There are moments when someone helps us recognise a part of ourselves we have spent years refusing to name.
For me, that part was arrogance. It had been growing quietly for years, becoming a defence mechanism I built to protect my sense of worth, control, and safety. Deep down, I had always sensed it was there. What I couldn’t accept was that I could be arrogant at all. My arrogance was so complete that it refused to acknowledge its own existence.
Growing up, love often felt conditional. I was praised when I achieved, when I noticed what others needed before they said it, when I stood out, and when I was exceptional. Slowly, I began to believe that an ordinary version of myself was unlovable. Only by standing high enough could I avoid being hurt.
I became afraid of being ordinary, afraid of making mistakes, afraid of disappointing people whose approval seemed to determine whether I deserved to exist. When the spotlight wasn’t on me, I didn’t simply feel overlooked. I felt abandoned.
Without realising it, I became increasingly dependent on feeling exceptional. High standards became part of my identity. Distance from others became proof of my worth. Eventually, I no longer knew who I was without the belief that I was somehow different.
The frightening question underneath it all was always the same.
If I am no longer special, what remains of me?
The honest answer was that I didn’t know.
So I built armour. I hid everything that felt uncertain, ashamed, or deeply human, and showed the world only the polished surface. The armour was beautiful. It was also cold.
The loneliness that followed was easy to romanticise. Perhaps no one understood me. Perhaps everyone else was too shallow. Perhaps loneliness was simply the price of depth.
At first, these thoughts comforted me. Eventually, they became part of my identity. I found myself quietly looking down on ordinary happiness, becoming impatient with ordinary conversations, and increasingly sensitive to the imperfections of real people. Reality could never compete with the ideal world I had created inside my own mind.
Looking back, I no longer think this was confidence. It was a quiet inability to meet the world as an equal. I couldn’t truly depend on people. I couldn’t receive love naturally. I couldn’t admire others without comparison. Most of all, I couldn’t admit something painfully simple: that I was vulnerable, that I was lonely, and that I needed other people too.
Sometimes healing begins when someone quietly refuses to meet us where our ego lives.
Instead, they invite us back to the ground. It is uncomfortable. It feels, at first, like losing ourselves. But perhaps becoming ourselves first requires letting go of the person we worked so hard to become.
I hope that one day I can stand peacefully among other people.
Not above them.
Not beneath them.
Simply with them.