It doesn’t get any easier. “Unfortunately, we regret to inform you”. Every rejection of this scale, every failure of this type, I feel again like in school or at university: my whole being gets shoved into a spiral of self-doubt where the impostor that I am, that I have always been, is unmasked. It becomes one of those races against ticking bombs and time where I am scrambling for something that puts my mask back on as soon as possible. Because the “Unfortunately, we regret to inform you” doesn’t stay in my inbox, it will have to be communicated. Everyone will know. Everyone will see. Everyone will look at me, and doubt: wasn’t she supposed to be great? She is not. I am not. I shouldn’t have told them, that I was aiming high. I shouldn’t have aimed that high. Swirling in that spiral of self-commiseration and doubt, here it comes, that familiar statement that has crept into my head since I was probably 14 and discovered I wasn’t that good...
You can be every little thing you want nobody to know. Maledizione.