Help Me!

by Marianne Power

  But now this fear wasn’t saving my life, it was stopping me from living it. It was time to change that.

  On Friday 9th May I went out with my youngest sister Helen and her friend Jim for drinks at the Queen’s Head in Islington. I texted Sarah to see if she wanted to come but she replied that her boiler had broken and she was waiting for an engineer to come and look at it. There were no kisses at the end of her message and I had the queasy feeling that she was annoyed with me for not picking up her three last calls.

  So far Helen had been keeping her distance from the whole self-help extravaganza. She’s more of a ‘just get on with it’ kind of person. Go figure.

  Jim, on the other hand, was enthusiastic. ‘You should ask them if you can play one of their instruments,’ he said, pointing to the jazz band who were playing plinky-plonky music in the corner.

  ‘Nah, they’d never let me,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the whole point,’ said Jim.

  ‘Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting that.’

  So when the music stopped, I walked up to the floppy-haired bassist.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Hello,’ he replied, not quite looking me in the eye.

  ‘I was just wondering . . . um . . . I’ve never played the double bass and always wondered what it would feel like. I know it’s a random request, but could I have a go?’

  I was just about to start saying, ‘Don’t worry if you don’t want a stranger playing your very beautiful and probably extortionately expensive instrument . . .’ but before I could even get that out, he shrugged. ‘Sure, if you want.’

  Oh! Just like that! He passed over the silky wooden instrument and I wrapped myself behind its curves. It was taller than me but lighter than I expected. I plucked the thick strings and felt the sound vibrate with a thrill.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Mr Double Bass.

  ‘I love it!’ I said. ‘Is it heavy to carry around?’

  ‘More awkward than heavy but you get used to it. The Underground can be tricky.’

  ‘I really love it!’ I said, plucking again.

  ‘Good!’ he said. He smiled this time. ‘Do you play anything?’

  ‘No, I got to Grade One piano and Mum made me give it up because I sounded so bad.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m not very musical. I mean, I love listening to music, but I can’t play. I only came up because of a challenge I’m doing.’

  I told him about Rejection Therapy; his eyes widened.

  ‘Try being a musician,’ he said. ‘You get used to rejection . . .’

  And then he started telling me about how tough the music business was, and how he would be better off following his other dream, which was to open a coffee van.

  ‘I’d buy coffee off you,’ I promised.

  ‘Would you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, of course.’

  His face lit up and I went back to the table.

  ‘So you didn’t get rejected, then?’ said Jim.

  ‘No, he was really nice!’

  And while I wanted to take some time to celebrate my brave break from social norms – Jim was staying on task.

  ‘Your next challenge is to ask the barmaid if you can pull your own pint,’ he said.

  I looked at the bar. The woman behind it was all eyeliner and aggressive cleavage and I figured she would definitely say ‘no’. I didn’t want to put her in that position of power but I went up anyway . . .

  The music had started up again and the pub was noisy, so there was a bit of confusion when I started my spiel. ‘I’ve never pulled a pint before and I’d really like to know what it feels like . . .’ I said.

  ‘You want pint?’ she demanded, frowning. She was not English and the language gap wasn’t helping.

  ‘Yes, but I’d like to pull it myself.’

  ‘You want pint? Beck’s? Foster’s?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ I now made gestures of me pulling the pint.

  She frowned and her angry-eyeliner’d eyes got angrier.

  I kept doing more pulling motions and pointing at the beer taps and then at me.

  Then she seemed to get it because, before I knew it, she’d opened the heavy wooden flap built into the bar and was motioning for me to come to her side. I ran around and was excited to discover that the bar staff was on a raised level – I had gone up in the world! Angry eyeliner lady grabbed my hand, put it under hers on one of the pumps and suddenly I was pulling! Pulling my own pint! Yay!

  ‘Like this?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes! Thank you!’

  We both grinned at each other. She wasn’t angry eyeliner lady, she was fun, sweet lady!

  ‘Did you see that? She let me pull the pint!’ I said as I sat back down, giddy with excitement.

  Jim high-fived me and then pointed to a group of women in the corner of the bar.

  ‘Now your mission is to ask to sit down and join them,’ he said.

  So I did it. I walked up to the three women who were deep in conversation and stood at the end of the table until they looked up at me. I gave them my best smile and said, ‘My friends are boring me, do you mind if I join you for a while?’

  ‘Yeah, sure! We were just talking about what it’s like having sex the first time after you’ve had a baby,’ said a woman with a magnificent cleavage.

  Two of them were new mums and this was their first night out. They’d been celebrating with prosecco and had just ordered sticky toffee pudding.

  And so I ate dessert with my new friends and learned, in graphic detail, what happens to a vagina after giving birth.

  ‘They were lovely!’ I said to Jim back at our table. ‘Isn’t it so stupid that we don’t all talk to each other all the time? Why don’t we? Why do we all stay in our little groups talking the same old crap to our friends?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Not everyone is as confident as you, I guess.’

  ‘I’m not confident.’

