andrew61

Confessions of a Slacker
2009-04-21 00:00:00 (UTC)

Rejection and obsession and such…

Why do I take rejection so very seriously and obsess over it instead of simply moving on? That’s been a pattern of mine throughout my lifetime, and it still persists.

I think it’s due to my own insecurities.

I think it started back in my teenage years with Jim B. I had plenty of wonderful friends at the time but had to obsess over the one who no longer wanted to be my friend.

In my adult life, I could hook up with five guys in a row who were hot enough to be gay porn stars and who thought I was “cute” and lusted after me… only to obsess the following week over the one who turned me down, snidely telling me I had a “big stomach”.

And let that one get me down and make me feel so deflated and hopelessly undesirable that I wouldn’t even try to hook up with anyone else for a long time after that… Why?

And this week it happened again… on Twitter, of all places.

I looked at the people I was following and who were following me, and then looked at their lists of who else they were following and checked out some of those profiles, trying to find some new, interesting people to follow… which I did. I found a few local Chicago guys… gay guys… after all, one never knows where something might lead.

I found people who, for their profile pics, displayed their hot, hunky, muscular bodies for all to see, and in their tweets gave detailed accounts of their sexual escapades… and a number of these people, total strangers, followed me right back. Instantly.

But there was one guy I followed, cute but certainly not the hottest of the bunch… only to discover a couple of days later he had blocked me from following him.

And I obsessed. Why? Why? I wondered. It’s not like I’d harrassed him in any way… I hadn’t even sent him any messages at that point. All I did was click on the “Follow” button after checking out his profile and rendering him interesting enough to follow. On Twitter, people follow total strangers all the time. It’s done every day. What’s the big deal?

What did I ever do to him? I wondered. What was there about me that this guy found so unacceptable that he didn’t even want me reading his updates? Is this kid some kind of narcissistic, self-absorbed jerk or what? He thinks he’s all that… like he’s too good for the likes of me? All of a sudden I was agonizing over it, couldn’t get it out of my mind, and found anger and resentment welling up in me against someone I’d never even met. Why couldn’t I just let it go?

I made up my mind I wouldn’t. “He will be mine,” I decided.

I’d sent him an “@reply” asking him why he’d blocked me, but didn’t hear back. But I didn’t know how he had his account set up, and since he’d blocked me, I didn’t know if he ever even saw my message.

In the meantime, I’d found his blog on which he’d posted an e-mail address, so today I e-mailed him… nothing harrassing or unpleasant — I did restrain myself despite how I was feeling — just an assertive “Would you mind telling me why you blocked me on Twitter? Thanks in advance.”

Turns out it was just a mistake. He’d seen my follow on his iPhone (whatever that is), hadn’t read too closely, and had hastily blocked me, thinking I was some spammer or something.

So now I’m unblocked, I’m following this guy again and he’s even following me now, and everything’s cool.

But oh, the obsessing and head trips I went through in the meantime! And all for nothing. Will I ever learn?




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