POV: Imposter Syndrome

If you've experienced it, you know

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Note: The following isn’t the most cheerful walk through the human psyche, but if you’ve ever experienced imposter syndrome, you will likely recognize the narrative below. If you haven’t, this is what it’s like. If you’ve endured this, know that you are not alone.

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You wake up, groggy and sore, and as your consciousness twitches to life, you become vaguely aware that you are still alive. The assassins have failed, and you have no choice but to face another day.

With a cloudy head, you stumble downstairs, joints aching, eyes gritty with sleep, and make a bee-line for the coffee machine.

It’s early, but you’re already thinking about self-medicating. Whatever your particular poison is, the question boils down to: will this make me feel better, or will it make everything even worse?

You decide against it, at least for now. The coffee sloshes into your mug. You make it the same way you always do, but it tastes different somehow. Worse than usual.

It figures, you think.

You make breakfast, and as you crack an egg, some egg white on the shell sticks to your hand, the whole thing falling with a wet crunch to the floor instead of landing in the trash where you aimed it. A small thing, an infinitesimal inconvenience, and yet you feel that it is somehow symbolic of the way this day already feels.

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, you mumble under your breath.

You begin to contemplate what’s on your plate, but then reflexively shrink back away from such thoughts. So much to do that it’s daunting, and here you are, feeling like this.

You’ve got more bills than money, more stresses than joys, more turmoil than stability. You haven’t produced work you’re really proud of in years, and your bank account confirms that. You’re struggling. Floundering. You’re lost and you know it, and so does everyone who is counting on you.

I miss the days when I used to be someone, you think, until it’s replaced with another, darker thought: don’t kid yourself, you’ve never been anyone. Even your successes were a fluke. You’re nothing. You’ve always been nothing, and you’re always going to be nothing. If you were ever going to peak at all, that moment is probably already in the past. It’s just nothing but failure from here on out, bub.

Some part of you bristles at this thought, musters up a smattering of indignation at the insult of the thing, but only just barely. Like a car with an empty tank that manages to crank over just once on the fumes, then stalls out again with nothing to propel it.

You’ve been told to try affirmations, but you feel like lying to yourself isn’t a great way to build up your confidence or self-trust. Telling yourself, “I am successful, I am respected, I am loved” may be aspirational, but it’s sure as hell not the truth at 7:40AM on this particular Wednesday morning.

You know you are capable of more than this, so what the fuck is your problem? Why can’t you get your shit together and make something happen? You are too damn smart to be this stupid and this stuck.

You think to yourself that maybe another cup of coffee will help, but you know it won’t. It’s just another distraction. Another excuse. A procrastination ritual that confuses activity with achievement. Busy work for a BS morning. But you make it anyway, because why the hell shouldn’t you? At least it’s something.

As you sip, you scroll, letting the deluge of news and gossip and rumor and negativity that saturates the world of the very online wash over you, pull you under. You know it makes you feel worse, but when you abstain you feel disconnected, so you justify your immersion. After ten minutes, you’re refreshing your timeline, hoping to see something new, but it’s just the same old outrage porn posts you’ve already scrolled past twice. Things aren’t going to get more interesting. Nobody is going to put the answer to your problems in your timeline. You’re going to have to figure that out yourself.

You wish, not for the first time, that you weren’t such a prisoner of your emotions and fears. Maybe if you were more like Teddy Roosevelt or Ray Dalio or David Goggins or Elon Musk, you would actually have accomplished something of note by now. You’re not getting any younger, after all, and the gray hairs are starting to outnumber the ones in your natural color.

How did you get so far without ever becoming a real person? How is it that nobody ever figured it out?

You remember that time, a decade or so ago, when you last worked in an actual office, and you had an epiphany while sitting in a meeting: “Oh wow,” you observed, “everyone is faking it. Nobody knows what they’re doing.” You found it consoling at the time, but later you realized that the fakers were at least accomplishing something, while you were just busy being aware of the fakery.

I have nothing to offer, you think. Part of your brain says you’re just looking for pity, and another part says you’re probably not being critical enough: You have nothing to offer and you’re such a worthless POS that you can’t even bring yourself to do anything about it.

You fumble through the day, looking for any wins you can claim, no matter how small. An errand successfully run, a letter successfully mailed, a sink cleared of dishes, a meal on the table on time. Small, almost meaningless victories, but victories nonetheless.

Only you don’t feel triumphant for taking out the trash. You just feel stupid.

Evening rolls around and you decide to switch gears. You’re self-medicating now, all hesitation gone. Instead, you’ve chosen to willfully embrace the numb. You don’t want to sleep, or you’ll just have to hurry up and do this all over again tomorrow. But you do want to feel something that isn’t self loathing, doubt, or regret. You think of that song by Third Eye Blind that you used to listen to on repeat all those years ago:

The God of Wine comes
Crashing through the headlights of a car
That took you farther than
You thought you'd ever want to go

We can't get back again
We can't get back again

She takes a drink and then she waits
The alcohol it permeates
And soon the cells give way
And cancel out the day

The tears well up in your eyes, unbidden, and you can’t decide if you should wipe them away so nobody sees, or leave them there in the hopes that someone might notice, and care.

You’re such a self-indulgent little bitch, you think, always looking for someone to feel sorry for you.

What is wrong with you? Why can’t you just be normal? What is it that you think you need?

Your friends tell you that you need to believe in yourself, but you can see that they don’t understand what your problem is either. They’ve figured out how to muddle through, so why can’t you?

And what is there to believe in? When have you ever proven that you can be the person that you always thought you wanted to be? When have you not fallen short? When have you not made the wrong decision, taken the wrong direction, or done something else to screw things up?

Your self-medicating has finally kicked in, and for a moment, at least, you feel a little better. Being lost to oblivion is better than feeling like you are oblivion, sucking everything and everyone else around you in.

You turn on the TV and scroll through four streaming platforms for half an hour, looking for something you might actually want to watch. You settle on something, but fall asleep half way through. Face it, you’re too old to stay alert through the buzz or the high.

As you head to bed, you think about the day. It was a near-total loss, and it’s your fault. You let your feelings and your doubt win again, and you procrastinated the time away. Time you’re never getting back. You’re desperate to feel loved and respected and wanted, but you’ve got to actually be someone to receive those things. They aren’t free.

You toss and turn to get comfortable, and sigh deeply, as though such exhalations have the power to exorcize despair and discontent.

“It doesn’t matter,” you intone. “I don’t matter. Nothing matters.”

This mantra is itself a kind of affirmation. A lie of a different kind; one that seeks to undermine the way you really feel. The truth is, everything matters too much, and you don’t know what to do about it.

The part where you say you don’t matter feels true enough, though.

If you did, wouldn’t you have proven it by now?

As consciousness fades, you find yourself hoping that tomorrow will be better.

But you still don’t know what you’re doing, so you already know it won’t.