i might be choosing the wrong dreams

Letters to the Ether, S2E6: on rejections, being an outsider, and... being decisive?

Worried this is nonsensical, since it delves deep into, like, the context of my life (and Arab culture), and perhaps the timeline is incoherent to you, stranger. But… as I’ve said before—we’re thinking less, writing more. And I think… I think I had to write this.

April 16, 2025

Dear whomever,

Margaret Atwood once said, A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing, which is a beautiful way to rephrase an understanding I’ve already had my entire life. I knew failure was intertwined with writing ever since I first learned to spell my name, pencil heavy against the page, underside of my palm dirtied with lead: A-M-A-L.

Wanting to be a writer turned me into the perfectionist I am today, because as a child, brain fresh and ready to build neural pathways that would shape who I was to be for the rest of my life, there was nothing I cared for as much as I cared for writing, nothing I wanted other than to be a ✧✵༚ Bestselling Author⋆.ೃ࿔*: The perfectionism bled into other parts of my life, as well, as I grew older, aside from wanting to be the Best Writer I also wanted to be the Perfect Person Diagnosed with High Functioning Depression by showering instead of rotting, or writing essays about my sadness and how I Am So Good At Fixing It (See: my entire archive). Or, you know, trying to be the Perfect Friend Ever by setting reminders on my phone to keep in touch with people. The Perfect Girlfriend by adjusting to his needs, silencing myself instead of screaming. The connection to be made here is easy:

To be a writer is to want to be seen.

It is a deep, intrinsic desire to hide yourself between sentences and hope someone is brave enough to find you. It’s instinctual. Us writers, we hide in corners with typewriters (or on the balcony at a party with our notes app) and hope. Who will be brave enough, to delve into my maze, and work to find me?

---

We must begin at a low note, it is only honest, as it is where I am: low. Admittedly, my lowness has lasted a while. It’s a point of frustration for me because I did want this Substack to be bright and cheery, but if I’ve learned anything it’s that the cheeriness I put on is only an act, and deep down, I am a dark, unmanageable woman. Too Sweet by Hozier may remind my past lovers of me¹, but I am not the girl, drunk on life, waking up for the sunrise, as I seem to be. I am the speaker: it’s 10’oclock before I say a word, and I do want to wake up dark as a lake, smelling like a bonfire, lost in a haze.

Many people have said to me that your 20s are the most uncomfortable, unpredictable, off putting years of life². This is reassuring to hear for only a brief moment before subconscious beliefs kick in and you feel like you’re on a race against not just time, but the influencers now younger than you sitting in their mansions, your high-school best friend who didn’t even invite you to the engagement party, and then there’s your cousin who—well, fuck—just got pregnant, and she’s younger than you. And it’s a big deal. Oh, it’s a big deal.

They’re all moving past me, sprinting, and I am here, still trying to decipher my place in this world.

Throughout 2023, I received at least one job rejection every day for about two months. I can remember the feel of my best friends’ leather seats against my cold, terrified skin as she assured me it was normal and fine and in a couple of months, this would all be a funny story. But I was running out of time—a feeling I could not put into words, a feeling so close to anxiety but more like dread. Like death. I graduated and I was ready—so ready—for the world. I imagined myself in a brisk, clean office, writing copy or editing manuscripts. But the rejections came piling in. I became efficient at writing empty, robotic cover letters, my knack and excitement for putting together a story gone, tapping the Quick Apply over and over again. It was a sort of dance, a loop, a desperate attempt to latch onto meaning in a period in which I had none. They like to say enjoy it while it lasts, the unemployment, the periods of nothing, but I have only ever known to wait for the in-between to be over.

And what has my life been, but an in-between? The other side of the bridge keeps sweeping further and further away from me.

Trying in the wake of rejection is a kind of faith, says novelist Aja Gabel. I wonder what faith that could be. Some divine, historic gene, evolved over and over again throughout the years. Something outside of myself, like religion, like God. An instinct to become. I got rejected from jobs until I landed one of the best ones. The type of job your friends roll their eyes at when they hear you complaining—Everyone wants this, they tell you. Just get over it! And I understood, then, the brutality of midlife crises or psychotic breaks. I could feel it creeping up on me, that insanity that wasn’t really made for a 20-something. These breaks, these losses, these crises, they come after a collection of dismissals and forceful shoves into the monotony adulthood offers. They come after your inner child is finally silenced, and you have to mourn its death, but that child haunts you like a ghost, and you think you may be going insane, but everyone around you is like You get paid so well. You have the job I want. You should be so happy. You are so stupid you’re not happy. You are so childish you’re not happy. Grow up! Grow up! Grow up! and you realize the deep selfishness that is innate to humans, and you take that selfishness, and with it, you allow yourself

to break.

