I was a born cheerleader. I practiced my splits for the entire month of March, 1991 in anticipation of try-outs. For the three prior years, I attended every basketball game, watching my sister jump and shout and my brother make countless three pointers. The team let me stand with them during smaller events.
When I did not make the squad, because of a blip in my character as noted by Mr. Madison, my Proverbs teacher, I never attended another game. I even cut ties with the girls that I had been close to. They wore the thigh high green and white knit skirts that should have been mine.
This rejection ricocheted into other areas in my life. The minute I believed that my Field Hockey couch benched me without an explanation, I assumed she disliked me and I quickly switched to Cross Country. When I received an "F" on my first college English paper, I changed my major to education, wriggling towards anything less painful. (eventually I switched back, but always feared that I was a fraud)
In my recent attempts to recover my artistic dreams, I applied to a Masters program for writing. The anticipation was answered in my dreams, where I relived my Cheerleading rejection, now titled "MFA try-outs."
In the first scene, I am sitting in my Creative Writing class and received a wooden ticket with a green circle seal in the center, which I somehow knew meant I was accepted into the Writing program. I cried in the dream and texted my husband. I could feel my lungs expand and lift me like a balloon for sheer relief that the weight of deciding on a path had been lifted.
My waking came with the memory of the second dream, where I received a huge package from the same institution, with some knowledge that they rejected me. I could not find it written in the sheets of text that were stapled in a thick stack, but there were comments on my writing sample, lots of scribbles on my application and an elaborate light blue children’s book, all shouting to me the word, “NO.” Just next to me was my best friend and writing coach. I asked if she had gotten in and she said “yes.” In that moment, I loved her for her success and hated my own rejection at the same time.
I want to react differently when the real notice arrives. I know that regardless of the message inside, I will continue to write. Why, because I know what it means have a voice. I am my own panel of judges deciding that I get to be an artist. I have to write and so in this moment, I sit outside the Marco I-Net Café and Boutique listening to a techno beat doing just that.
