At the height of college application season, I was granted a wave of confidence in myself and was inspired to write an entry entitled, “Why Not Me?” It was all about how I was capable of it all and worthy of every aspiration I strived towards. Now that I have come down from that high and faced the ugly truth that is reality, I now have the answer to a different question, “Why wasn’t it me?”
This question is one that I have come face to face with on multiple occasions. After having multiple rejections and failures in the past few years I have spent countless days pondering why it wasn’t me. Why didn’t I win? Get what I thought I had always wanted? In all honesty, the answer that I have curated isn’t even a good one, but it is the most genuine and honest one.
I’ll never know.
It’s unsatisfying and makes my stomach twist and turn more than if I did know, but it is the only answer I can hold onto, especially with college applications. There is never going to be an honest and concrete answer as to why I was denied or why I lost or was rejected. The only real way to find peace in those failures is to be content with never actually knowing.
Now I can speculate and point to the “C” I got in AP Calculus BC or the spelling errors in my essays or whatever else I can zero in on, but none of that will give me closure. None of that is going to give me the satisfaction I so dearly desire and that is okay. Stressing about finding something that isn’t even there is much more uncomfortable and taxing on the mind than just learning to adjust to the discomfort of not knowing.
“Why wasn’t it me?” Who knows.