You Probably Won't Read This

FEATURE | ANAMATA / THE FUTURE

Written by Elise Sadlier (she/her) | @elise_sadlier | Contributing Writer

Rejection.

I’ve never been good at it.

I spent the summer on the couch, popsicle dripping down my wrist, refreshing Seek and

offering up prayers. I had high hopes for the year. I saw each month stretched out

before me, clean and full of potential. I fantasized about a working holiday in Bali, a cute

gallery job, money flowing into my account. I was finally free from university and

StudyLink, from contracted hours and blue light migraines.

But the months started to bleed into each other.

The sky is turning darker now.

The days pass in a blink.

45 job applications.

15 creative and freelance applications.

2 Excel spreadsheets.

And with the chime of my phone—one new rejection email, every day.

“Sorry, we are writing to inform you that your application has been

unsuccessful...”

I’m 24 years old, with a BFA (Hons) and a Diploma of Māori Language Fluency. I have a

$35,000 student loan. But mostly, I write—like my life depends on it.

But you wouldn’t know, because you probably won’t read this.

And why should you? You don’t know me. You don’t owe anyone anything, least of all

some scruffy girl with her clickbaity titles.

I should’ve made this more digestible—maybe a TikTok. An Instagram reel, ready to be

sipped at.

Or maybe you saved it to the graveyard of things never read in your Instagram folder.

Because who wants to read an essay, a magazine, least of all - a book?

I’m sure you would stay—if I told you I was baring myself on the page: fleshy, bloody,

cellulite and skin.

You’d stay if the article came wrapped in something sexy—behind the Trojan horse of a

fat ass, some juicy celebrity drama, a money-making scheme, a politically charged

podcast snippet.

You’d stay if I sprinkled this article with enough brain rot - if Subway Surfers jumped

across each word, if a drone of AI voice-to-text could take the reading off your plate.

You’d stay if I was emotionally slutty—willing to hold my failures up to the light instead of

letting them undress me slowly, in the quiet hours.

Why did I think I could send my book off when it still needed work?

Why did I kick that window in Year 12?

Why did I let that guy belittle me?

Why did I let my mind get so dark?

I’m trying to walk the line between confidence and humility—asserting my intelligence,

but knowing when to be quiet. Hold that tension. Trying to lay myself just bare enough

on the page. But I’ve always been too raw, too much, too unfiltered to ever get away

with it.

I always spoke too much in class. Insisted upon myself. And fell short in my lack of

experience.

I don’t want to be generous with you.

You’d cancel me in a second. You wouldn’t even blink.

I scroll through Instagram stories of prettier girls. People who can afford tropical

holidays. People likeable enough to monetise their personality. People who know the

right people. I dread the influencer of it all—not because I begrudge them, but because

I’m not good at it. I can’t outsmart the algorithm. I don’t have the gear, the glamour, or

the friends in high places.

This is all I have to give you. Take it or leave it.

This year, for the first time ever, I thought about quitting. Not dramatically, just

disappearing. From the inboxes, the applications, the spreadsheets, the manuscripts.

From unfinished paintings, from looming deadlines. I would stop praying so hard. I'd

save just enough for a little farm, or move back home to Gisborne. I’d get my post

graduate-teaching diploma, or answer phone calls and make appointments for a living. I

would have a baby, and when I held her for the first time, the sky would be clear and the

world would be brimming with potential again.

But then something in me refuses. An instinct.

The call within me that aches, truly and desperately yearns, to create.

At four, I have my mother read Cinderella’s Wedding and The Tiger who came for tea so

many times that I have them memorized.

At five I’m shaping letters. My S’s are still backwards.

At seven, I begin writing stories.

At ten, I wrote a children’s book, convinced I’ll send it off to get it published.

At fourteen, I started writing poems for the newspaper.

At sixteen, I’ve just had an appendectomy and I’m sitting up in the hospital bed writing.

At seventeen, I wrote my first collection of poetry. I steal my sister’s print credit from

school, gluing each one into my blue and gold notebook.

At University, I write countless essays, compose poems in the evening light of my dorm

room.

At twenty-three I am published in a book for the first time. And everything feels possible.

I have three separate google drives, a library of lists, an archive of screenplays, short

stories with no resolution. Letters I never sent. Poems that walked around in circles.

Sentences that hung heavy on their own. Essays without a home. Manuscripts I haven’t

sent, diary entries, a catalogue of my hopes and fears.

Most of my writing goes nowhere, forever stagnant in the cloud. Waiting for their

potential to be seen.

Hoping that you will see mine.

Two summers ago, me and my friend Sam decided to swim to an island in the Marine

Reserve just to see what was over there.

He wore flippers. I didn’t. On the way back, the current began to pull me across the bay.

I switched between breaststroke, backstroke, and freestyle.

My body was tired, but I don’t like to admit that.

When I finally made it to shore, I walked back to our diving spot.

I asked if he had been worried.

He said:

“Nah, not really. I know you can swim. Plus, you’re stubborn as shit.”

It’s that same stubbornness that makes me write.

Edit.

Publish.

Share.

Because why shouldn’t I? It’s what I want to do. Even if nobody reads it.

It’s my stubbornness that dragged me through 5 years of university. Through the early

years of men with their liquid courage who told me I’d never amount to anything, that I’m

delusional, undeserving, stupid.

And it’s because of your stubbornness that we’re here—at the end of this page.

Because even though I challenged you, you insisted you were different.

And now what?

You want me to clap?

You want a medal?