  ‘You are more confident than you think you are.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I would never do the things you’re doing.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s because you’re sorted – you’ve got the wife, the house, the kids – you don’t need to do all this stuff. You’re happy.’

  He looked at me, then knocked back the rest of his pint. His blue eyes were bloodshot and glassy, his shoulders slumped.

  ‘I get up every day and know exactly what’s going to happen – you wake up every day and anything could happen. Make the most of that.’

  Helen walked back from the loo. We gathered our things and headed out into the mellow night. It was getting warmer. Summer was on its way. The lights of expensive clothes shops were casting their glow onto the road. Couples walked home, cuddling in to each other and speaking softly. A gang of friends brushed past us, cheering and jeering.

  I still hadn’t been rejected, so when we passed a young man parking his motorbike, I spotted my opportunity. ‘I’ve never sat on a motorbike before . . .’ I said. ‘Would you mind if I sat on yours for a minute?’

  He grinned. ‘OK!’

  I swung my legs over the cushioned leather seat and sat down. It was surprisingly comfortable.

  ‘I like it!’ I said.

  He grinned again. ‘I just got it yesterday.’

  He talked about engine sizes and speeds; happy to be talking about his new baby. He told me he was seventeen.

  ‘What does your mum say about it?’ I asked.

  ‘I paid with my own money so she can’t do much about it,’ he said.

  ‘Will you take me for a quick spin?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t have a spare helmet.’

  ‘So you can’t?’

  ‘Nah, sorry.’

  Hurrah, rejection accomplished.

  Lessons learned?

  1) Rejection Therapy is easy when you’re drunk.

  2) People are lovely. It is our own fears that make us think they are not. I told myself the guys in the band were
stuck up and the woman behind the bar was scary. Neither was true.

  3) It’s much easier to stay safe in your pub (life) corner but the second you do something silly, like ask to join the band or pull a pint, life becomes more fun – it feels like an exciting game rather than an endurance sport.

  4) Embarrassment doesn’t kill you. It passes quite quickly, actually.

  5) I now loved Rejection Therapy.

  The next morning, I woke up, hungover, to a conversation going on in the neighbour’s garden. It was between the little boy, who was probably about four, and his dad.

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Yes, Nate.’

  ‘I LOVE YOU,’ said the childish voice.

  I smiled under my duvet.

  ‘I love you too . . .’ said his dad. ‘Do you want a hug?’

  The little boy seemed furious at the suggestion: ‘NO!’

  Rejection . . . it’s everywhere.

  I was back in the game.

  Monday 12th May, the sun was shining and all was well with the world. My night in the pub had changed how I felt about Rejection Therapy – and my whole project. I kept thinking about Jim and what he had said. For the first time I didn’t feel like a failure because I didn’t have what he – or all my friends – had. I didn’t have a husband, a house or savings, but I did have freedom and adventure. And I was going to make the most of it. For the first time since Feel the Fear, I felt proud of what I was doing. It wasn’t self-indulgent and narcissistic (well, not entirely) – it was brave and brilliant!

  I jumped out of bed and went for a walk around Hampstead Heath, wearing the leggings I’d slept in. On the way I smiled at everyone. I smiled at dogs and children. Old men and trees. I even smiled at stuck-up skinny women. The trees and the skinny women didn’t smile back but most of the others did. I was winning friends and influencing people!

  On the way back, I walked past a basketball court, where two teens were shooting hoops in hoodies and trainers. They looked like they should have been in school but I decided not to ask. Instead, I asked if I could join in.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ said one. They spent the next ten minutes coaching me, positioning my hands on the ball, telling me about angles and how to bend my knees. Their names were Steve and Leon.

  I told them about Rejection Therapy. They looked at me as if I was a crazy old lady who might well have slept in her leggings but they kept talking.

  ‘Try being a guy,’ said Leon. ‘You get rejected every day. You go up to a girl and you get blown out and then you have to walk the ten steps back to your mates . . .’

  ‘Does it bother you?’ I ask.

  ‘Nah,’ he mumbled, looking down at the floor.

  I told them that one of my challenges was to ask out a man.

  ‘There’s no way a guy would reject you,’ said Leon.

  I beamed.

  ‘Cos, you know, a guy’ll say “yes” even if he doesn’t like the girl, cos, like, why not? You might get some . . .’

  Charming.

  We kept talking. Me and two sixteen-year-olds swapping chat-up techniques.

  As I walked off the basketball court Leon shouted: ‘What are you going to do now? We didn’t reject you.’

  ‘Could you lend me a tenner?’ I asked.

  ‘Nice one,’ he smiled.

  ‘Is that a no?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a no.’

  ‘But what has any of this got to do with your real life? It’s not like you applied for jobs you wanted and got rejected –’

  ‘I pitched to other magazines,’ I lied. I hadn’t really pitched to other magazines. I was hardly doing any work at all.

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘They didn’t reply.’

  ‘Did you chase up?’

  I was on the phone to Sheila. I’d called her with news of my daring deeds, in the hope she would tell me how brilliant I was. It wasn’t happening.

