Special

I think my need to feel special to someone (specifically, to have a label) comes from a belief that being special is protection from abandonment. It’s not a belief founded in truth, but it feels like a label is armor. I mattered enough for a title. So when I hear someone doesn’t like labels, I bristle, because it feels like I have no way to matter to them in any consequential way: that I’ll be disposable, because I’ll never be special enough to them. I know none of that is true, but I’m struggling to convince my insecurities of that. I hope I’m not alone in this.

Whenever someone comments on my ether thoughts, it makes me feel special.

Like maybe I'm one of the cool kids...

Even if it is just anonymously.

I know it's dumb.

It seems that the more worth a person has, the more prone they are to being unable to handle it.

"I don't do, say, or think anything phenomenal. Everyone has my potential. Why am I respected?" he asked.

I wasn't sure how to answer. It wasn't the first time this topic had come up, and I knew then that it wouldn't be the last, but it was the only time that I'd felt this desperate need to explain to him exactly why he was so special. And I couldn't. How do you logically justify love, no matter how deeply it's founded in logical respect? I can't. If you figure it out, let me know.

I knew he was drunk and would be back to hiding these things again the next morning (afternoon), but I wanted to know more about him. I'd been sleeping with him almost nightly for months now, but there were still so many things that I didn't understand about him and was normally afraid to bring up. I wanted to be special to him, and I wanted him to need me around as desperately as I need(ed) him.

"Everything is so redundant."

I wanted to tell him that he could change the world, but suddenly I realized how I must sound to him. Redundant and forced. I didn't want to be either. My feelings were sincere.

I don't know if he cried or if it was only me. "I want to bleed," he said. That was the only time I'd heard said what I'd seen in faces several times. I knew that I couldn't comfort him, so listened until he passed out, then left the bed so that I couldn't see and hear him struggling with nightmares that I couldn't wake him up from.