The hell with being special

What happens when being exceptional stops working

Photo by Julia Nalivaiko

“You are special and I’m always here to remind you of it,” a friend told me this week after my break up.

I know she is well-intended, but honestly… what being special has ever brought me besides pain?

From childhood, being valued and loved has always been conditioned to performance. Excellence in everything was the norm. Excellence was the synonym of being special, someone worth loving. If I wasn't, there was never understanding, there was always criticism and mockery.

So I developed the fastest brain I could, because I learned that being intelligent = excellence = love.

I started going to the gym when I was 13 years-old, because, especially in Brazil, a nice body is a status symbol, so again, sign of excellence.

I was drawn to Engineering, even if I struggled with numbers, because unconsciously being intelligent was doing hard things, and STEM was difficult for me, so if I excelled, it was proof that I was intelligent. And I excelled at it, I graduated 2nd of my class, with a first-author publication from Harvard at age 22, and three international scholarships.

This is missing the last one from my PhD at the University of Strasbourg.

I became the outlier above the curve for every single endeavor I put my head to: I started doing therapy to work on my self-development because, on my quest of becoming special, I had been told I was selfish and egocentric; I raised money through crowdfunding to pay for my Masters’ degree at Cambridge instead of giving up for lack of funds; I finished a PhD in Chemistry in France (Hello, again STEM); I became a dance teacher, even if my mom mocked me when I danced as a kid, saying that I was stiff as a brick, while my sister had it naturally. Guess what, some dances require structure.

So I made myself the most special person that I could be.

And it worked. People noticed. Here’s what my dance association wrote about me:

I liked hearing it. I still do.

Throughout my life, I put my head down and I powered forward as if my life depended on it. And it did, because as humans we crave connection, we crave feeling worthy and belonging. And I learned way too early that being simply me wasn’t enough.

So I was hell-bent to fix it.

To the point that once, while arguing with my sister about her life choices, she said: Not everyone is as strong as you are, Camila.

This is something I hear often: how strong I am. And parts of me are indeed very strong. I don’t even feel the effort of overachieving. That’s just who I had become.

Looking back, it wasn’t about being strong. I was disconnected. Completely disconnected from my emotions, from who I was and wanted to be, because I was way too busy filling the role someone else had given me. You only start questioning why you need to be so strong when the results stop matching the efforts.

The good thing about this role play is that life becomes easier. The path is clearer because someone already drew it for you. You don’t need to question anything. You just follow through believing it will take you to safety, to belonging, to worthiness.

Until it doesn’t.

Until you keep reproducing the same patterns in your other relationships: over functioning, constantly proving yourself worthy of someone else’s approval, staying too long in a relationship where you are already alone because you believe that everything that is worthwhile requires investment and you refuse to give up.

Giving up is for the weak, and you are the strong one, remember?

But then people give up on you.

And this time, the performance didn’t even work.

At least before, overachieving brought accomplishments, external validation, proof of worth.

This time? I did everything I could, stretched myself beyond capacity to make it work, and he still left. The strategy that had carried me through life finally failed completely. And you are left questioning your self-worth again.

Even if them leaving has nothing to do with you. Even if they tried their best to break their own patterns, but their traumas won in the end.

So it feels like there’s no way to win.

And when someone comes and says that you are special, you find yourself thinking: and for what? What’s the point on all of this? What has being special actually brought me?

Just more pain, abandonment and rejection.

All the things that I was desperately trying to avoid.

I might as well have saved myself all this trouble. The hell with being special.

The point

I wish I could finish this letter saying: the hell with all of this, from now on you will have to take as I am. I’m done with the performance.

But that would not be true.

First, it would be very unfair with the dark place where I am right now. We are all too quick to dismiss sadness and grief as something bad that has to be overcome as quickly as possible. But I learned that no emotion is bad, they are only signals and they should all have space to be processed, whatever time it takes.

Second, we don’t shed years of conditioning with one rebellious wave of the hand (or in this case, one rebellious text published online).

This is unrealistic, potentially irresponsible and shame-inducing in others, who can see their ongoing inner struggles as proof of their lack of capacity. Much of what is wrong with the internet today, if you ask me: too many quick fixes for complex and layered problems.

What I’m doing instead

It is indeed true that you are the only one who can choose different patterns for yourself. No one can do it for you.

I’m trying to find forgiveness. Not to be altruistic, but because the resentment weighs way more heavily on me than on them. My rational and conscious brain is fully aware that most people who hurt me were either trying to protect me or doing what they could with the few emotional tools they had.

For example, my mom was so hard on me because she wanted me to build an armor to defend myself and avoid suffering like she did. She did it out of love, even if it didn’t feel like it. And it worked, in parts. Although, I need to reconcile with the price it took. It was way too high and I had never agreed to pay it.

My partner embarked on a long distance relationship completely out of his comfort zone, and did all he could to make it work until difficult external circumstances took too much of a toll on his emotional bandwidth. Then, he used the only tool he knew to feel safe: run.

Rationally, I know. Emotionally, I’m not there yet. I’m sad and enraged, feeling betrayed, abandoned and rejected.

One thing I managed to do already was making peace with who I was until now. I don’t feel like I lost time, even if I wasn’t following my own path and being fully myself. I feel like I did what I needed to be able to embody my next chapters fully. And the tools that I built are extremely useful in our capitalist society, so I might as well use them.

The question then becomes: who to be from now on?

Maybe you’re reading this far because you recognize the trap. The endless striving. The belief that you have to be exceptional to deserve love, money, rest, or someone’s decision to stay.

Maybe your version looks different than mine: you’re the one who says yes to everything, who can’t set boundaries because disappointing people feels like proof you’re not good enough. Or you’re the one who stays small on purpose, dimming your light so others feel comfortable, while silently resenting that no one sees your potential.

I’m not done going through this yet. But I do have a clear vision of the life I want to build for myself. How I’m going to get there, I’m not sure, but I’m sure I’ll get there. Because I always did.

That might sound like I’m falling back into the same pattern: the unshakable confidence, the belief that I can power through anything. But I’m learning that I don’t have to choose between being capable and being soft. Parts of me are genuinely strong. Those skills are real, they’re useful, and I’m keeping them. What I need to stop doing is ignoring the parts of me that are hurt and need tending. The question isn’t whether I can figure things out. It’s whether I can do it while actually being present for all of who I am.

Right now, I’m sitting in the mess, learning to forgive the people who taught me this pattern and myself for following it for so long.

But I’m starting to understand that the question itself matters: who are you becoming when no one’s keeping score?