The expectation of rejection

The expectation of rejection

It was just a week before Christmas and Clair was sitting on the chair in from of her laptop in her dorm. Her eyes were full of tears, staring at her cell-phone that she hung up few minutes ago. Her lips still were pressed together like her mother’s often were. Just an hour ago, she was extremely happy because she received a mail form the guy named Jack who she had been dating the past few months. He told her he missed her a lot. Because of the distance and school stuff, they could not meet each other so often. Of course she couldn’t wait to call him she loved him and she was excited to plan how to meet during the coming holidays.
She called twice but nobody answered. She waited for a while, and tried to call again. At the same time, her phone rang. Yeah, it’s him. She couldn’t hide the simile on her face. She quickly picked up the phone and answered in a sweet and girlish voice.
“Hi, I miss you so much, where are you right now?” She said.
Jack took a deep breath and said to her, “ I am in my girlfriend’s house now.”
Clair was so surprised even though she tried to be calm.
With the shaking voice and said, “You never told me you have a girlfriend. And what about us?”
He ignored her questions and just screamed hysterically, “ Look, I have girlfriend. So, don’t call me anymore! Don’t call me!” The suddenly he hung up the phone.
At that moment, she couldn’t hold her tears back. Lots of questions flooded her mind but she couldn’t figure out the answers. She tried to pretend that she would be fine and everything would pass, like when her father passed away. She still made it through that difficult time when she was young. As she was thinking about how could she survive this, the phone rang again. It was Jack. She wondered what would happen now, but she hoped that he had changed his mind.
Still crying, Clair picked up the phone and answered “H-hello…”
Jack’s voice was so calm and serious this time. “ Clair, just listen to me! I don’t have enough time now. You kept calling and she went crazy. I had to say that in front of her. But I really want to be with you. Just don’t call me for a while. I will call you. Trust me, okay?” Then he quickly hung up the phone. She didn’t even have a chance to speak.
The tears couldn’t stop falling. Past memories flashed through her mind. Her heart was totally broken. However, she wasn’t so shocked by what happened. She was prone to expect hurt and rejection from the men she loved. At that moment, she almost flashed back to when she was 7 years old. Her mother found out her father went to the movies with another woman, his secret lover. Clair was with her mother at that time. Both of them were hiding in the corner of the theatre. She also could remember her mother’s lips pressed together in humiliation. She could not tell if her mother was extremely angry or sad.
Because of her father’s affair, her parents divorced when Clair was young. Even though her father loved her so much, he gave the custody of the children to her mother without notification and disappeared for a while. She felt betrayed by her loving father’s apparent disinterest, and she rejected all that he stood for because of it.
In this cold Christmas season, her sensitive heart was broken like a mirror again. She expected to be dealt with the way her father dealt with her by leaving in the end. She had mistrusted close relationships and assumed those men she loved would always reject her. The call from Jack proved that rejection was her destiny. Her tears were not only for Jack, but also for the repeated pain in her childhood and the never-ending longing for that withdrawn father figure. She could not recognize that some men are not like her father and how this mistrust feeling can draw her to the very rejection that she was trying so hard to avoid.
That night, Clair thought about it over and over with Jack’s voice repeating in her mind, telling her to wait and trust him. Secretly, she wanted to trust him again. Even though she knew it was ridiculous, she still convinced herself to believe him. The longing to return to her childhood gave her the hope so her father could have one more chance, that everything might be different in her life. However, Clair couldn’t admit that even if Jack called and dumped his girlfriend, nothing could bring her father back.