The One Who All Rejected

There was a girl who lived in a village who everyone in life rejected. She always wore a frown and never had kind, or cruel things to say of others, but only had things to say of herself. ‘She’s a cold and callous girl. She’s not really friends with anybody,’ the townsfolk said of her, and the townsfolk broadly were right.

“I’m not that bad, I don’t think,” frowned the girl to herself, for she had nobody to talk to. “Maybe I am cold and maybe I’m callous, but I’ve never done anyone harm. If they reject me for being cold and callous, that is fair... but there must be somebody who won’t mind, and will love me regardless.”

The girl hunted through the town for such a person as would love her for herself, as much as she loved her for herself. She entered choirs and worked without pay, for grocers, for farmers, for anyone she found, but each grew disconsolate around her frowning face and tiresome talk, always of herself, and each quietly said they’d no need of her services.

“I’m not that bad. I’m truly not,” she said to herself in her room. “I did the work earnestly, but that does not matter when you frown and talk callously of only yourself. I see, these are the things I love to do, and plainly they are hated. There still could be somebody who perhaps doesn’t mind. Maybe that one could love me.”

The girl hunted further and found a boy who she thought perhaps could love her, even with her frown and selfish talk. He was a marvellous young man who exuded joy like a glorious sun, who everyone loved, and who always knew what to say to make another smile and laugh—even the girl, who tittered simply watching from afar.

“It’s that one. He’s so bright it balances my gloom. It has to be him.” So she reached out to the boy. “I am a dark woman, but you make me light. Please, can’t we be perfect together?”

“Hold on,” he said. “I don’t want to balance darkness, I want to shine perfectly brighter and brighter. I know which ones I love, the ones I wish to unite with. They are the ones even brighter than me.”

“I see,” she said. “If that’s what you want, then it is fair to reject me... oh, it makes so much sense, too.” She returned to her house.

“I think I am that bad,” she muttered to herself. “I didn’t harass him. I respected his wish. But I should not be such a dark person to begin with, that is the problem with me. I love myself too much to change; oh woe. Woe woe woe, I’m doomed to have only myself...”

She was correct. For every person she reached out to, none could appreciate her, for she was a dark and dingy person, who adored to speak of only herself. She not once cared what another was feeling if it did not accord with her immediate thoughts. She pleaded for every conversation to shift as swiftly as possible onto only things that interested her: nobody enjoyed it.

“I am that bad, and I’m rejected by everyone,” she announced miserably. “Now I suppose I will die.”

She did not. She lived for many years in agony, alone with herself despite all the people she met through the daily motions of life. She began to plead for Death to visit, for she hadn’t the will to pursue him herself.

“That is the one thing of which I am thankful: that I despise myself so much as to court death, but adore myself too much to chase him. Ah, I’ve gone insane. Ah, oh well, so it is.”

She saw in every motion reason for why she ought die. ‘Because I ignored that beggar on the corner,’ ‘because I donate little but a pittance to charity,’ ‘because I smiled at not anyone today to bring them cheer,’ ‘because I have not cleaned the dishes quickly enough.’ She then adored wooing death, and summoned to her doorstep the Tax Collector.

“Wow—you’re juicier than a witch, and all you’ve done is curse yourself.”

“You are Death, and you’ve come to take me,” she said. “Finally. I do deserve it.”

“Yeah yeah. Well no. All you’ve done is curse yourself, all these years, that’s the extent. Here’s the thing. That’s one casualty, and it’s a suicide. I don’t think you’re really that bad.”

“What do you mean? I’ve brought no joy to anyone.”

“You’re juicier than a witch—but I won’t be taking you. There’s others out there I think serve me better. You’re not getting away with shoving a guilt complex on me, for taking a person who did nothing to anyone, except hate themselves.”

“I see. Even you—even you are rejecting me.”

“Of course. I’ll be an ‘everyone’ who rejects you as well. For the first time I’m according with a popular consensus—wow, thank you actually.”

And the woman wailed and balled her fists in her hair. Her face scrunched up like an ogre’s.

“Thank you? For being this, ‘thank you’!? What am I meant to do!?” she cried. “All I had was death, and now I don’t even have that—you want me to live, but how do I live!? I haven’t a clue!”

“You know, you should speak with a Bishop. He might reject you, but they’re adorable. You might love them even more than yourself.”

“A Bishop! Curses, I don’t need that...” but her words fell to silence as the Tax Collector turned away. And with nothing to live for and nothing to die for, that woman stood still in the room.

Every night the Tax Collector prayed for that woman’s future. She one day decided to leave the room and delighted all people as a fabulous painter, whose conflicted heart steeped her works with passion and complexity. Praise be to Czjeir and to his Bound Familiar, through whom mercy is shown to the wretches.