Why Do I Keep Wanting What Doesn’t Want me?

Alex Isley’s “Thank You for a Lovely Time” is on repeat, and a question sneaks up and won’t leave.

Why do I keep wanting what doesn’t want me?

Sounds like a love song question. It’s not. It’s a self-love question. A confidence question. A fulfilling your purpose question.

And it’s not just in personal relationships, romantic or not. I do it in business. In those rooms. With clients. With opportunities that have me auditioning for a seat I’m already qualified to sit in.

Why do I do that?

Someone doesn’t want to hire me. A Black masc-of-center lesbian who knows exactly what she brings. And instead of hearing it as information, I turn it into motivation. Let me show you my intelligence. Let me prove my worth. Let me explain my purpose until it lands.

But convincing isn’t the same as being chosen. If I have to continuously show you my value, I’ve already lost the thing that made it valuable. I handed you the pen. Grade the paper I already aced.

Come on, Anisa. You know better. Now do better.

And under that question is a worse one. If someone doesn’t want me, why do I want them?

Why do I chase the closed door? Especially when ten of them are already open.

I learned it early. A lot of us did. The ones raised to be the exception in the room. Acceptance is earned. Be impressive enough, undeniable enough, and you can flip a no. So I pour myself into the one person who hasn’t decided I’m worth it. While the people who already know it, wait.

That’s not strategy. That’s a trauma response running the negotiation.

And here’s the part that gets me.

I can see it for everybody else. I always could. In life. In business. I can tell you — be yourself, all the way, and your audience will find you when you do. I believe that for you. No hesitation.

I just didn’t do it for myself.

That’s the irony I’ve been living inside of. The Curated Misfits was built on one idea — Identity Is Architecture™. That who you are is the structure everything else stands on. I’ve built that for other people. Founders, creatives, brands that were shrinking to fit rooms that were never going to hold them. I walked them back to themselves and watched it work.

And the whole time, I was the misfit still trying to get curated by somebody else’s YES.

I have to choose myself first. Before the room. Before the client. Before the YES I’m still trying to earn.

That’s the most authentic part. That’s the whole thing I keep teaching and skipping.

The strongest brands don’t chase everybody. They’re clear enough that the right people feel it and the wrong people leave on their own. A brand that begs a bad fit to love it waters itself down for the ones who already do.

I’ll tell a client that all day.

Believing it about myself is the work.

Because a no isn’t always rejection. Sometimes it’s routing. Sometimes a door closes because it’s efficient. Steering me out of a room I’d have had to shrink to fit. Toward one built for all of me.

That’s what The Curated Misfits is, if I’m honest. Not a company I started. A blueprint I had to grow into. Every client I chose me through. Every time I stop auditioning and start building — that was me becoming my own architecture.

So I’m sitting with it. Not solving it.

Maybe the real question is the flip side. What would it feel like to only want what wants me back. To let a no be a full sentence. To stop auditioning.

To choose me.

Thank you for a lovely time. And no thank you to the ones who never wanted the pleasure of my company to begin with.