I hold another letter in my hand.
Scanning it again, now-familiar words jump out at me. Cold, remote, impersonal.
The usual suspects.
They’re words I’ve become accustomed to glance over a page for.
Words that send a chill down my back, and haunt subsequent days.
Unwelcome apparitions.
I know that words have power. Delivering delight, or generating joy.
I know that words have power. Hijacking happiness, or destroying dreams.
There’s no way to dress it up.
It’s a Sisyphean exercise.
When it’s spelled out that “we wish you the best of luck for the future,” the enchantment is broken.
There’s a sudden extinguishing of possibility, and then, the slow evaporation of hope.
These letters aren’t the exception. They’re the rule.
They contain the cruelest of words. Those that plant doubt, despair and disillusionment. A heartless harvest, after careful consideration and hours of exhaustion.
Futile, and fruitless.
“Sorry” is said to be the hardest word. Yet it’s always generously peppered across the page.
Sorry is superior only to silence.
And so the carousel carries on.
Write. Revise. Repeat.
Reject.
How can I go on doing this? To watch hope limp on, throw itself on yet another try. Only for hope to die again, on a black and white bonfire of vanity.
I sit, brooding, unaware of my manager’s entrance into the office room I’ve slipped off into. She glances at the desk, then fixed me with a stare. Her words make me jump.
“Have you not sent those rejection letters yet? We haven’t got all day.”
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