Over the summer I had an extensive and cathartic clear out of my bedroom. In addition to the bags of total and inexplicable shit that went straight into the bin, I filled two of those large, blue Ikea bags with clothes and lugged them over to my nearest Marie Curie charity shop. I walk past this shop often and in the weeks following my donation I took the time to carefully study the window display, certain that I would see my wares on the mannequins, said wares being exponentially cooler than the offerings of the Islington Blue Rinse Brigade. I stopped every time I went to the gym, peered over from across the road when I went to Tesco and had a gander on my way to my therapist's - but nothing. The mannequins continue to be dressed in the two-tone taffeta and linen trousers that epitomise charity shop couture. My trendy cast-offs are nowhere to be seen and when the Islington branch of Marie Curie Cancer Care is repulsed by your sartorial choices, you start to ask yourself some questions.
Rejection. It is something with which we all come into contact, constantly, and our first experiences date back to our arrival in this world, for what could be more dejecting than expulsion from your mother's wombs? Rejection is inherent to maturation, from the first time you hear the words, "I don't want to play with you", to the first time you are dumped and the first time you are turned down for a role in a school play, a job or a loan. Rejection is everywhere, and being pretty or privileged does not make you immune - one need only look to Cheryl dropping her Cole, after Cole so publicly dropped her, for proof. Yet the ubiquitous nature of rejection does not negate the pain it causes; being dumped for the third time hurts little less than the first, although you are at least safe in the knowledge that you will "survive" it, to steal a term from psychodynamic psychology. In other words: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
For transplant patients, however, rejection provides a much more tangible threat. The spectre of rejection haunts you as soon as you open your eyes in the recovery room, even if a smiling surgeon is on hand to assure you the new kidney he has just sewn into your abdomen is going great guns. My kidney rejected five years ago and I am still reeling from the effects. It is no comfort that the rejection of a transplanted organ is paradoxical: your body rejects the very object that was introduced in order to to save it...organ failure is riddled with such wry inconsistencies. It makes you want to laugh, or cry - I can't decide which. Any excitement I feel at the prospect of a receiving a new kidney - sometime way, way in the future - is tainted by the anxiety that it is only a matter of time before it inevitably rejects. In the past when I have been driven by desperation and/or my menstrual hormones to pray, I have always specified a working kidney, though these days even a week's respite from dialysis would be welcome. I suspect, apropos of nothing but my own particular brand of pop psychology, that the only way to manage rejection is not to let it dictate your actions. Be brave, basically, although it is easier said than done. I wish I didn't let my expectation of success define my behaviour, but no-one wants to be the last kid picked for the team, so it feels safer not to go to try-outs at all. Perhaps it comes down to your own definition of what constitutes rejection: maybe we are not so much rejected by those around us as emancipated, freed, finally, to pursue the goals that will ultimately leave us more successful and fulfilled than we could have previously imagined. It takes courage, strength and energy to risk rejection, three components that seem in short supply these days, especially here in London where the lights are powered by human cynicism; but I would rather experience rejection, in all its humiliating glory, than live in the shadow of its nemesis, regret. A little rejection can be a good thing - I'll remember that when I go home tonight and tune in to The X Factor. One day I might even donate some more crap to charity.
Rejection. It is something with which we all come into contact, constantly, and our first experiences date back to our arrival in this world, for what could be more dejecting than expulsion from your mother's wombs? Rejection is inherent to maturation, from the first time you hear the words, "I don't want to play with you", to the first time you are dumped and the first time you are turned down for a role in a school play, a job or a loan. Rejection is everywhere, and being pretty or privileged does not make you immune - one need only look to Cheryl dropping her Cole, after Cole so publicly dropped her, for proof. Yet the ubiquitous nature of rejection does not negate the pain it causes; being dumped for the third time hurts little less than the first, although you are at least safe in the knowledge that you will "survive" it, to steal a term from psychodynamic psychology. In other words: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
For transplant patients, however, rejection provides a much more tangible threat. The spectre of rejection haunts you as soon as you open your eyes in the recovery room, even if a smiling surgeon is on hand to assure you the new kidney he has just sewn into your abdomen is going great guns. My kidney rejected five years ago and I am still reeling from the effects. It is no comfort that the rejection of a transplanted organ is paradoxical: your body rejects the very object that was introduced in order to to save it...organ failure is riddled with such wry inconsistencies. It makes you want to laugh, or cry - I can't decide which. Any excitement I feel at the prospect of a receiving a new kidney - sometime way, way in the future - is tainted by the anxiety that it is only a matter of time before it inevitably rejects. In the past when I have been driven by desperation and/or my menstrual hormones to pray, I have always specified a working kidney, though these days even a week's respite from dialysis would be welcome. I suspect, apropos of nothing but my own particular brand of pop psychology, that the only way to manage rejection is not to let it dictate your actions. Be brave, basically, although it is easier said than done. I wish I didn't let my expectation of success define my behaviour, but no-one wants to be the last kid picked for the team, so it feels safer not to go to try-outs at all. Perhaps it comes down to your own definition of what constitutes rejection: maybe we are not so much rejected by those around us as emancipated, freed, finally, to pursue the goals that will ultimately leave us more successful and fulfilled than we could have previously imagined. It takes courage, strength and energy to risk rejection, three components that seem in short supply these days, especially here in London where the lights are powered by human cynicism; but I would rather experience rejection, in all its humiliating glory, than live in the shadow of its nemesis, regret. A little rejection can be a good thing - I'll remember that when I go home tonight and tune in to The X Factor. One day I might even donate some more crap to charity.
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