Rejection feels like a punch in the stomach to me.
Every time. It never gets easier. It hurts like hell every time, no matter how often it has happened to me, no matter how prepared I might be for it. Even when I know it’s going to hit — like I did yesterday evening — the punch in the stomach is still extremely painful. And then, afterwards, when I’m idle, a clenching in my chest — like the anxiety in a burgeoning panic attack, I think.
The body keeps the score.
How old, how deep is this trauma of rejection within me, in my body?
There are some relational needs that keep going unmet for me. Some include physical touch and sexual connection within “friends with benefits” contexts. And the ongoing lack of getting those specific needs met, along with the fact that my external/bodily alignment with my inner gender-identity was something that I got so late in life and the current, extremely hostile political and social situation for trans/nonbinary/gender-nonconforming people, makes me particularly vulnerable when the rejection comes in that area of life/relationships.
Such a rejection came for me last night and it really, really hurts.
The Little Prince and the Fox 