![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquill[formerly filtered to ic]
I wonder whether I'll ever cure myself of impostor syndrome. Or whether it's possible to do so without turning into someone I don't like.
It's not that I don't feel like I'm good enough. I think I managed to banish that for good this year, and my confidence is still pretty solid. What I do well, I do well, and what I don't, I give the ol' college try, and that's sufficient.
It's that I'm hiding something. And that something is who I really am.
Maybe this is what it feels like to be a closeted gay in an unfriendly society. Constant vigilance, not letting my guard down so that I can just be spontaneously me without fear of repercussions. I used to get some of it at UC Davis, except that I didn't feel like there was a heck of a lot of risk to having my classmates look at me a little sideways when I waxed enthusiastic about a plasma torch made out of bacon. It's okay to be eccentric in academia, and geeks have a decent reputation in the public eye. I was a little odd, but that was okay, as long as I didn't mind being somewhat isolated. That was just being a geek, which isn't even close to the full picture.
I grew up fearing that no one would like me if I didn't have something to offer them. I had thought I beat that, but now that I'm looking to expand my tiny social circle, it's rearing its head again. When I reach out to the old friends I do still have and hear nothing back, it mutters at me. I have plenty of things to offer these days, but it still exposes a harsh perception of myself: that my intrinsic desirability is small, or possibly negative. Without my skills and items of cred, I'm not someone anybody wants.
I have a decent self-esteem most of the time, but it's based on my own observations that I have intelligence, a good attitude, a sensible nature, all qualities I can point to and label "desirable". I've worked hard to develop them (at least partly to gain acceptance). They help me fit into the circles I like to run in. I have the cultural references, the rational fundamentals, the accepted earmarks of geek culture, which has given me something of a clan. It's good to feel like you're part of a group where people laugh at your jokes.
Beneath that self-identification, beneath the cultivated social and physical skills which I present as my credentials, there is me. And I think I'm still terrified of what would happen if most people really knew what was down there. What I'm like in the dark, when there's no mask left.
Those I trust the most, the ones I can let my guard down with, are people who have known me the longest. Before my control was this good, before I had built up a wall of geek creds to hide behind. I figure if they could be scared off, they would have been long ago. Some of the more recent ones, the people I've only known for twenty years, give me a sidelong look when I let my facade slip too far; when I let the black beast show, and the leash that holds it in check. Because that's what's at the heart of my self, the deep dichotomy between my passions and my rational pragmatism. And, just like the dirty underbelly of mental illness, most people don't want to see that kind of raw elemental structure in the people they know.
I'm seeking out new people to see whether I can call them friends, but it's all just on that same surface level, more people who have no idea what I'm really like. And I continue to be lonely and isolated, for the same reasons that closeted gays are. Because I can't shake the feeling that if I let them see underneath, they'd run for the hills... and even after we've known each other for a while, the person they know is my surface self, and they might not take it well if I turned out not to be quite the person they thought I was all this time.
So I feel like an impostor in my own life, and I have no idea how to present myself more sincerely to the world, because I don't think most people have ever experienced what I have tucked away. Because the people who are like this do keep it tucked away, or become famously driven people, or go insane, or get addicted to drugs. None of the alternatives say "solid dependable friend". I can be a solid dependable friend, but I know that in their shoes I'd be worried about that black beast rearing its head and throwing everything out the window. I used to worry about that too.
Maybe I need to associate more with artists and musicians, but a lot of them aren't solid dependable friend material. :)
The most intimate relationship I currently have is with a man who becomes deeply uncomfortable whenever the beast comes to light. I figured out that this was the answer to why he thinks I'm angry when I'm not, thinks I'm shouting when I'm not, has no idea what to do when I'm really truly hurting, and thinks I'm absurd when I express real happiness. I have to leave the guards up with him. I have to leave the guards up with my mother, because doing otherwise would be a breach of etiquette (when I do slip she takes it in stride, at least). There are two people I can think of that I can let my guard down with, if only for a moment, and I've seen each of them for a handful of minutes, and never alone, in the last six months to a year.
To think I was wondering why I'm in so much pain lately.
I let my guard down with strangers at Burning Man, which is why I feel so peaceful afterward. I wonder whether there's an OKCupid equivalent for local Burners? I might have better luck there, if I can sift through the sparkle ponies and flakes.
