Becoming Nobody
Current Goal: Becoming Unspecial and not giving a f*ck about being chosen by anyone but myself.
Recently a friend told me she’s focusing on releasing the need to be special. She realized that in her relationships she was more attracted to the fact that a partner chose her than she was to the actual person. She loved that someone wanted her to be their partner more than anything else. She loved being chosen.
And don’t we all?
My greatest challenge in relationships has been letting go. Even when I know it’s for the best and I’m not even interested in continuing the connection, there’s a part of me that still desires and expects the person to fight to be with me. To not just let me walk out of their life. Then when they do, I find myself wanting them again.
I’m aware of this pattern and where it roots from.
I think believing we are worth fighting for and knowing what we bring to the table is okay. We should all know that we are worthy of an epic love and partnership. It becomes a problem when we desire to feel special so much from another, that we make choices which aren’t in our highest alignment, or stay in a relationship we know damn well is no longer serving us.
Were you chosen in school? Were you invited to events? Did you feel seen by your peers, or the boy/girl you had a crush on? Did you feel seen and prioritized by your parents?
For me, I can’t say yes to any of these questions, so I am aware of where my deep desire to feel seen and chosen comes from.
I have a vivid memory of one PE class where we were choosing teams for a baseball game and everyone was picked except me. I just sat on the bleachers waiting, and the last team wouldn’t call my name even when I was the only one left sitting there. The guy I had a crush on was just staring awkwardly as though he felt sorry for me. It was a long silence until the teacher chimed in and told me which team to go to. I ran straight home and smoked a joint instead. Declaring I was done with school for the 600th time that year.
Why wasn’t I picked? I don’t know. Children are assholes. I was in great shape, naturally athletic, always nice (definitely too nice), and very shy. I got bullied severely for being pretty, I was hospitalized by girls who ganged up on me many times. I was constantly threatened to not talk to any of the boys or I’d get beat up (we moved a lot and I was always the new girl which got attention that other girls did not like). Other girls would get threatened if they befriended me. High school was truly hell for me and I just barely made it out alive.
I was so mortified by the experience that I almost never went to a PE class again and it was the subject I failed every following year. Suffice to say, I never joined any sports teams which I likely would have loved.
So, back to feeling chosen in relationships. Perhaps you can relate to a situation like that yourself. It always goes back to childhood. Those situations shape our later reality. It’s our natural instinct to want to be chosen and to fit in with the tribe, this is how we survive. When there’s a threat to our survival, like not being chosen by said tribe, our nervous system remembers it. Which then will likely project into our future relationships if we don’t bring awareness and healing to those parts of ourselves.
What happens when we make it our goal to become unspecial? To perhaps choose ourselves so deeply that we truly stop caring whether we are chosen by others or not? To fully stop chasing attention or love?