  ‘I don’t really see what the big deal is about asking someone if you can play his instrument. You were in a pub. That’s the kind of thing you’d do anyway,’ she said.

  ‘No, it’s not – when have I ever done that?’

  ‘I just think you need to do things that affect your real life. If those two boys had said, No, you can’t play basketball with us – would it have ruined your week?’

  ‘No, but I would have felt embarrassed and the whole point is you get used to being uncomfortable with small rejections so then you feel stronger when it comes to the big ones.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s my whole point. When are you going to do the big ones? The only thing you did that involved real rejection was when you chatted up that man on the Tube and that was months ago.’

  I hung up feeling furious . . . Screw her! I’d like to see her jump out of planes and ask teenagers to play basketball . . . Why can’t anyone be more supportive? Why is everyone so critical? I need new friends, new family . . .

  I tried in vain to stay angry and avoid the fact that Sheila was, as usual, right – seeing straight through me like the light you hold a dodgy £50 note up to.

  Jason says that we should start with small rejections before ‘graduating to more emotionally and socially meaningful rejections’, but I hadn’t faced meaningful rejection by friends, nor had I faced rejection from the opposite sex and I had definitely not pushed the rejection stuff enough with work.

  As a freelance writer I should have been constantly sending ideas to different publications but I didn’t. I had colleagues who had done great things not because they were better than me but because they knocked on doors and hustled. I didn’t do that because I didn’t want to get rejected. And I didn’t want to get rejected because I would take that as a confirmation of all the insecurities I had in my head – that I was a rubbish writer, that I had been lucky to get even this far, that I would never work again.

  That’s the thing with rejection – it can hurt more than the event justifies because it confirms all our worst thoughts about ourselves. But rejection isn’t always a sign that we’re not worthy. There are dozens of famous rejection stories: Harry Potter got knocked back by twelve publishers. Almost every record label turned down the Beatles; Walt Disney was fired because he lacked imagination – the list goes on . . .

  And so I pitched ideas to editors at the Telegraph, Grazia and the Irish Independent.

  The first reply was to the point: ‘This has been done before.’ It didn’t feel liberating to get that rejection – it felt rubbish – but then I got two more replies. One was another ‘no’ but came with the message: ‘Please do send more ideas, I always enjoy your articles and I’d love to commission you.’ She always enjoyed my articles! She’d love to commission me! She knew who I was!

  Then came the third email, which was in response to my most daring suggestion – that I write a regular column about the tiny habits that can make us happier. ‘Send me a few examples,’ said the editor. Yay! I potentially had a column! An actual newspaper column!

  In my last week of Rejection Therapy, I was given my Big Moment. A make-or-break, do-or-die opportunity.

  I was writing in a coffee shop in Soho when a good-looking man walked in. When I say good-looking, he was my current version of good-looking – scruffy, beardy and intellectual-looking.

  And it wasn’t the first time I’d seen him.

  He’d been at the same coffee shop a couple of months earlier, the only other time I’d been there. He looked clever and serious and I imagined him writing a brilliant book or a screenplay. I had been so smitten I’d told Rachel about him when I got home.

  ‘You should have said hello,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I said sarcastically. I would never in a million years do that.

  Now he was back. I was doing Rejection Therapy. It was a sign.

  A sign that I should completely and utterly panic and freeze.

  Even though I knew rejection was the name of the game, and that crashing and b
urning would be a success, I stayed stuck to my seat.

  First there was the practical challenge of the act itself – chatting up a stranger. How would I do it? Just go up to him and say, ‘Hello’? And then what? He says ‘hello’ back and there’s deathly silence and I walk away?

  People in American sitcoms could handle those situations, I couldn’t.

  Then there was the emotional challenge of being rejected by a member of the opposite sex, which I found devastating. Even though I knew that his lack of interest in me would not change my life, it would feel like a blow, the kind of blow that could get me on a self-doubt spiral for weeks.

  And so I just sat there stirring my coffee and staring at him.

  At one point my staring must have become obvious because he looked up from his laptop and smiled. I panicked and looked away. A guy I liked smiled at me and I blanked him. I was so bad at this stuff!

  After another half an hour he smiled again, and this time I smiled back. I felt my cheeks burn. It’s such a tiny thing – this smiling business – but it felt like I was wearing a t-shirt that said ‘I’m single and lonely, please like me! Do you like me? I bet you don’t like me. Of course you don’t like me . . .’

  I went back to studying my Facebook feed.

  Then disaster struck. A friend joined him. After a few minutes the friend turned around to look at me. This was so embarrassing. They must have been talking about the weirdo that was staring all afternoon. I fixed my gaze on my laptop.

  I looked at the time – it was 6.10pm. Jason Comely says that when it comes to Rejection Therapy we must live by the three-second rule, an approach strategy conceived by pick-up artists, which says that when you see someone you like you must approach them within three seconds. Any longer and fear starts to creep in. ‘Remove time, and you remove fear,’ says Jason. I had not removed time. I had been in the coffee shop for four and a half hours – no, I’m not exaggerating – FOUR and a half hours, nursing cold coffees and trying to get the courage to talk to a man.