I think a great part of what it is to be human is exactly to be as others are. As much as we might like to think as ourselves as special in the one way or the other, that very line of thinking, indulging in what effectively amounts to but a kind of mild self-pleasuring activity, has the consequence of also making oneself un-worldly in its most literal sense, that of being removed from the world as shared with others. Matter of fact is that most people are very much the same, and that the vast majority of actual differences to be found across a given population can be correctly surmised as being nothing but the consequence of circumstance. Eventual counterarguments coming from points of either traits viewed as negative (one might think of various disabilities) or positive (great athletic skill or intelligence) neglect to admit that these factors, too, are contingent - that to suffer a disability is effectively to be within a society that has arranged itself as to be unsuitable for some people, and similarly that any positive evaluation of a person's "natural abilities" also neglects the fact that those things are only viewed positively because of the society within which they prove useful - useful always being useful for something, and that something might've been different.
In thinking of yourself as special, you are taking a first step towards solipsism - a point of irreconcilable difference between yourself and The Other, an Other whose reality through time will be ignored and neglected to the extent that their Otherness is forgotten, the Other reduced eventually to simply that which I am not. Refracted through the prism of a "Special Self", the Other becomes a Projection, a pure surface whose utterance, that great, saddening and universal unifying utterance that is "I Am In Here", becomes nothing but an Utterance, a sound, devoid of its separate reality except as something Heard, the underlying Meaning rejected not by conscious deliberation as we might do with an LLM, but by something more akin to a subjectivised predestination - predestined, mind you, by yourself - the Solipsist. The necessity of the aforementioned becomes a sort of truism so soon as you acknowledge that, insofar as the world of The Special Person is defined exactly as that - the world of The Special Person, any claim which would amount to a challenge of specialness becomes an existential threat. It is by this process that The Other ceases to be The Other and becomes pure appearance, for the simple reason that even entertaining the thought of The Other as being "In There" would put the mythology of the Special Person in total jeopardy, insofar as it introduces the possibility that things might not be as they appear.
The structure of this world is that of a great unifying story, which tells that how things are now - i.e. that the Special Person is Special - is how they have always been - i.e. that the Special Person not only is but always has been Special. As a story, its legitimacy is established continuously through its telling and re-telling, a story at once told (although only to oneself) and enacted and reenacted. The two points here, on the one hand of the telling and re-telling of the story, and on the other of its enactment and reenactment, both lie so deep in the core of the Special Persons being that their very being itself cannot be understood without them. Both play a part in ensuring that the constructed world of genuine solipsism neither will nor can be disturbed. Yet neither is done intentionally - for the basic reason that if they were done knowingly, as to construct the narrative reality of Specialness, this would deny from Specialness that essential feature - namely that of its obvious self-evident truth, a truth which must never be cast into doubt. Everything must seem thus at once both accidental and necessary to ensure that the belief of Absolute capital-T Truth is retained, a Truth so absolute that even its recognition is only implicit. While truly a product of narrative and solipsistic practice, Specialness must never appear to The Special Person as a product, but instead be present only in the shape of an unseen foundation upon which the rest of the world is constructed.
For this reason, the narrative structure that shapes a great part of Specialness never shows itself as what it really is to The Special Person himself, who instead lives in the self-isolated and solipsistic belief that their Specialness is simply that, Specialness, and a Specialness unconnected to the rest of the universe expect to the extent that Specialness also requires that the Universe stand in a special sort of relation to the Special Person, seeing as they are Special not just in the positive sense, but also in that they are Different from everything else. It is difficult to understate just how central self-reflexivity is to the Special Person's way of being in and conceiving of the world.
It would be all too easy if Specialness manifested as some sort of empirically evident self-centeredness or belief of monstrous grandiosity. But the truth is that most Special people today have managed to construct ideas of Specialness which are instead parasitic, alienating and self-deprecatory. The fact of self-deprecation is the guise underneath which so much of the modern iteration of the Special Consciousness hides. In having reflected away any notion of "being better" or other connotations, Special People have largely managed to now tell stories not of how they are different to other people, but how other people are different to them. What remains is of course nevertheless the narrative of Specialness, the world and its appearance-only inhabitants construed not as somehow lesser than the Special Person, but rather as somehow "more" than the Special Person. The Special Person tells themselves that somehow, in some way, Other People are "more alive", "feel more", or "think differently" to how themselves. But still, the prism of Self remains the core through which all of reality is refracted. Other people are not truly Other People. Instead, they are projections of Self to which are adjoined these vague terms of being "more alive" and the like, to which the Special Person (for reasons that have hopefully become clear) neglects to add what our Appearance-Predicate requires, namely the fact that more is always more than. More alive than what? The Special Person, of course - who else? The otherwise externalised Specialness thus returns to the Special Person, whose fundamental difference to everyone else becomes exactly what they desired, namely manifestly obvious and self-evident: all they have to do is look around.