I’ve known what I’ve wanted since I was fourteen. I want to be a writer. At an interview last week, a cheery, bright woman asked me: What would your dream job be? And then quickly added: I know the answer already, I think, but humor me. It’s in my mannerisms, my speech, it is embedded in who I am. First year of university I was coursing through my lectures, acing all my tests, GPA at a staggering 99/100, whilst my peers from high school struggled with their Calculus’s and their Business classes and their Architecture courses. I watched friends pull all-nighters, barely passing classes they had no interest in. I thought it sad, that we were promised university years would be fun. That we could choose what we learned. And none of them—not one—pursued what they truly wanted. They didn’t know, is the real shame. Or, more accurately, they weren’t sure if they knew. In many ways, we were taught not to know.

I saw the effect of letting your life be chosen for you: and I saw myself, in them, a part of me that would have listened to the culture, and said, Fine, I’ll be an architect/doctor/engineer. I will learn to draw crisp lines and build miniature buildings, and struggle through Calculus 2. I will accept the rulers when all I truly want is a lined page and a perfect, ballpoint pen.

I understood it was a blessing, to know. To really Know. But then, well, you graduate, and realize you only knew for just a moment. You’re thrown into the real world, rent and cat food and toilet paper, and wonder if you should take those dreams and crush them between your fingers, let them dissolve like dust. Maybe you should have crushed your dreams before they had the chance to half-bloom in your almost-spring, back at the steps of university. Maybe the ones forced into surgeons are the ones that got off easy, in the end. A parent’s job, after all, is to subdue their children well enough that the change into adulthood doesn’t kill them. My mother tried, but she failed—I was too stubborn. Maybe she was protecting me—from this feeling. This dirty feeling of being so lost. I thought I could maybe solve it with a degree.

I want it. I want it.

I wanted it. Desperate, foaming from the mouth kind of desperate. The Creative Writing MFA would please all: my mother, my cousins, my aunts, my inner critic. It would allow me a break from the societal pressures of my Arab blood. It would force me to move away, far away from the questions. My contempt and disgust for the US disappeared from my awareness like they were only a dream, and for a brief collection of months I wanted. I took down the frames that decorated my apartment and waited. I cleaned out my suitcase and waited. Just give me the Go, and I will go. I wanted. I wanted something I’d never wanted before.

And what is more humiliating than to want?

As I wanted, in the midst of my desperation I couldn’t differentiate between if it was my want or others: to land in the country everyone thought I should be in. I tried not to think about it. I decided if I got off of the waitlist that would be the Sign³. Move. Get out of here. Run. Run. Run! I thought everyone telling me I shouldn’t be here was a sign that I shouldn’t, even if I felt I should be. I grind my teeth until my jaw hurt through the days, and only ate enough to survive. I slept. I slept and I wanted and I prayed in every religion, in every language. Free me of the torment of others’ eyes, give me an acceptance that will fly me away from their judgement. Give me an acceptance that will validate me, damn it, after all the rejections I’ve faced. Before their hellos I was already saying,Yes, fine, fine, I am going back. It is shameful to live alone. You’re right. The whore repents! God is the most forgiving! You win! Hear that? You win! You win! I applied and I did and now I want. Fuck you, for making me want. For making me wonder. For making me waver in my contentedness living in this jungle of eyes.

And the universe, of course, solidified it’s No in the form of We regret to inform you…

Let’s go back in time, to the moment that reminds me of why I did what I did. Why I broke my family’s heart and moved back to the country that gave them most of their pain. We were all so close to our American Dream, our closing scenes. The credits were about to roll and I refused.

Sure, this country gave me pain: so much of it that I see little bits of heartbreak across every road I drive through. But when I landed in Amman, post-culture-shock, post-desperation, post-breakup-with-someone-I-thought-was-my-forever, I knew, I knew in my heart that it was the right decision. I knew and I know still. I made the right decision.

The first breath I released after a hellish six-months was when the 14 hour flight from Michigan to Amman landed, rough against the ground, as I placed my palm on the seat in front of me to remain still against the thud of the aluminum tube finally hitting the Earth. I like landings, because they’re the end. And I imagined beautiful nights ahead of me, lost in the familiarity of my hometown. I yearned for the smell of my car, the low hum of it. The sound of my AC. How close my friends would be, and how much fun we’d have, with my apartment as a safe space. Truth be told, though, I did not live the life I imagined I would. Two years in, and every month or so I fall into a depressive episode that often feels thicker than the one before it. My friend group, well, it’s shrinking. Everyone hates each other. The city so small everyone’s already fucked or fought or something in-between. They say Amman is a dead-end and that much is true. Perhaps I’ve reached my dead-end, I’m not sure, but I had already accepted that the universes sign to me would be the MFA. If I got it, I would move. If not, I would try again where I am. I would give it one more year. One final push.

