Surviving Concavity

I hate rejection.  It's painful.  When I come face to face with rejection it jars me to the core.  And if I'm not careful, I allow it to sink me into a deep depression -- but thankfully only for a day or so.  Then I climb back out after a long thought process, and put my life back in perspective.

A little fresh air and sunshine don't hurt none neither.

I'm told that sharing rejection that leads to depression helps, so, here goes.  I'm going to open my life up a little and share some of my most significant rejection moments that have lead to some of the worst depression moments in my life.  Hey, the good thing is that I'm still here to talk about them.

My first rejection was the worst.  I think we all experience this, don't we?  I fell in love in the Seventh Grade with a dazzling gorgeous fellow named Jen.  He was tall and beautiful, and he actually gave me some attention.  Maybe that's why I fell in love.  For the next two years I saw him hug and kiss a pretty young blonde, and every time I saw this, a dagar shot through my heart.  It would be the first of many to come.

In high school, my heart went out to a young boy by the name of Chris.  He was kind and gentle, and he was, at that time, going blind.  But I loved him nonetheless.  He was also the lead guitar in a band, and I spent many moments in the same garage with him and his fellow musicians.  Those were lovely moments.  A year later, he was the proud father of someone else's baby girl.

I left for Sacramento to start my life and, like a kid in a candy store, I fell in love a lot.  Life was grand!  But I ended up with a guy named John who, after three years, liked to use me as his personal punching bag.  After the third time, I felt I had had had enough; and, quite frightened, I escaped to San Francisco to save my life, with a new job, and new everything.  No ties.  No friends.  No connections.  Everything ripped away.

I went to work with the USPS and fell in love with a gorgeous fellow there by the name of Chuck.  We dated for about two years or so.  We broke up over differences, and, though I tried desperately for a year to win him back, the young woman from the mail room soon appeared after that, parading herself on his elbow.

Each of those heartbreaks was painful, especially when the aftermath of them was flaunted right before my eyes, and things were ripped from my life.  But I always pulled myself up and continued on.

During my time in the USPS, I was wrongly accused of dealing drugs by the Postal Inspection Service.  I knew the people that were dealing the drugs; I was just not one of them.  After the painful and arduous interrogations, I was able to clear my name but the gossip stories in that corporate world had already taken hold.  Reluctantly, I quit the Postal Service.

During those interrogations, I met my husband, Gabe, and we were married in 1986.  He owned a restaurant in San Francisco, and I went to work for him as a dancer and partner.  I lived the artist dream.  Ten years later, we were divorced because of his complaints that I had an inability to bear children.  I already knew from my past I could have them.  The hole that I was left in because of his reason for divorce was deep and dark, but I managed to crawl out of that one and get on with life.

I met my late partner, Hatem, during that bout of depression and with promises of fame and fortune, I latched on to his reigns.  And, having bought the restaurant lease before my divorce, for the next two years I rode on a new high in a new restaurant and with a new future.  Then, because of certain circumstances, the floor fell through, and I no longer had his support.  That relationship snowballed downward and took with it all the connections to my biological family.

In that snowball, I was handed a lawsuit from my landlord who was doing his best to break my lease.  I had put so much into my restaurant and now I was on the verge of loosing it.  After a year of depositions and discoveries, I prevailed but at a large monetary cost, physical anguish, and lost sleep.

Then, the two young girls, "S" and "G" (names changed to protect the guilty), who were involved with the restaurant at the time of my partner's cancer diagnosis, saw an opportunity and climbed aboard that snowball ride, pilfering all my assets and bank account.  In the interim, my partner passed away of a lung disease in 2008.  When I emerged from that roller coaster ride, I had nothing but the clothes on my back, six lawsuits, and a restaurant in badly need of repair, marketing, and business, and an empty heavy heart.

Four years later, while going through my books, the discovery of $2.8 million of stolen and embezzled monies spiraled in my brain as I found out that these two girls, whom I had trusted with my heart and soul, had otherwise spent all of my savings and earnings on everything but what they were supposed to have spent them on.  Because my partner was no longer around to state his case, all I was able to do was file a police report.  There are now two dance studios and a house in their names in the East Bay as a result of that crime.

After that significantly depressing chapter of my life, out of which I was still climbing, a fellow -- at my request -- by the name of Max stepped in to help me recover from the loss, and acted as partner and supporter.  A year later I discovered that he had double tipped all of my customers to the tune of around $5,000.

And then there was my Navy captain Marcus, a fellow I used to know in the Seventh Grade.  I met up with him and I thought he was it.  He promised me the world and for the next eight months I was on cloud nine.  Then nothing.  No word.  No letter.  No email.  After about five months of wondering I did a search on the Internet.  Yep.  There it was in the local newspaper.  Married about the same time he quit calling.

Depression paralyzes and obscures life.  It holds one back from making timely and wise decisions.  While I never in my life really had the support of my family, I never thought they would turn on me.  I never thought my close and trusting love relationships would betray me as deeply as they have.  I never thought I'd turn out to be a possible homeless person.

But here I am.

I have found out that family is the family you choose, not the family to which you are born.  And the family you do choose in life can also betray you, but that's a chance one needs to take.  I have found that no matter how depressing life can be that there is STILL life out there, and that all I need to do is to search and find it in the core of my soul.  I have found out that no matter how many betrayals I have encountered, I will continue to trust, for without the ability to trust, there is no life.  I just won't again trust the people who betrayed me.

I don't know why I leaned so hard against the very people who betrayed me.  I believe it is because I failed to see the greatness in myself, and so I turned to those who I thought knew all the answers.  Each time I was plummeted into oblivion, it was I who found the courage and the resources to climb back out.

Having survived these rejections and the accompanying bouts of depression has not been easy.  It would have been easier to give up.  To throw in the towel.  But in not giving up or giving in is evidence of how great I am or can be.

I'm working toward that goal, now -- to be greater than I have ever been in the past.  I'm in in command now.  I'm at the wheel.  And even though I still go through bouts of depression just thinking about what my life has been like and what I've been through and what I have lost, I know that I will be OK. 

There are still many many years to come, and many many things to accomplish, despite any rejection that may come my way again.  I still have my health (knock on wood.)

Like I said, I'm in command now.