We who know we are not Special Persons of course recognise that if they did stop to look around, or more importantly stopped to listen, they would quickly realise that they were not so different to everyone else. Except, of course, seeing as their worldview relies on it, Special Persons, like anyone else looking to guard relics of their faith (their faith in this case themselves) obviously maintain more defences than a simple outer fence. Thus the Special Person will usually not to stop at the level that they are Different - the difference between themselves and everyone else has to be irreconcilable. For this reason, many Special Persons tend to carry the belief that the fact that they cannot properly understand other people (who they, despite their own conviction, never truly attempted to understand) also implies that they, themselves, are incapable of being understood by others. How, after all, could someone as alive as you understand someone like me? Whether it is reasoned by means of some awful tragedy of a life story (negating the fact that there are many others whose life stories are equally or more tragic) or by some rare case of genuine unhinged grandiosity, others are simply so different to the Special Person that not only can they not understand them (or their Specialness), but it's not even worth trying.
Special People thus manage to turn the surrounding world into a collection of Manic Pixie Dream Girls, at once despised and desired as their only shot at leaving Neverland.
In an odd way, Special People are eerily reminiscent of an early stage of puberty which simply never ended.
First, the rest of the world has basically been turned into a collection of Manic Pixie Dream Girls. Different to and more alive the Special Person, they represent what makes the Special Person Special, namely their Deficiency, acting in appearance as the symbolic representation of the possibility of escaping a far too prolonged stay in Neverland. At the same time, of course, the very fact that the Special Person has projected the image of a Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl onto all other people serves as the very thing that guarantees their continued stay in Neverland. For insofar as the projection is what makes up the appearance of the world, the appearance relies on the projection. It is exactly because the Special Person believes and continues to believe that the world is made up of teen-comedy romantic interests who got at most five minutes of screen time that the Special Person ensures that he will never leave Neverland. The Special Person has created a story of the possibility of "salvation" which turns out to be impossible, thus guaranteeing the continued existence of their own Special dimension of existence - ignorant that, in truth, Salvation could be had if only he ever attempted to understand that when a Manic Pixie Dream Girl tells him that "I am in here", what she meant was not "I am more alive than you", but that "I, too, am a person - not just a canvas for your fantasy. I, too, am a person - and in that, we are one and the same". Of course, the Special Person is all too invested in their own Specialness, and the Real Person subjected to the Special Person's projection is left wondering, as so many will have done before her: "Did he even see me?". The answer is unfortunately always the same.
Second, the Special Person has managed to effectively extend what we at an age-appropriate time might've termed "just a phase" into something capable of consuming all of reality. And of course, it has consumed all of reality. There is perhaps (and probably) some truth to it when a fourteen-year-old, recently-turned-goth teenager screams at their parents that they just don't get them. After all, it's probably been at least 20 years (and probably more) since the teenager's parents were fourteen years old themselves. Yet with time, the belief of irreconcilable difference and the consequent impossibility of mutual understanding grows to be increasingly disturbing. While the angry teenager's expressions of seeming solipsism can be rightfully understood as a necessary type of growing pains, reflected back at them as - indeed - just a phase, the Special Person who maintains their unique difference into adulthood presents themselves not just as a victim, but also as a threat to other people. Not a threat in the physical sense, but a threat to the Being of the Other as an Other. The Special Person withholds himself from the world, keeps others at distance - based on the belief that even if they wanted to, they wouldn't be able to get any closer. In turn, they impinge on the autonomy of others, robbing them of The Special Person. This is the true hurt suffered by those who know and care for the Special Person: As much as one might like to Be There for the Special Person, the maintenance of the all-important narrative of irreconcilable difference acts as a guarantor that no attempt will ever succeed. The Special Person has given up on your behalf before you were allowed to try. And so the story of a self-fulfilling prophesy repeats itself, as the Special Person dreams as they have done since their teenage years that "If only someone could understand me, then...", all the while they do everything in their power to ensure that noone will ever get close to even have a shot at understanding them.
...
To be continued.