‘Did you get much done today?’ asked the owner.
‘Yes,’ I lied.
‘You’re ready to pay?’
‘Not really,’ I said, with a smile. ‘Can I have it for free?’
He laughed.
I laughed back.
‘No, really, can I have it for free?’
He continued to laugh but I got the sense that he no longer found me funny.
I felt horrible but I persisted: ‘So I CAN’T have it for free?’
He gave me a sad, tired smile. He rubbed his bald head. He didn’t really understand what I was playing at but his expression suggested he’d like the game to be over.
‘It helps if you pay. We’re very quiet today . . .’ he said, looking out into the cafe.
We both gazed forlornly at the semi-deserted premises. There were three people hunched over their laptops with empty cups. One woman with a long purple cardigan was hugging up against the radiator. She didn’t have a laptop, just an old newspaper and a glass of tap water on her table. It looked like she’d been there all day without spending a penny. A young girl with orange hair and Doc Martens boots was reading Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, scribbling furiously into an A4 notebook. Then there was a twenty-something guy I’d seen there before – black t-shirt, black jeans and giant headphones on. He was shooting people from his computer.
The owner was too nice. This was no way to do business.
‘Why is it so quiet today? Do you think it’s the rain?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. There are so many new places opening, maybe they go to Costa across the road.’
‘People are stupid, this place is much nicer than Costa.’
‘Thank you. It’s hard to compete. When Costa comes into the neighbourhood, all our rents go up. Soon everything will be a Costa. A Costa or a Starbucks.’
We both stood in silence, contemplating this coffee-shop apocalypse.
‘How much do I owe you?’
‘£1.60, please.’
I put down £2.50 and left, feeling awful for having tried to deprive him of his livelihood. I had insulted him. Note to self: do not do Rejection Therapy in small businesses.
In the name of fairness, I went across the road to Costa and asked them for a free coffee.
‘I buy a lot of coffees here and just wondered if you did any of those cards, you know where you get the stamps and get a free coffee?’
‘No, we don’t do those,’ said the teenager behind the counter, perfectly pleasantly.
‘So could you just give me a free coffee?’ I asked.
‘No. We cannot give you free coffee. Would you like to buy a coffee?’ she said, again, perfectly calmly. Like she got this kind of request every day.
‘No, thanks!’ I said, with a smile.
I flounced out. Take that, Big Business! I’m fighting for the man! Or against the man?! I never really understood those phrases . . . But my point was made. Sort of.
After the incident I felt too ashamed to go back to that independent cafe. I spent the rest of the month writing in Costa.
The next day I popped into the phone shop.
I’d lost my charger and needed a new one. I picked one off the shelf and took it to the till where a spotty guy of about eighteen was waiting.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’d like to take this please –’ I handed over the charger.
He went to scan it in.
‘I don’t know what I do with them,’ I continued. ‘I’ve lost count of how many I’ve bought. I keep leaving them places.’
He kept looking at the till, with an expression that seemed to say, ‘Madam, I could not care where you leave them, why are you talking to me?’
‘Anyway,’ I ventured, ‘I’m a really good customer, is there any chance of a discount?’
This time he looked up from the till. He looked confused. He wasn’t expecting this. He paused for a second and looked around for his colleague, who was busy.
‘Er, unfortunately I’m not able to do that, madam.’
I grinned. ‘Are you sure? I’m a really, really good customer. My bills are crazy every month . . .’
He gave me a look which suggested that not only were my bills crazy, I may be crazy and he might have to call his manager soon. ‘Er, sorry, no.’
‘Not even £1 off?’
‘No.’ He looked alarmed. His big brown eyes darted from the till to his manager. Then I remembered that I didn’t need to keep this going – the whole point was that I got a rejection.
‘OK! Thanks. No worries!’ I said, still grinning, wildly.
He looked relieved. I handed over my card and tapped in my PIN number. He smiled, nervously. I smiled manically.
The end.
I felt bad that I’d put the guy in an awkward situation. That’s the thing with rejection: it’s painful for both sides.
With one rejection under my belt, I headed to a job – blissfully unaware of the rejection that lay ahead. Superdrug had relaunched various make-up products from the 1960s and I had been asked to compare the old-fashioned foundation sticks and pressed powders to today’s hi-tech serums and highlighters, with the help of a make-up artist.
I told her what I’d been doing so far that year.
‘You’re so brave!’ she said.
‘Oh well,’ I said modestly.
‘No really, I think you’re so brave! Tash, have you heard what she’s doing?’ She started chatting to the photographer’s assistant about my year of self-help.
So I told them all about it. The best bits – stand-up comedy and public speaking. The worst bits – jumping out of a plane and looking at my bank statements. They ate it all up and I ate up the fact that they were eating it up. All year I’d been waiting for people to recognize how brilliant I was but so far my friends and family had been spectacularly underwhelmed. Maybe it took strangers to see your profound and breathtaking bravery.
I gave them both a lecture about how important it was to get out of your comfort zone, how the minute you do something – anything – scary you feel stronger and how I no longer sweated the small stuff . . .
