RSD

It begins as a tide,
not a thought.

A deep sadness rises
without asking permission,
flooding my chest,
my throat,
my hands.

My right hand aches first—
a dull, insistent pain—
fingers tingling
as if longing itself
has nerves.

This is how rejection lives in me:
not as an idea,
but as an ache
for what has been denied.

A place I thought I had.
A yes I was quietly holding.
The comfort of being chosen
without having to earn it.

The feeling pulls the past forward.
Old doors swing open.
Old moments step back into the room.
Every time I was almost enough.
Every time I was left wondering
why it always seems to be me.

A familiar chorus starts to speak:

They don’t like you anymore.
You’re not good enough.
You ask for too much.
You are too much.
Too difficult.
Too needy.

The sadness thickens.
My body believes the story
before I can question it.

And when the rejection is real—
when the leaving actually happens—
I fall apart.

I wail from somewhere ancient.
Sobs tear through me,
messy, choking,
lungs scrambling for air.
My chest locks tight,
panic spirals,
breath turns sharp and fast.

I cannot imagine surviving this.
I want the world to open beneath me,
to swallow me whole,
because how does a body
go on living
after being abandoned?

This is not fragility.

This is RSD—
rejection sensitivity
etched into the nervous system.
Grief that arrives all at once.
Attachment screaming into absence.
A body that loves deeply
and feels loss
all the way to the bone.

And still,
my hand aches,
remembering every time
I reached out
and found nothing there.

—Frost ❄️