Imposter Syndrome (x3)

Imposter syndrome means different things to my different selves.

Perhaps you’ve felt it before, a class you got an A in without doing the required readings. A job landed when the interview was done with little or no preparation. A relationship with someone beautiful that you couldn’t understand what, if anything, they saw in you to warrant their sustained presence or adoration.

I’ve felt it. I feel it, more accurately. Three lives, three selves, battling with feeling inadequate – the self-doubt and anxiety of being discovered as less than advertised, less than normal.

Before getting into the veneers of these three selves, I want to throw out a guess on why we feel this fraudulence. In my opinion, it’s that society (oh yuck, I know, just hear me out) is systemically focused at every level on values and competitions.

Value is something we feel as an employee, a lover, a friend, a student, and, perhaps, even as a person. These values are our salaries, GPA, the length of a relationship, or how hot we are on the hypothetical 1-10 scale that’s obsessively talked about around high school tables at lunch.

In order for these values to have any meaning at all, they must be weighed against something, the competition. Whether you’re a competitive person or not, the system just doesn’t care. Your 3.0 GPA is good, but you could’ve done better. What stopped you from a 4.0 won’t and doesn’t matter to the system, even though the story of how it happened is who you are. A divorce, an interview without a call back, the way your hair just won’t cooperate this morning, and the Bumble message that expires after 24 hours because you couldn’t think of something clever to say. Competitions. And failures.

We are assigned value, and we must always, in every moment, strive to give validity to that value, to prove ourselves, accordingly. Or else . . . imposter - a fake, a fraud, a failure.

My three imposters.

A fake because of my outer life not being what it should be – of not being what everyone else’s is.

A fraud because my inner life shows a different version of myself than reality.

A failure because my schizophrenic life is holding me back when it shouldn’t.

THE OUTER LIFE

(I could write about a thousand anecdotes for how I feel like an imposter around or compared to people. I’ve chosen how I think about love because it’s a topic that’s forever talked about with others. With an upbringing surrounded by people that got married young and fast, it’s something that sticks out the most in my life and makes me question just who I am.)

“What do you want your wedding to be like?”

I don’t know. I can play around with different version of it in my head.

The big wedding with so many friends and family that I’m completely overwhelmed, have a panic attack, and tell my new bride I’m going back to the hotel – “enjoy the party without me!” She wanted the party, she can have the party.

Wait. That last part isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

Elopement in courthouse isn’t really unconventional. But what led us this moment? Us deciding to just get eloped because it’s simple, and really simplicity is how we ended up here in the first place. Is it love? I don’t think so, but I genuinely don’t care. We get along and living together has made sense thus far. Plus, when we probably get divorced, we won’t feel bad for all those expensive gifts we were given.

How romantic of me that this version of my wedding seems to be the one I go back to time and time again.

Ah, but what about just never getting married? Of course I’ve thought about that. And here are my thoughts about that . . . on one hand, okay, and on the other, why not just get married once for the kick of it (it’s what all the cool kids are doing).

How can my life be filled with people that have gotten married, people getting married, and people desperate to get married, and I’m here just wondering, “hmmm, IF I do get married, can I still go out to dinner by myself because I’m quite fond of that.”

It’s these conversation that I have with people, especially the people I grew up around, that make me feel like I don’t get it. Something has to be wrong with me if I don’t care about the one thing these people care most about. With so much practice in these types of conversations, I should understand by now, but I don’t.

My outer imposter is . . . everyone is falling in love and in love with the idea of love, and I simply don’t care.

THE INNER LIFE

What I want most in life is to understand. I want to take in everything I can. To horde information (and sometimes dish it out at the right moments) for the simple joy of knowing something. A constant, calm life of learning. I want to chase after intelligence. I want to be smart, well-read, well-reasoned, wise, and viewed as such in some small way. And I want to know that my internal life is of some use. Even if that use is for a random question at bar trivia, it’s a validation.

