on being special

I stand in the shower on a Saturday morning and a man lathers my back with soap. This is the second time I’ve found myself in the shower with this man. I don’t tell him about the fantasy I’ve had for years in which the love of my life washes my hair and asks me to marry him as the shampoo suds build up between his fingers.

I don’t tell him because that is just a fantasy. And he is just a man. And we are still dancing around with unclear intentions.

I like his eyes and his ability to make games up on the spot. I like his questions and I like his answers and I like to be close to him, even when I’m sleeping. I let it be as simple as that.

“You don’t really know him at all,” plays like a mantra in my head.

Sometimes, I force the mantra to play over the hum of desire. The hum compels me to switch his body into the water and mine into the cold. The mantra pulls me back from a compulsion to care too deeply, too quickly. I give advice to my friends and I follow my own advice and I am not naive. Or so I tell myself.

Somewhere between the proposal fantasy and a bad inside joke, I realize I feel special. And feeling special gives me an echo of what it felt like to be a little kid. Little girl Anna felt chosen all the time and for no good reason. Suddenly, I feel the need to tell him this.

“Hey, I felt special before YOU made me feel that way!” Na-na-na-boo-boo! I do not need you!

I’m caught between this feeling of “I was special before you,” and “you’re dangerously close to touching a fantasy I will never tell you about.”

So I opt for a small question instead of inviting him into my private fantasies or bragging to him about my inherent worthiness. Both of which are incredibly off-putting options.

I ask him if anything completely ordinary used to make him feel extra special as a child.

I realize I may simply be asking the question because I want to answer it. I suspect something rotten about me and my intentions each time I ask a question. Maybe I am secretly very selfish. I have a memory I want to share and instead of just sharing it, I’m saying “you go first.” I’m not asking out of pure curiosity about the other person and this makes me wonder if I am secretly evil. Maybe I want to tell him a memory and I want to know what he thinks that memory means about me. It’s exhausting trying to parse out my own intentions sometimes.

He tells me about his family’s tradition of making a little performance at Thanksgiving dinner. He says “I used to think that was special until I realized that everyone did that.” He’s half-joking. But only half, so of course I give him shit because no one does that.

This information is so damn cute, I suddenly have the urge to tell him about my proposal fantasy again. I play the mantra and resist. His family sounds deliciously creative and nerdy. I think his example is not completely ordinary at all. I think it would still make me feel special today.

When he returns the question (a simple kindness many men do not know how to give), I don’t answer it because I’m having too much fun giving him shit. Maybe my intentions in asking were pure after all! Or maybe I don’t answer him because I’m afraid he’ll sniff out my self-absorption. We can never really know.

We move on and I do not tell him what made me ask the question. But here it is: I used to feel extra special because of a pile of white rocks on the front porch of my childhood home. I remember thinking we had the best house on the block because of this pile of rocks. Not because it was beautiful, but because it was distinct. And anything distinct felt extraordinary to me then.

When I look at pictures, it’s clear to me now that it was just a garden bed without a garden. The rocks were a placeholder for two tired, overworked parents renting the house with no extra time or energy to give to a garden. From an adult’s perspective, it’s actually quite ugly.

I look back on the girl that thought something so ugly made her so special and I love her ardently.

When strangers told her she had the best Halloween costume they’d seen all night, she believed them. When her music teacher went out of her way to ask her why she hadn’t joined after-school choir yet, she took that to mean she had the most beautiful voice in the world. When her grandparents got her a cardboard cutout of Zac Efron for Christmas, she thought her entire family was full of comedic geniuses. When her first crush kept the sock doll she made him at the bottom of his backpack until the last day of school, it was assumed to be cherished, not forgotten.

The pile of white rocks was special because they were hers. The compliments were special because they were assumed to be true. The gifts were special because they were given by people that were paying attention. The small embarrassments of infatuation didn’t register as embarrassments at all because she imagined reciprocation was inevitable.

She found details that made her feel special effortlessly. And she did this without trying every single day. She had an ego and her attention was finely attuned to her own significance. Anything that violated the feeling that she was one-of-a-kind garnered an intense reaction of indignation. Her family called her firestarter, not because she actually liked to start fires, but because she had a strong sense of justice towards herself.

This wasn’t always helpful, in fact it was often problematic. But I guess the question is, when did I go from “special” as an assumed state of being, to “special” as an endowment that I should act coy about? Or “special” as a notification I need to keep refreshing the feed to find? Or “special” as a state of being that this man has any power to take away if he ghosts me like the last guy did?

I feel more confident right now than I have in my entire adult life. And I know it’s not because I’m standing naked in the shower with a man I really like. I felt this way before I met him. But I still catch myself thinking that I am an ordinary monster. The kind that looks simple on the outside, but internally, she’s got all the worst intentions.

She asks questions just because she wants to answer them. What a selfish weirdo. She projects fantasies onto men she barely knows at all. What a desperate, naive little girl. She writes all of this out for strangers on the internet to read. She’s over-sharing for attention! I feel special in my depravity but every other feeling of “special” is a heavier lift these days.

So I have to summon that little girl that knows how to tune into the affirming parts of life. I have to reach a hand out to the little girl that feels fiercely protective over herself. I imagine she would say:

“we are so special because we asked a question that we knew would feel good to be asked.”

“we are so special because we have a vision we aren’t afraid to move towards, even now that we know what heartbreak feels like.”

“we are so special because we are paying attention.”

I like to listen to her.

Though I feel special now, I want to feel special when I am not standing in the shower with a man. I want to feel special when I am not receiving an influx of followers on a video about taking notes. And I know that not everyone is so concerned with feeling special. I know this might make me ugly to admit. But special is a part of me I used to guard and believe in every second of every day. It’s unnatural to wait and hope for special. It’s my nature to find the state of special in everything I see.