‘I mean, imagine what we’d go for if we weren’t scared of rejection!’ I was saying once I’d told them about this month’s challenge.
Then Tash started saying words that made me wish I’d never opened my stupid mouth.
‘Me and my friend are queueing up for X Factor auditions the week after next, you should join us!’
‘Oh well, um . . .’
‘Can you sing?’ asked Tash.
‘No.’
‘Perfect! You’d get rejected! The doors open on Saturday but the queues start on Friday night, so we’re going to meet at midnight and head there. Where do you live?’
‘Archway.’
‘I’m coming from Peckham but we can meet somewhere that works for all of us,’ she said.
What? No! Don’t make travel plans around me! I’m not going to do this!
I couldn’t audition for X Factor – I’d be an actual public laughing stock . . .
But just as strong as my feelings that I could not do this was my certainty that I had to. I mean, what were the chances of being offered such a perfect opportunity for brutal and public rejection in the very month I was supposed to be doing Rejection Therapy?
‘Is that a yes, then?’ asked Tash.
‘Um.’
‘Go on . . .’
‘OK.’
I went to the loo and put my head in my hands as my normal life went down the bend.
That night I drank a bottle and a half of red while Rachel calmed me down.
‘I’m going to be one of those acts that gets laughed at for being so deluded. I’ll be like a Ginger Jedward. But on my own.’
‘No, you won’t. There’ll be thousands of people there, you’ll end up singing for two minutes to some producer in a back room.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. You’ll never get on camera. They
only do that if you’re really bad or really good. So just be average bad and don’t wear anything stupid.’
Ten days to X Factor. Woke up with a hangover and googled ‘worst X Factor auditions’. Took two Night Nurse and slept all day.
Nine days to go – pure panic. What should I sing? ‘Manic Monday’? Was that too old? Or Tracey Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’? Wrote a text to Tash to cancel but didn’t send it.
Eight days to go – the only way to get through this was to pretend it was not happening. I would focus on other rejections, starting small: smiling at strangers on the Tube. I gave a middle-aged couple a half-hearted smile on the Northern Line. The woman gave me daggers before glaring at her husband: ‘Do you know that woman?’ she demanded.
Seven days to go – went out for a walk. Said ‘hello’ to three strangers on the street on the way to the Post Office. One older man smiled and said ‘hello’ back, which was nice but two women looked at me as if I was nuts. I felt like a freak. Seriously, what is wrong with us human beings that we don’t just say hello? Why are we all so suspicious of each other? And what damage was this doing? Studies have found that every time someone blanks us in public – even someone we don’t know – it makes us feel disconnected and this feeling of disconnection is linked to depression, high blood pressure and dementia. We’re all killing each other with our aloofness. Gandhi might have told us to be the change we want to see in the world but that was thankless work when you were saying hello to strangers in Archway.
Back home I went back to scrolling through songs in my head. What about the Cranberries? That singer had a voice that wasn’t too high.
Six days to go – I visited a friend and her eighteen-month-old daughter, who screamed, ‘No, no, no!!!!’ when I walked into the room. Maybe I’d sing Alanis Morissette’s ‘Ironic’.
Five days to go – I went to the Post Office with a plan to ask to skip the queue but I looked at all the old people waiting for their pensions, and mums trying to keep their kids in line, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Four days to go – spent the day near tears as I learned all the words to Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’. In the evening – OK, 4pm – I went to Tesco to buy a bottle of wine. The guy behind the counter asked me for ID to prove I was over eighteen. I was just about to tell him that it was the nicest thing to happen to me all week when he looked up and said: ‘Oh don’t worry, I didn’t look at you properly.’
Three days to go – did not sleep a wink. This did not feel like self-improvement. It felt like some sick joke. Kept reminding myself that Rachel was right. They would not be filming me. I would be one of a gazillion. I’d be in and out. Another silly experience to add to the list. The phone rang. It was Sarah.
‘You sound stressed,’ she said, sounding concerned.
‘I’m about to audition for X Factor, of course I’m stressed!’ Jesus – why didn’t anyone understand what I was doing here and the toll it was taking on me?
I could hear her take a breath.
‘Angel, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to do it.’
For a second I softened at her term of endearment – a term that always made me smile, always made me feel better – but then I pulled myself together. This was not the time to relax. I had to focus.
‘The whole point is to do things that make me uncomfortable. I can’t wimp out,’ I said, my voice brittle.
‘I thought the whole point was to be happier and it doesn’t seem like this is making you happier.’
‘Yes, it is!’ I snapped before hanging up and singing Adele while pacing my room.
Two days to go and I woke up with a now familiar slanging match in my head.
I can’t do this.
You have to do this.
I don’t want to.
Tough. Stop being such a fucking wimp.
I checked my phone and saw three missed calls from Mum. She was in Ireland for a wedding and it was unusual for her to call. As soon as she went away she treated her phone like it was radioactive – she couldn’t touch it or look at it for fear of coming home to a £3,000 bill.
‘Your uncle has died,’ she said, in tears when I got through.
