours the Sunday before my segment launched because I could just feel it all coming crashing down before I’d even started. I’d broken my number one rule, my most tried and true habit- reject them before they reject you. And now I was about to put myself out there in front of 40-thousand viewers who would reject me as soon as I appeared.
Every day I made sure to perfectly style my hair, my wardrobe so that nothing was out of place and would give people a reason to hate me. And as I began to get more comfortable with this new role over the next several months, I was reminded of something important. I LOVED THIS. It was like getting to perform on stage every day, but every day it was a different show and you had different lines. Everyday was a new opportunity to make people laugh or cry and I relished in it. I liked being a producer, but I LOVED being a reporter. I wanted to do this forever and as far as was being told to me by my peers, I was actually really good at it too. Finally, I’d found something I loved and was good at too. It may have taken a long time to get here, but I’d finally made it and now I wanted to do it all the time.
I just needed my boss to give me a chance. And why wouldn’t he? Hadn’t I already proven what I could do? Hadn’t I already earned my chops by being a producer for two years?
Incident #4: My boss said no.
That’s not how the conversation went though. Instead of saying that yes, he’d love to give me a reporter job as soon as one became available, he said that we were too big of a market for first time reporters and that if I really wanted to do that I’d have to start my career over again at a smaller market with less pay and earn my way up again.
I’d set myself up for rejection and rejection is what I got. Instead of tricking professors and classmates into thinking I was smart, I was now tricking my colleagues into thinking I was talented. But this guy, my boss, saw right through my lies and knew before anyone else did that I wasn’t cut out for a job on TV, that I was better suited to staying behind the camera.
And I walked away from that lunch feeling more dejected, deflated and depressed than I’d ever felt before. It was the first time I pictured myself running my car off the side of the road.
Trauma is different for everyone. Trauma can be both big and small. And for some people no matter how small the trauma may seem to other people, it can still have a HUGE impact on your life.
Through a lot of therapy, I’ve come to realize that all of these rejections I just shared with you have been part of my trauma. It’s been hard to admit that over the years because to feel traumatized by rejection seems trivial and pathetic.
Trauma is fighting in a warzone. It’s being raped or assaulted. It’s being abandoned by a parent or bullied for being fat.
A boy telling me he didn’t like me or not getting a job I wanted shouldn’t be traumatic. I needed to stop whining, stop complaining, get over myself and move on. There were people out there with REAL problems so I need to stop feeling sorry for myself because someone told me no.
And I think that’s why I really wanted to drive my car off a cliff. Life was hard and if I couldn’t handle these rejection curveballs that were being thrown at me, then what possibility did I have of surviving anything worse? It would be better for everyone if I rejected life before it had time to reject me.
Now almost three years later, I am that reporter that my boss told me I’d never be. When an on air job opened up at my station, he asked me why I hadn’t applied. When I told him it was because of what he’d said all those months ago, he looked at me like I had three heads. He said that’s never what he said or meant and that actually, he knew I was going places and by golly he wanted me on his team when I did.
I applied and was hired within a week. I had to start in a bureau meaning I’d have to move again, give up my church, leave the convenience of living next door to friends, but I did all of that because I wanted something so badly it hurt to just think about never getting it.
It was only after I got the job that the scars of every rejection I’d ever received were opened up again in a whole new way.
Every day as a reporter is any opportunity to be rejected, to fail in a very public way. Your story pitch can be rejected in the morning meeting. Your interview request can be rejected and never rescheduled. Your appearance can be rejected by a stranger in a basement who has nothing better than to tell you you look too fat or too skinny. Your colleagues can reject you because you screwed up royally during a live shot. Your community can reject you because they think you’re a liberal media spy paid to deliver fake news to unsuspecting people.
Over the last three years, I’ve had to get really comfortable with rejection. And you know how they say practice makes perfect? Well in this case, practice does make it easier. I have a whole folder of negative emails sent to me or to the station that I keep for laughs. I don’t lose sleep over unanswered phone calls or emails. When stories fall through for the day, I spend my time planning stories for the next week. And now after three years of doing this, I’m pretty confident in my skills and ability. I’m good at my job. It took a long time to get here, but I’m finally doing something I love AND am good at too.
However… I can’t stay here forever. I’m growing too big for the pot I’m in. I know I need to be replanted, I need a new challenge to keep sharpening my talent, to keep me hungry and not complacent. But I’m scared. I’m genuinely scared of rejection again because of what it almost cost me. I’m at the point in my career where I should be applying for new jobs, higher markets, bigger roles… but I’m comfortable here and I’m afraid that to dream big is to fail. That feeling that maybe I’m just deceiving everyone in my current job and that an outsider will see right through my bullshit is a very real fear of mine. I could probably be the poster child for imposter syndrome.
But here’s the thing- I’m not the same person I was back in college getting rejected by the theater department. I’ve been rejected so many times since then that I have built up scars of resilience and tenacity. It doesn’t always make rejection painless, but the pain is way easier to recover from and it doesn’t have a say in my identity anymore.
When the time is right, I’ll put myself out there again. Maybe I’ll be rejected. Maybe I won’t. But you know what I will be? I’ll be okay. Because if I can survive every rejection, hurtful word, passive aggressive attack, and backstabbing rumor up until this point? I’ll survive the next one too. And in the process of facing my fears of rejection and failure, I’ll become stronger and more capable of being the woman I was always meant to be. Trauma has no hold on me.
Rejection changed my direction not my destination.
I'm exactly where I should be right now. How I got here was a journey that I didn't set out to take and there were plenty of road blocks and detours, but ultimately I ended up at the destination I was always meant to have. Every rejection was a left turn when I thought I was supposed to go straight, but I made it. I'm here.
And you're here too.
Whatever your "here" is, you're meant to be there. Maybe you're in a season of confusion and rejection and the destination seems impossibly far away. Or maybe you realize that you have accomplished what you set out to do and you can look back at your journey and see all the twists and turns that brought you here.
Life is journey where instead of miles trodden, you count the lessons learned. And for me, rejection has been one of the hardest, best lessons to learn. And honestly, to still be learning. I have to believe that everything happens for a reason. But as I've gotten older, I've realized that sometimes you have to decide those reasons for yourself.
You decide why you're here. You decide why you went through this rejection or that hurt. Maybe it's too raw to do that right now, but in time I think the reasons will come to you. We ask ourselves why a lot and sometimes we have to come up with the answers ourselves. It's how we make peace with our circumstances and begin to appreciate where life has taken us.
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