Sunday Scribblings: Second chances.

It's rejection that fuels my own fire. Yesterday, I got my first rejection notice in the mail for a series of poems I submitted back in December. I knew I would not be accepted to this publication; I was shooting too high, I think, with this set of poems. But I needed to get myself motivated and get it out again--to submit as I had done a decade before. So much of my career has left me stagnant, forgetting who I had once been, forgetting what I found most important to me. Before I was rejected, though, I had already sent those poems out again, knowing the letter would come soon, knowing it was OK to move on.

I remember my first real pang at rejection in a relationship. He broke up with me on the phone, halfway across the country, saying we were too young to do this to ourselves. I was so angry with him, so angry that he cited his mother in our breaking up, and that was when I first submitted to magazines. A short story, something about a swimmer at a meet, was accepted in a nothing anthology, but to me, then, it was something, and I was light footed all day. What a thrill, to have something in the wide world.

I think about second chances and I think about how K and I have always warned the other: if you cheat, this is over. I know we mean it when we say it, an edge to our voices, a lack of tolerance when it comes to this mistake. This is something I would not do to him, something I respect him too much for, something that would devestate me. I worry sometimes, though, but I know that I can ultimately trust him, which is the only way we can maintain any kind of relationship. He is my light, my beacon.

I told my students we will have been together eight years this summer. They are shocked and ask, "Have you ever broken up?" The truth is: no, we haven't. I know some folks who have broken up and have gotten back together, generally with disasterous results. There are a lucky few who can make it through some of those hardships, but it seems more often then not, the relationship is strained.

Do I believe in second chances? Yes. But I hope it's never something I have to truly mull over.