My ragged edges against the ragged edges of others has caused so much plight, so many painful back-and-forths. We are so intertwined it’s difficult to know where you start and where the other begins, even passing a stranger on the street feels intimate. And then there was that job that seeped the life out of me, slowly, but ever-so-surely. These past two years I’ve been in a constant state of Survival Mode⁴. If work didn’t exhaust me, then it was the relationships, which I had to hold with so much delicacy and care; it felt for so long that I was walking a plank. And I tried to do so well. I did. Steps careful and straight. I would let myself fall into the vastness of the sea, yes, if I knew that the people around me wanted me gone. It’s always been about the people, you see. I was raised to be the perfect Arab Girl. If the culture wanted me to be shunned, then shunned I would be. This is simply instinct. To do as I’m told, or as I think I am told.

Many of the last year I have spent in a constant state of pain and anxiety, of which I coddled with Plants VS. Zombies 2 and taking up smoking and vaping. You know it’s been hard. I know it was hard. But as the cut-off for MFA acceptances came to a close, the big April 15th, I had a deep, intrinsic hope that I was owed a win: a celebration: I deserved to finally be chosen. It’s a deep belief of mine, a warped view of the world that only gifts me with more sadness: that if you survive enough shit, you deserve something Good. And I was ready: April 15th would be the day I became free. When I was given a reason to wake up everyday for the next 2 years.

But that didn’t happen.

Maybe the reason your 20s suck is that you must come to this painful realization: that the Earth owes you nothing. Nor the planets or even the moon, not the waves. You exist as a collection of atoms—in your end you will be one with the soil and the dust and the animal bones.

Maybe that’s it.

Being on that waitlist disrupted much of my confidence in my work over the past two months. But I did think: I did hope. It’s my name, of course. Amal. Hope I must.

There have been many things in my life that I wanted deeply. That I wanted truly. And many of them I have gotten. I thought this… well, I thought this would be one of them.

You've got your passion, you've got your pride
But don't you know that only fools are satisfied?
Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true

I hate rejection. I hate it. It’s hard to bare it, in any form. When a person cuts you off while you’re driving, or in line at a grocery store. When you try to open a conversation with someone you love, but they’re lost in their phone. When you apply for jobs, but they’re all empty ghost-jobs on LinkedIn with 2,000 applicants posted 3 months ago. But rejection, well, it comes with the territory. I must take it, chin up, because the words will bleed from me anyway. And no matter how many times I rewrite the sentence, many will come along and look away just as quickly. But I will write nonetheless.

Trust me, I’ve tried to stop writing. I really did. It never worked.

The freedom I enjoy as a fully independent woman in one of the most patriarchal countries in the world is limited. But, alas, it exists: the freedom. The soul-baring, ever infuriating freedom. Despite it, do you know how it feels to be a trigger for most of your family? It feels like a collection of rejections, hitting me from every side. The questions hit not like curiosity, but like interrogations. It feels like you’re an outsider, the other person always attempting to convince you of a different route when you don’t even know what route you’re on. Like a Jehovah witness, at your door, twice a day. Everyone’s got something to say, some doctrine they want to feed me. Why don’t you study? Why don’t you get married? Why don’t you move in with us, our 6-member family in a 3-bedroom, and we can keep an eye on you, we can feed you. My God, Amal, why don’t you just go back to your mother? The youngest is the caregiver. That is your role. Didn’t you come back for a boy? Didn’t you want to get married? Weren’t you engaged? Why have you done this to your mother? What are you doing with your life? Aren’t you lonely? Don’t you feel lonely?

I’ve been an outsider since I was born, the big gap between my siblings and I solidifying it. You would think I’ve gotten used to it, used to being left out of my sisters’ rooms, used to being in the corner of the classrooms, hair messy and eyebrows meeting. The moment I landed in this country at the small age of six years old, I knew immediately I was an outsider: jumbled words spoken to me, sounding nonsensical. I have never belonged. And yet—

My God, how I want. In December 2022, I belonged deliciously to this country and its’ people. Perhaps they were simply bidding me farewell, being extra-kind before the Big Move of January 2023. Perhaps that is the high I chase, the kindness and empathy that people only give when you’re about to leave. When they don’t think you’ll ever come back.