I chase after the moments when someone says, “oh, that’s interesting,” to the random fact I have for just such an occasion. Or when someone asks my opinion on something because they perceive me in a way that I might have an answer.

And in those moments where I have nothing to contribute, I feel the failure. I feel as though I have shown them a version of myself that is not quite true. I have deceived this person.

My fear is my ignorance, of my failing to find facts and information.

The imposter is my life, the repositories of “useless” information, and the moments I come in blank when I shouldn’t. I should’ve known, should’ve seen, should’ve remembered, should’ve understood.

I don’t have a problem not knowing something or responding with, “I don’t know,” in most situations. But I feel I’ve failed the version of myself I have built when I say, “I don’t know,” to something I really, honestly, should’ve known.

I will never know everything. I will never even get close. And that’s okay. That’s not the goal. That goal is to know what I should know, to have the answers people assume I would have when asked. The goal is to make those moments of ignorance as minimal as I can, even to myself.

My inner imposter is . . . I was seeking information, and I am found wanting.

THE SCHIZOPHERNIC LIFE

I’ve basically battled with the idea of myself as a schizophrenic ever since I got the diagnosis. From strangers and doctors not believing me when I tell them my diagnosis to myself when I’m having a good day.

Being disabled isn’t one size fits all. Each diagnosis and each version of that diagnosis looks different. But where am I in all of that? Is a bad day disabled and a good day just nothing?

Somedays I struggle with everything, even existing can be a challenge. Other days it’s like nothing is wrong – and it’s those days I feel like the way in which I live my life isn’t . . . okay. I haven’t pushed for my doctorate because I’m scared of the bad days, but I have so many good days when I feel I can do it. I’ve quit relationships and friendships because I couldn’t cope and care for someone at the same time. I’ve cancelled plans days ahead of time because I mighthave a bad day, or I’m saving my energy for that inevitable bad day, whenever it might happen.

Am I failing at life because I haven’t progressed in some metric? So many people are encouraged with how serious I am about getting better and how far I’ve come. But is there an endpoint? Is there a point in which I am no longer praised for being smart about my health and instead lauded for being lazy, for not pushing myself when I, so obviously to everyone else, should’ve been?

This line between disabled one day and not the next is constant. This entire week I’ve struggled to show face, but I’m feeling good about spending my weekend with my friends at a concert and movie.

My schizophrenic imposter is . . . I’m taking care of myself, and then, suddenly, l am not because I’m not pushing myself enough.

These feelings of being an imposter, a syndrome that plagues us in so many different ways, is the result of a system of values and competitions. My fake, fraud, and failure selves are the values of myself I battle with because I am competing against myself and you.

I'm fake because I am not the same as you. I'm a fraud because I am not as smart as a version of myself. I am a failure because I am not successful in your abled world.

These feelings I have (and the feelings I know you have, too, in your own way) are telling. There are lessons to be learned. So, so many of them. However, what these say about me, I'm going to keep them inside my head. What they say about you, I'll let you figure out.

But what they say about us? That's what I want to end on.

When life is viewed as a competition, it sets our values. It determines winners and losers.

When you don't view life as a competition, our value is indeterminable. If you don't play the game, the game does not exist.

My value as a person in all three of my selves is . . . nothing. And that's comforting. I'm not chasing after points. I'm not chasing after myself. I'm not chasing after you.

That nothingness of leaving the competition, of ignoring my point values, is everything.

It's accepting that what others have is theirs to have and not a reflection on what I do not. It's the authenticity of not knowing something, and letting that conversation carry on anyway, because it was going to either way. It's my schizophrenic self that allows for time to determine the next move, for healing to take place and teach me things, and for success and failure to be things I determine on my own time.

Value and competition are important when you're trying to win something. But, life isn't about winning. Or, at least, it shouldn't be.

Unless you're playing the game of Life, in which case, yeah, I'm getting married and having a ton of kids.

I'm competitive, alright?

But, I'm going to try not to be with the things in life that actually matter.