My mother’s much-loved younger brother had left the family wedding early because he wasn’t feeling well. A few hours later he had a massive heart attack and died. He was just fifty-nine.
So the next day, instead of preparing to travel to Wembley to give Adele a run for her money, I flew to Ireland for the funeral. In that one phone call all of my stupid fears about singing for a stupid television show felt, well, stupid.
The church was so full there were people standing not only at the back of the building but outside it. We walked the coffin the four miles from the church to the cemetery, along an old coast road. There was silence except for the sound of black shoes, walking.
The wake was at the house. My cousins sat in the kitchen, pouring endless cups of tea and glasses of whiskey while they talked about their dad.
My uncle Gerald had been a farmer but his main occupation was smoker and tea-drinker. He was always at his kitchen table, cup in one hand, cigarette in the other, looking out of the window and listening to the radio. In between hours of daydreaming and silence, he’d make declarations about the modern music scene. Statements such as, ‘That Lady Gaga’s getting more like Madonna every day,’ were funny delivered in a thick Irish accent, even funnier when you took in the outfit of muddy Wellington boots, battered jeans and forty-year-old jumper.
My cousins talked about the day he drove through the fields on his tractor, shouting, ‘No, no, no . . .’. They were wondering what he was shouting at. Turns out he was singing the Amy Winehouse song: ‘They tried to make me go to rehab, I said “No, no, no . . .”’ Then there was his knack of acquiring cars with something wrong with them. One was a car that hooted every time he turned the steering wheel. We had fits of giggles imagining him on roundabouts effing and blinding as the horn went ‘beep, beep, beep.’
He was so loved that, long after his children left home, their friends would still call around to see him.
He’d listen to everyone and greet any problem with a cock of the head and a tut that seemed to say, ‘Sure, what can you do?’ It was a nod that put everything in its rightful place. In a world that was changing and moving he remained resolutely the same, a constant.
In the pub that night, I got talking to a second cousin who’d made his fortune in America.
‘This is what’s real – your family, your friends – none of the rest of it matters,’ he said, looking at the mourners.
I agreed.
‘Are you still doing the journalism?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, a bit but not so much.’ I told him about the selfhelp. ‘I was meant to be auditioning for X Factor now,’ I said. ‘As part of Rejection Therapy.’
He looked at me with concern.
‘Was your life so bad that you had to do all that?’ he asked, softly.
As soon as he said it I felt ashamed.
Of course my life wasn’t bad – by anyone’s definition it was good, beyond privileged. Standing at my uncle’s funeral, my whole year seemed absurd.
Gerald hardly ever left his kitchen and yet, somehow, he had touched hundreds of lives with his kindness and patience. He listened to people. He was there. Didn’t that make him more of a guru than any of the authors of the books I was inhaling? I should be more like him, not Rhonda Byrne. Just be a nice person. Do my best. Be grateful for what I had.
When I got home, I did no Rejection Therapy. I couldn’t face it. I was sick of self-help and sick of myself.
Sarah called but I didn’t pick up. I didn’t know what to say to anyone anymore.
5
Rejection Therapy, Take Two
‘From now on, think of comfort as the enemy of your personal progress.’
By the end of April normal service had resumed. I went back to spending my days working, sleeping and watching television. I was not being re
jected, not repeating affirmations and not looking at my Vision Board. I was also not waking up wondering if today was the day I should request a free room at Claridge’s, ask George Clooney on a date or try to be on the cover of Vogue. It was a relief.
‘So are you quitting self-help?’ asked Rachel. There was hope in her voice.
‘Dunno. I’m just taking a break. I’ll see,’ I said and continued to slowly dig my way back into the old rut until the second week of May, when I found a piece of paper tucked in my diary.
‘Comfort is highly overrated for individuals who want to progress in life . . .’ it read. ‘Your comfort zone may be more like a cage you can’t escape from than a safe place you can retreat to. From now on, think of comfort as the enemy of your personal progress . . .’
It was something I’d printed from Jason Comely’s website at the start of April. I surveyed my room, where I’d spent the weekend watching crap on telly – glasses of water everywhere, dirty jeans on the floor, half-empty coffee cups . . . my messy cage.
I kept reading: ‘The fear of rejection keeps us from breaking through to our true potential . . . it turns into regret and lack.’
This was true. Self-help might be self-indulgent and ridiculous, but how was opting out and slobbing out any better? I didn’t want a life full of regret and lack. I wanted to live to my potential, whatever that was.
Jason’s final words were a rallying cry: ‘Choose your master. Obey the fear and deal with feelings of regret for the rest of your life or choose rejection.’
I chose rejection. Again.
‘But if you hated it why don’t you just move on to another book?’ asked Rachel over breakfast.
‘The fact I hated it so much is a sign that it’s a big thing for me and I want to tackle it.’
‘Rejection is a big thing for everyone,’ said Rachel.
And of course it was. I’d learned that in Feel the Fear. We’re hard-wired to fear rejection because in our caveman days we needed to be accepted by the group to survive. Rejection in those days meant death and it still feels that way even if it’s just two girls who don’t want to play with you or a boss not emailing you back.
Help Me! Page 10