I’ve said this before, but, yeah, again: I am too Jordanian for America, too American for Jordan, too independent for my family, too un-independent for lovers. My use of my freedom isn’t as it should be, for still I am reeked with people-pleasing, with covering, with lying to please this auntie or that. I could go completely insane, sure: I could start clubbing and drinking myself to darkness, or I could go religious and docile and move into my aunts extra bedroom, listen to her husband’s misogynistic meanderings. I could marry a stranger. I could fly back to America and live in my mothers’ house, which still reeks of my breakdowns from, you know, the Great Culture Shock of 2023. I would go back to my caregiver role, and then… slowly lose my mind.

What I’m trying to decide is, well. Had I chosen a dream I thought others would be proud of? I can’t quite pinpoint it. It’s been the challenge of my entire life: Is this what I want or is this what everyone else wants of me? It’s hard for me to make the distinction. Did I want that degree or did I want to run from the words, the eyes? Do I want to be published in that magazine, or do I just want the validation of someone saying You’re good enough? What am I doing? And once I ask that question, it loops. What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?What am I doing?

okay STOP.

Stop looping.

Stop thinking.

Pause.

Many great writers will say that their rejections kept them going, amidst the plight of it. Like,

Stephen King said “By the time I was fourteen... the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and kept on writing.”

Sylvia Plath: “I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.”

Laura Knightlinger: “I always feel like rejection is my petrol. That’s what keeps me going.”

Sylvester Stallone: “I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.”

etc.

But it is not rejections that fuel me. I couldn’t possibly be that way. Rejections knock me down, hard against the ground, leave me smoking cigarette after cigarette, staring at the ceiling.

What fuels me, actually, are the things I’ve achieved: being clear about studying Literature. Continuing to write. Landing a Big Girl Job, even if I hated it. And being waitlisted, despite it all. And, fuck it, moving across the world, living alone in a country that hates it, raising two cats being kind being weird being open and terrified but still doing so. As I waited for the April 15th cutoff of MFAs, I kept repeating to myself the things I got when I thought I wouldn’t get them. As a reminder: It’s possible! It could happen!

Hey, isn’t that an exercise? Yes, hun, go on, do it. What have you achieved? The rejections are useless and pitiful and I remember less than half of them, now. But I do remember the things I went into headfirst, and succeeded in, despite the beating of my heart.

We get so caught up in what we haven’t gotten that we forget what we have. What we’ve done. Life so short and precious, filled with little wins. I’ve described myself here as overtly docile and sweet, but I have lied to you, my reader, truly I have. My sensitivity aside, I am a crazy, fiery, fierce woman. I refused to take my SATs unless my mom let me study English Literature. When they wanted me to stay in America I boycotted the world. I refused. My heart was leading me elsewhere, and I follow only my heart, especially in those rare moments in which it’s speaking clear. I flew back to a patriarchal country and live alone despite all the pestering. I go to the events despite, and I smile at the passive-aggressive questions, the Do boys take advantage of you because you live alone’s, the I don’t understand’s, the How could your family allow this? I sleep and wake up and I wash my face. I cried to people whose eyes remained blank and I lived. I have been ignored but I have Loved. Oh, I have loved: I have loved writing, I have loved studying, I have loved sleeping with my cats, I have loved folding my clothes in my home.

That’s what they will say about me, after I die. That I Loved.

They all thought me sweet and sensitive and stupid, but perhaps the docility is a tactic. It’s disarming, to be so nonreactive.

The universe doesn’t have to gift me with something good, to make up for all of the bad. No, no, it’s all unnecessary. I will take what I want with my hands. As I have so many times before—somehow.

I will make it mine.

Isn’t that the only answer? Amidst all this meandering? All this bearing of my heart? That, at rock bottom, you know what they say: all you have is up.

I don’t know. I’m just writing.

With love,
Amal

1. Can you tell I’ve read through my entire Substack discography?

2. If anyone can vouch for this, please, share with me.

3. They say a waitlist is better than a rejection. But a waitlist is a purgatory, slow and disgusting and painful. You’ll find yourself begging: Please choose me. Please think of me. Like a teenager who’d just gotten broken up with, waiting for a text to come in.

4. I have not been able to see my therapist for a while, but she keeps reminding me of this. You’re in survival mode, Amal, you need to be kinder to yourself. But how can I practice kindness when I feel it has never been given to me? I think of Olivia Rodrigo’s song, here, when she says: I play the victim so well.