“What Does It Mean To Be Special?”

When I was a kid, I was enrolled in a program at my elementary school called G.A.T.E.—Gifted And Talented Education. It was one of the public schools’ attempts to keep smarter students from being obscenely bored. I remember having such high hopes at the start of it. Finally, a challenge. Finally, something that would hold my interest. Finally, a place where the fact that I thought about larger issues than just the mind-numbing drudgery in front me would be acknowledged, accepted, and embraced.

Reality, as is so often the case, failed to jibe with my expectations. The real kicker, though, was what the program ultimately proved to be. It seemed that the teachers assigned to carry out this program, whether they weren’t too bright themselves or because of their own general lack of understanding, didn’t quite know what to do with us. In the end, the program was nothing more than excess busy work. What I learned was that being smart, being gifted, being special, meant doing twice as much of the same old crap as the other students. Being special was a curse, not a blessing. Being special was something worthy of punishment, not reward.

All of us are deeply insecure, raging egomaniacs.

In my Recovery, there have been times when I felt as though I was special, as in, different from other addicts. Experience has taught me this is definitely not the case. Each time I chair a meeting, there are plenty of people who come up to me afterwards, thanking me for all the things I said that they could relate to. When I listen to others chair, when I hear people share in the meetings, I still hear things that speak to me. My disease is really no different than any others’.

I struggle, still, with this concept of being ‘special’. On the one hand, I fight to tell myself that I am a person of worth, that I am enough, in those times when I feel like I’m not. On the other, I fight to remember that I am not particularly unique, that I am more like others than I want to admit. It is a balancing act of sorts, finding the line between accepting myself as important, worthy of love, and knowing that I am not unusual in other regards.

It’s possible that I’m comparing apples to oranges here, but it all seems to be different sides to the same coin. Am I so special and unique that the rules don’t apply to me? In my jobs, I don’t progress up the ladder; I can’t claim to have anything resembling a career. Is this because I don’t play the game, or refuse to? And what is the game, really? For me, it’s always felt as though the game was to pretend I am not a person, that I am in fact the cog in a machine that so many people are treated as. And yet, if I insist on my own personhood, it’s as though I’m singling myself out as special, different. Uppity. How dare I think that I’m so special that I deserve to be treated as a human being and not a mindless robot?

Some people say that maturity is coming to terms with the world around you, making peace with authority. For me, I often feel that I took enough shit growing up to last ten lifetimes. I’ve had enough of being treated as less-than. But it does beg the question: what makes me so special? Who am I exactly that I don’t have to endure what most others endure? Being judged by others is a part of life. I do handle it better these days than I used to, this much is true, but I still have a line which I can’t seem to let myself cross.

It’s always possible that all of this is simply a distraction. Recovery teaches us Acceptance. I am who I am. I don’t need anyone else’s approval to be me. When I pretend to be someone I’m not, that’s disrespecting God, who after all created me as I am.

I do some philosophy reading from time to time. One of the schools of thought out there is called existentialism. The gist of it (as far as I can tell) is that there is no deeper meaning; life simply is. Thinkers along these lines have made some pretty profound statements, and here is one I find myself pondering lately: there are no answers, only choices. Going with that line of thinking, then it would seem that the choice is mine whether I ‘play the game’ or not. The choice is mine how I allow myself to be treated, and how I allow myself to react to that treatment. Maybe I’m groping for answers when none exist.

Maybe I’m special in some ways, and just like everyone else in other ways. It reminds me of something a Recovery friend shared with me recently. He was feeling not a part of, that he was the most different of the different—even among those of us in the rooms who are already ‘different’. I told him that I won’t argue it with him, because it seems to me a valid perspective. I reminded him, though, that he is also the same of the same and told him that he can choose which he wants to focus on. And a popular Recovery slogan comes to mind:

Listen for the similarities, not the differences.

It’s up to us how we conduct ourselves in the world. We can choose to focus on how we are different, or we can choose to focus on how we are alike. They are both true, and often all at the same time. We get to choose how we look at it. Positive? Negative? Being a part of? Being separate than? And in this measure, within this choice, is where our true freedom lay.