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Monday, February 24, 2025

Why we should stop wishing we were special – and celebrate being ordinary

Trying to dazzle others with our brilliance all the time can lead us into dark places and take us further away from who we really are

Many of us suffer from a wish to be special. We toil away in the unconscious belief that a special person is a better person, and a special life is a better life. Whether that specialness is conferred by the glamour of celebrity or social media likes, or by the dignified success of reaching the top of your profession, or by the glow of being anointed head girl (no, I wasn’t, and I’m not bitter about it, not at all), this craving to be raised above others, to be “the special one”, can lie at the heart of everything we do.

This wish might be lurking under the making and breaking of your relationships, as you seek the person who will make you feel special, and reject the ones who don’t. It might hide in the extra hours you spend in the office to get something “just right” for your boss, rather than settling for good enough. It might ring out with the alarm that wakes you far too early to train for a marathon, or to perfect a yoga pose.

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* This article was originally published here

Saturday, January 25, 2025

‘When my date arrived, I studied his face looking for a particular reaction’: Shon Faye on dating, love and heartbreak as a trans woman

I wrote a romantic fantasy for myself to cope with my fear and vulnerability. Would it hold?

It was, without question, the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Which is a bold claim about a breakup with someone I’d known for all of 18 months. I can be a little dramatic sometimes. But honestly? Not about this. I have never known agony like it. An older pain, the kind caused by far more shocking blows dealt to me in the past, seemed to lie dormant in my bones until the anguish of heartbreak reanimated it. I felt all of it – the old pain and the new – erupt at once. My body was burnt up by it.

In part, the devastation was caused by the rupture catching me unaware, like a natural disaster no one sees coming. It had been my private little earthquake, and it razed me to the ground. Many of us have experienced this kind of breakup. The kind that nothing prepares you for. The kind that leaves you existentially unstable. The kind where the only reasonable response to the first note of an Adele song on BBC Radio 2 is to wrench the car radio out by brute force and toss it out of the window.

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* This article was originally published here