Who do you think you are?

Years ago, I was told by a friend that when she first met me, she thought I was so stuck up. That I was flicking my hair back so full of myself and then, I stood in a meeting and when asked to say something about myself I said I do not like talking about myself. It seemed hilarious to me that this was the way that I was perceived. The reality is that I was terrified. I was trying to hide the panic, and I was trying to straighten myself up. I was thinking that I should be looking put together and make a good impression. My hair kept falling out of place. No matter how hard I tried, it was out of place. I was crumbling on the inside thinking all these things and thinking how everybody else could have it together, but I didn’t. I had to get up and say things myself in front of 20 people I had barely met, and I sat up and spoke the biggest truth “I don’t like talking about myself”. The more I talked about myself, the more I would expose myself I thought, and this was not an environment I felt comfortable in. The outside image of overconfidence and self-importance and my inner world are polar opposites.

As a child, I always got reminded that I was smaller and that I should let someone else do it for me since I couldn’t do it well. I tried to wash dishes, and I tried to polish shoes and all I got was a roll of the eyes and getting told that I should not have bothered. There was always this idea that I should be supervised, or I should let someone else do it for me. I got the sense that I couldn’t do things well enough on my own, even more so, that my efforts were not wanted. This creates a lot of self-doubt and shame because I thought I had done well, I thought I could be proud of the work, and it was clearly not the case.

I was raised with the constant reminder that my parents have done as much as they could, and it is my obligation to improve, to do better, and to go further. Live the life that they couldn’t live. Everything was under scrutiny. All my report cards were looked at and top grades were expected while lower ones were questioned. If I got anything less than top marks, I would be told that I was being lazy and I was wasting my potential. It creates this belief that I should be great at everything and that I should constantly strive to be better. Achieving is expected and anything less is being looked down upon. Nothing impresses because one just meets the ever-increasing expectations. No academic achievement. No award that my work can give me, later in life. No personal show of strength. I try but there is always a never-ending list that needs to be completed.

The problem with not being celebrated when I have a win, or the win being disregarded when it is not the right one is that I don’t really know how to win. It is not that I am being full of myself and putting other people down, it is that I get imposter syndrome immediately. I start thinking that I was lucky, and I got away with it this time but, soon enough they will know that I cannot do any of it. That I will be found out and exposed. It spirals even to the point where I start to think that I will get fired because of it. This is especially when I am on a downward spiral, and I am highly anxious or depressed.

There is nothing more uncomfortable in this world than somebody raving about me or how good I am at something. I can take a “thank you”, I can take an “I appreciate your help”, I can take an “I couldn’t have done it without you” but not if somebody keeps going on because regardless of how hard I tried and how much effort I put in, it always feels like the praise is undeserved. On the other side, every single time I fail, I am ready to take that criticism, recognize blame and take responsibility. A loss comes as a confirmation that I was never good enough so, of course, something like this happened to me. I am my most vicious critic and I am on my case all the time. There is nothing anybody can say that can hurt me just as much as I can hurt myself. Even when I started to get myself together and I started to work out the solutions to my problems, I kept on saying how I had so much to do, and that I was so far from my goals. My friends keep on saying that I should look at how far I am from where I have started and how much I have achieved. I wish I could, but I still feel that no matter how much I try, if I stop everything will just fall apart, and I am going to lose everything in a second. I have this feeling that while I have achieved, I have not achieved enough, I have not achieved things fast enough, and I have not been efficient enough. I have this feeling that if somebody had helped me, and supervised me, I would have been able to do more and better.

I read at some point this short story about a man who dies and goes to the great beyond and finds himself in hell. He is very surprised about this as he has always tried to choose the right thing to do and always tried to avoid harming others. In the process of having his life judged though, he is shown has he has avoided making decisions so many times. He wasn’t being judged for the decisions that he made alone, but he was also judged for the opportunities he left to pass him by, for the life that he could have lived if he only took a stand. I could find myself in that story. I have had so many dreams and hopes, and I had let them die because I was too scared to try, or I had convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough to get them anyway. After reading the story, I decided to keep on striving to be braver, to set goals and shoot for the stars. This is my biggest challenge. Allowing myself to be all I can be. Being kind and forgiving with myself. Being grateful for the success I get and seeing that I have earned it, and I deserve it. Being patient with the small steps I make towards my goals and accepting that it is taking time for some things to come to pass. I will allow myself to rest and understand that I still have worth even if I don’t achieve all the time.

Even me writing this is a step towards me coming clean about my weaknesses and trying to become comfortable with the idea that all of them will be exposed. If I can recognize that I struggle, if I can recognize that things can take time and setbacks are a part of the learning process, If I can accept that failing is a part of the learning process and come to terms with them, I can reduce my anxiety around them and I can allow myself to perform at my true potential. I get a form of it whenever I start any new activity so, I have started to accept that as it is a new activity technically, I am an imposter but what I am investing in is time and energy to achieve my full potential by the end of it. After a few run-throughs, I can get better at it, and I will learn how to handle things. It will not be perfect, but it will be done.

 Releasing my fears is a step around accepting all the parts of myself as they are without judgment and being proud of myself. Everybody talks about greatness and having main character energy but, the world is made up of regular people going about their lives and doing their best. My life is still unfolding, and I still have to learn and grow but, if I manage to help people in their time of need then that will light up my life and if I string enough of those moments along the way then that will still make life worth living. I don’t worry about how people remember me either because I don’t really think that people think about me that much but, I want to be brave, strong, and honest. I want to be unapologetically me and more than that, be proud of it.