The Rejection Game

Do you remember middle school gym class and how horrifying it was when two of the super athletic cool kids were chosen as team captains and the rest of the class lined up waiting to be picked?

This, as you can well imagine, never ended well for me.  I was neither popular, or athletic.  What I was, was short...very short.  I was once compared to a wind-up toy.

For this reason I never much cared for gym, and never took it past those dreaded middle school years (in my high school the marching band counted as PE credit...told you I wasn't popular).

I like to think that those middle school gym classes were the beginning of my fear of rejection.  And lets face it, no one really likes being rejected.  We strive to fit it, to be part of a crowd, to be accepted by those around us.  It's the reason why people dress, and act, and talk, the way they do.  And lets not pretend like you don't do it too.  Everyone wants acceptance.

I'm not saying its a bad thing to want to be accepted.  I'm saying that it sucks to be rejected.

The adoption process, at least in my personal experience, is a study in rejection.  You spend months getting paperwork together; with background checks, and fingerprints (multiple times which, come on, is stupid), and social work visits, and interviews.  Your friends and family write letters of recommendation.  You create a self-absorbed (on purpose) scrapbook all about how fantastically awesome you are.  And FINALLY you submit everything to the agency and you wait...

and wait...

and wait...

And while each adoption journey, domestic or international, has it's own particular struggles, the wait is universal. And it doesn't matter if you wait 4 months for a birth mother to choose you in a domestic situation, or 36 months to get your match from China, the waiting (while it lasts), seems endless.

In my particular case the wait (9 months and counting) is interrupted with these intense moments of hope.  When I match the criteria a birth mother is looking for, and my profile is shown.  Let me assure you that the wait, during those moments, is worse then endless.  And when the hope dies, I'm still waiting, the short, unpopular kid in gym class, standing on the sidelines while everyone else plays.

It sucks...a lot.

And it's happened five times. 

And I really don't want it to happen a 6th.

A girl can only be rejected so many times before she starts to think...maybe it's her.

(also, gym teachers, I really hope you don't let the cool kids pick teams anymore...just sayin)