have you ever felt special?

thoughts on watching too much on Netflix and very few links to share this week!

Jul 22, 2025

The response I received from last week’s storytime about my Type 1 diabetes was incredibly special. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read what might seem like an irrelevant topic to many but somehow connected with it. Moments like these remind me to never hold back when writing something personal. Write till you drop, she said.

I was planning to write part two of my T1D story, but I felt an urge to write something culturally relevant for once!

It’s so aligned with what Love or Not to Love is founded on: having too much feelings.

I’m hoping you have probably guessed it by now but I have a lot of thoughts about Too Much on Netflix, created and directed by Lena Dunham. This won’t be a full review, but after binge-watching the series in two sittings, I couldn’t stop thinking about the characters, especially Felix played by Will Sharpe.

from netflix. The cutest actors!!! LD’s casting ability is chef’s kiss to me

What a character and what a man! He played that type that was reminiscent of when Normal People came out. The soft, the vulnerable, the wounded man-type. (why did the author of that article put quotation marks around everything, as if male vulnerability isn’t a real thing?)

Felix feels like he’s paving the way for future male characters. The ones that are genuinely honest. And what I know about honesty is that it can sometimes come off as a little dickish or cruel. But with him, there’s a tenderness to his honesty. Like he really sees you. It’s not a backhanded comment but he really observes you. When he said, “One specific thing is that you have sex hair and that’s really hot,” while brushing his teeth. What a keen eye for detail. What a gem.

Upon watching the show, I was also convinced that I will have such a fun time having a long lunch or dinner with Lena Dunham talking about love and the men who were not emotionally willing to go there with us; the mindless, disheveled, self absorbed men. It’s a strange place to be now when you say “I love Lena Dunham.” I have to say a caveat like “I know the things she said in the past are questionable…” If you say “I love Phoebe Waller-Bridge” it implies that you are cool and have taste. If you say you like Lena Dunham, it’s layered. I hate that our culture does this to us. The stakes are so much higher for women. If you said or done things in the past that are questionable, that’s going to be your entire personality moving forward. Are male celebrities who assault women held accountable for their actions? Do we remind the men of what they have done? As if!

I digress. Too Much was a striking reminder of the past. I used to feel so small because I thought I was burdening men with my positive demeanor or that I was so open and vulnerable to anyone — it was too much to many. Men in the past have made me think that those things are reserved for girlfriend stuff. It’s not for casual sex stuff. Those things — that make who I am — were things I should suppress because men don’t like those attributes. I learned that they find it cumbersome. The protagonist, Jess played by Megan Stalter isn’t who I related to as a character but her ambitions and desires are something I deeply understand. I’ll say, I don’t really relate to the things she does or says. Like when she suddenly screams in front of Felix’s ex-girlfriend’s house(??) “I want you to live with me!!!” Or when she’s possibly coming down from her coked-out night with her colleagues at her boss’s house, and she yells into the posh neighborhood in that fur-collar dress-like-coat; she’s a little unhinged. But as rom-coms by Lena Dunham goes, that’s fine for me.

There’s two things I will say about Jess. Jess is a little self aborted but there’s something about it that feels familiar. I’m not completely annoyed by it. She is self absorbed because she wears a sailor dress outfit or that she adopts a hairless dog and finds it perfect. The whole bit of her obsessing over her ex’s new girlfriend is also a added layer that I didn’t care for so much. There’s a humble balance to her character which is this millennial-women-are-always-trying-to-please-someone thing. She’s not as obnoxious as Hannah from Girls was but there is this confidence that she possesses. While that confidence feels unfamiliar to me her people (man) pleasing attributes are very very familiar. When Felix couldn’t get hard, she immediately jumped to conclusions that it was her fault. That maybe, it was something that she has done. Also, Jess trying to act cool in front of the French ex-girlfriend is too millennial as well. I think her self-awareness while trying to please everyone at once was millennial coded to a tee, I appreciated the sentiment.

The other thing I will say about Jess is that the act of feeling special is surprisingly honest and I loved every part of that. I feel like with rom-coms, they usually tell women to practice self-love even when men treat you like dog shit. I always thought how impossible that is to achieve. As someone who usually operates on low self-esteem and confidence, I thought that self-love is an innate ability and not an acquired one. Only in this couple years or so, I learned that I have to practice it like it’s makeup. Some days I will do good but most days, it’s going to feel pretty flat. But with Too Much, that’s not the message I saw. There were no moments that felt “Love yourself!” kind of a thing. It was freeing because the character knows that she is special. The only issue is that her past relationship made her think that it’s an act or worse a nuisance.

“I used to feel so special about me, and now I really don’t.”

I cried with Jess with that one. How dare he.

There’s Lena Dunham philosophy if I may and that is the portrayal of “terminal uniqueness.” I think it’s something along the lines of there’s no such thing as fixing uniqueness, we’re dying with this uniqueness and you can’t do anything about it. She mentioned this phrase in one of my favorite interviews with her from Talk Easy that I think is worth a listen but this philosophy is so Hannah Horvath, so Jess and so all of her other characters she has written about.

Out of curiosity, I watched her movie last night called Sharpe Stick that was created during the pandemic. It was such a Dunham film to say the least. In one scene, which she also talks about in that podcast, Sara Joe played by Kristine Froseth has an affair with the kid’s dad she’s been babysitting. The wife played by LD herself finds out and the husband also enters the chat and we witness that everyone now knows. The husband was a serial cheater and we didn’t know this until this scene.

LD explains, “it didn’t matter if it was a surprise to the audience — but it did matter that it was a surprise to the character (Sara Jo).” She continues. “Because part of the heartbreak is that — you are in some way, a lot less special than you thought you were.” This idea, that heartbreak sort of comes from knowing that you just weren’t that special than you thought you were, stings so bad that it feels like a jellyfish attacked me thrice on my thigh. I viscerally felt this.

How many times have I felt like I wasn’t that special. Ohhhhh many. Like that time when I told X that I like him and I want to date him but all he ever responded back to me was that I like you too but yeah, we can’t date. I guess by the time I conjured up the feelings, I felt like we were on the same page. But to be completely rejected, whole was a slap in the same. Oh so after everything, I’m not worth dating huh.

Or that time I was having a fling with this terrible man and I found another girls’ piercing in his bed while I was making his bed…I of course didn’t say anything and left it on top of his bed frame like a good girl I am. I felt so tiny.

Or that time when one of the August men texted me saying, “I think I met someone I like” and I was like oh this again! I was replaceable and I became terrified of men.

I thought I am special — just like Jess felt.

We learn the words that they say, the body language, the silence, the exclamation mark in texts instead of an emoji (to me, this feels strange and cold). Everything now feels like an attack to who we are.

We become skeptical of our worth, of what we can offer, of our best attributes.

I think many of us, if anything most of us know that we are unique and special. We probably just don’t present it in the most obvious ways. We all probably carry “terminal uniqueness” in some way shape or form. And there is something so beautiful and bright about knowing your best bits. So it’s such a heinous crime when one tries to knock you down with their worthless power.

We are all too much probably but and as Felix said to Jess, she is “too much” : “Just the right amount and a little bit more.”

love or not to love

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