why rejection hits like a truck

hey, it's tiff.

you sent the text at 9:40 this morning. by lunch there was no reply, and by three you had rebuilt your entire understanding of the friendship from the ground up. you reread what you wrote six times. you found the word that ruined it. your chest was actually tight, over a message, and some part of you stood off to the side asking, why are you like this.

so let me translate what's actually happening.

for a lot of brains like ours, rejection isn't a thought. it's a physical event. real or imagined, tiny or huge, it lands in the body first: the drop in the stomach, the heat in the face, the sudden certainty that you are too much and about to be left. there's a name people in our community use for it, rejection sensitive dysphoria, and whatever the researchers eventually settle on, the experience is not rare and it is not drama. the pain is real pain. you are not weak for feeling a text in your rib cage.

but here's the thing about it. it's a smoke alarm, and it was installed too sensitive. it goes off the same for burnt toast as it would for a real fire. that doesn't mean ignore every alarm. it means the alarm is not information about the size of the fire. an unanswered text at 3pm is almost always toast.

i won't hand you five tricks for this. i'll leave you one question for the next time the alarm is screaming: "what do i actually know right now." usually the honest answer is "they haven't replied yet." that's all you know. the rest is the alarm, and you're allowed to wait for more information before you evacuate the friendship.

🖤 tiff