Uniqueness
It's been a while since I wrote one of these little reflections on human nature.
Music: volume warning!
I'm glad my identity on the internet is unique. One concrete perk: I could even get the .com domain.
I don't know when I started caring about “uniqueness.”
Maybe it was when I registered that domain. I typed in my name, hit search, and discovered that the .com was somehow still available. The little rush of delight was strange: “It's just a domain, one of hundreds of millions of .coms around the world, but what I felt was: This is mine. I'm the only person in the world with this name.”
Or maybe it was my username? Searching my name on social media led only to “me.” That alone used to keep me happy for ages.
It probably goes back to early childhood, too: not liking what the people around me liked. In middle school, I even stopped liking a fictional pairing—a CP, in fandom terms—because “my close friend has started shipping them too.” Back then, I thought I was letting my dislike of someone spill over onto what they liked… I couldn't explain it.
I think I can now. It wasn't dislike by association. When something no longer belonged exclusively to “my world,” it stopped meaning anything to me. I didn't like it entirely for its own sake. Part of the appeal was that “only I liked it,” which made me feel special. Once someone else liked it too, that feeling was diluted. I'd rather throw it away than share a love for it.
So that's why I spent years in middle school subsisting on obscure ships…
Of course, a middle-schooler wouldn't think any of this through. They'd just wonder why they suddenly didn't like something anymore.
So, why do people need to be unique?
These were the answers I got:
People have an innate need to feel “I matter; I can't be replaced.” If you feel interchangeable with everyone else, your sense of existence fades. You may even feel that “it wouldn't matter if I disappeared.” Uniqueness is the foundation of self-worth.
Humans are social animals, but groups need a division of labor. Uniqueness gives everyone a different place, allowing people to complement one another. If everyone were the same, cooperation would lose its point.
Loving and being loved are, at heart, about “you are one of a kind to me.” Friendship, romance, and family bonds are precious precisely because the people involved are irreplaceable to each other.
People ask, “Why am I here?” Uniqueness offers an answer: because only I could have existed in this particular way, and that is meaning in itself.
But I also got another answer:
An excessive attachment to uniqueness can itself become a source of anxiety: fear of being ordinary, of being replaced, of disappearing into the crowd.
And then I found a way of putting it, a way of explaining why I hurt:
Because I have always suffered over not being the only one.
Uniqueness leads to possessiveness. Why do people need to possess things?
A chain of reasoning occurred to me: uniqueness creates irreplaceability; irreplaceability creates possessiveness.
If I'm the only one in a relationship, then I'm irreplaceable. If I'm irreplaceable, that place “should” always be mine. But the moment “should” appears, fear follows: What if I'm replaced one day? The more irreplaceable I feel, the more afraid I become of losing that. Possessiveness is just fear in different clothes.
So the chain doesn't end in possession. It ends in fear of loss.
Back to that ship I gave up in middle school. On the surface, I chose to let go: my friend started liking it, so I stopped.
Having someone take it away would mean being replaced. Throwing it away myself was at least my choice. A middle-schooler protected their uniqueness this way, at the cost of something they genuinely loved.
Am I still doing the same thing now? I'm not sure. I don't want to be sure.
I once heard a story: when possessiveness and the fear of loss take complete control of someone, it's like falling into a dark-red dream (Blind Eyes Red). Reason is obscured; all that remains is instinctive grasping, frantic obsession, and the loss of oneself that follows.
Reason is blinded, but it isn't pitch-black. It's red.
You can't see anything clearly, yet a burning, chaotic emotion fills your entire field of vision.
This feeling comes from the same place as anger.
You know you're being irrational. You know the tighter you hold something, the more likely you are to crush it. But you can't stop. Because what would letting go mean? Admitting it isn't yours. Admitting you can be replaced. Admitting you're not actually that special.
Sounds like the kind of romantic relationship that turns abusive…
What lies underneath it all, then?
I thought again about my basic understanding of the human world: everyone is selfish.
That may be unfair, but it's always been the basic rule I use to look at the world and navigate relationships.
Now the chain of reasoning can form a loop.
Selfishness → pursuit of uniqueness → irreplaceability → possessiveness → fear of loss.
That leads to a very interesting argument about human nature:
If “everyone is selfish” holds true, then the pursuit of uniqueness was never existential philosophy in the first place. It's selfishness made concrete.
People want to be loved. That sounds neutral. But unpack “being loved” one layer further: it means “I want to matter more than other people to someone.” Not “just as much.” “More.” That “more” is selfishness.
Then “more” stops being enough and has to become “most.” The most important, the most special, the most irreplaceable. At the far end of “most” lies “only.”
So uniqueness is selfishness in its most extreme form: not “I want a little more,” but “I want everything, and it has to be just me.”
Take it one step further: if everyone is selfish, everyone is pursuing uniqueness. What happens when two people pursuing uniqueness enter a relationship?
They possess each other.
I want to be your only one, and you want to be mine. Sounds romantic, doesn't it? “You're my one and only” is practically the default love line. But taken apart, it's really a deal between two selfish people: I give you my uniqueness; in return, you give me yours.
And what does a deal fear most? A breach of contract.Once one person's uniqueness is shaken—not necessarily by cheating, even just by “you seem to treat other people this way too”—the other's first response isn't sadness. It's fear. The deal has fallen apart. The uniqueness I gave away hasn't received an equivalent return. I've become someone who “gave everything, while the other person thinks I'm replaceable.”
This also brings me to my “views on love.” (Just turned 18, and here I am talking about my views on love.)
I've been writing fiction with AI lately, including, of course, stories about men and women falling for each other. Just teenage butterflies, really. I'll dream up a perfect partner, then watch these perfect partners go through their everyday romance. And I've noticed a few things about myself: I steer them toward possessing each other. And they can't have exes, because then they wouldn't be each other's “only one.”
Because in real life, I can't guarantee I'm anyone's only one. I can't control someone's past, their romantic history, or whether there's a person in their heart I know nothing about.
Reality is uniqueness's greatest enemy, because reality doesn't allow blank slates.
The certainty I can't get in real life, I make for myself in fiction. But the question is: once I've made it, am I satisfied?
No. Because I know it's fake. The uniqueness I write myself is, paradoxically, the least unique of all. You made it up. Its existence depends entirely on your will. Take you away, and it no longer exists. It wasn't freely given by another person, so it doesn't count.
So maybe that's also why I've… never been in a relationship? Because I can't stand someone being just as kind to other people as they are to me.
I'm the most selfish one. It isn't only romance; it's friendship too. I can't accept that my close friend is also someone else's close friend. It has to be two equally lonely people finding comfort in each other. That's my ideal relationship.
But that brings up another paradox:
If someone chooses you because there's no one else around, were you really “chosen,” or were you just “what was left”?
Am I their only one, or their only option?
Those sound alike, but they're completely different. Being chosen means “I have lots of people around me, but you're the one I most want to be with.” Being the only option means “You're the only person around me, so I'm with you.” In the former, uniqueness is freely given; in the latter, it's a circumstance.
I want the former, but the conditions I've set can only select for the latter.
Oh well. I'm still very young. I suppose I'll just have to spend my whole life endlessly anxious about uniqueness. I haven't found a way out yet, so all I could do was write down these wandering thoughts on a sleepless night.