I'm tired of pretending. I'm tired of editing. I'm tired of dimming my emotions to "acceptable" levels. I'm tired of hiding my flashes of inspiration under a bucket. I'm tired of putting up a good front all the time. I'm tired of seeming not to care. I'm tired of being politic. I'm tired of passing for normal.
I'm just... tired.
I wonder whether I'll ever cure myself of impostor syndrome. Or whether it's possible to do so without turning into someone I don't like.
It's not that I don't feel like I'm good enough. I think I managed to banish that for good this year, and my confidence is still pretty solid. What I do well, I do well, and what I don't, I give the ol' college try, and that's sufficient.
It's that I'm hiding something. And that something is who I really am.
Maybe this is what it feels like to be a closeted gay in an unfriendly society. Constant vigilance, not letting my guard down so that I can just be spontaneously me without fear of repercussions. I used to get some of it at UC Davis, except that I didn't feel like there was a heck of a lot of risk to having my classmates look at me a little sideways when I waxed enthusiastic about a plasma torch made out of bacon. It's okay to be eccentric in academia, and geeks have a decent reputation in the public eye. I was a little odd, but that was okay, as long as I didn't mind being somewhat isolated. That was just being a geek, which isn't even close to the full picture.
I grew up fearing that no one would like me if I didn't have something to offer them. I had thought I beat that, but now that I'm looking to expand my tiny social circle, it's rearing its head again. When I reach out to the old friends I do still have and hear nothing back, it mutters at me. I have plenty of things to offer these days, but it still exposes a harsh perception of myself: that my intrinsic desirability is small, or possibly negative. Without my skills and items of cred, I'm not someone anybody wants.
I have a decent self-esteem most of the time, but it's based on my own observations that I have intelligence, a good attitude, a sensible nature, all qualities I can point to and label "desirable". I've worked hard to develop them (at least partly to gain acceptance). They help me fit into the circles I like to run in. I have the cultural references, the rational fundamentals, the accepted earmarks of geek culture, which has given me something of a clan. It's good to feel like you're part of a group where people laugh at your jokes.
Beneath that self-identification, beneath the cultivated social and physical skills which I present as my credentials, there is me. And I think I'm still terrified of what would happen if most people really knew what was down there. What I'm like in the dark, when there's no mask left.
Those I trust the most, the ones I can let my guard down with, are people who have known me the longest. Before my control was this good, before I had built up a wall of geek creds to hide behind. I figure if they could be scared off, they would have been long ago. Some of the more recent ones, the people I've only known for twenty years, give me a sidelong look when I let my facade slip too far; when I let the black beast show, and the leash that holds it in check. Because that's what's at the heart of my self, the deep dichotomy between my passions and my rational pragmatism. And, just like the dirty underbelly of mental illness, most people don't want to see that kind of raw elemental structure in the people they know.
I'm seeking out new people to see whether I can call them friends, but it's all just on that same surface level, more people who have no idea what I'm really like. And I continue to be lonely and isolated, for the same reasons that closeted gays are. Because I can't shake the feeling that if I let them see underneath, they'd run for the hills... and even after we've known each other for a while, the person they know is my surface self, and they might not take it well if I turned out not to be quite the person they thought I was all this time.
So I feel like an impostor in my own life, and I have no idea how to present myself more sincerely to the world, because I don't think most people have ever experienced what I have tucked away. Because the people who are like this do keep it tucked away, or become famously driven people, or go insane, or get addicted to drugs. None of the alternatives say "solid dependable friend". I can be a solid dependable friend, but I know that in their shoes I'd be worried about that black beast rearing its head and throwing everything out the window. I used to worry about that too.
Maybe I need to associate more with artists and musicians, but a lot of them aren't solid dependable friend material. :)
The most intimate relationship I currently have is with a man who becomes deeply uncomfortable whenever the beast comes to light. I figured out that this was the answer to why he thinks I'm angry when I'm not, thinks I'm shouting when I'm not, has no idea what to do when I'm really truly hurting, and thinks I'm absurd when I express real happiness. I have to leave the guards up with him. I have to leave the guards up with my mother, because doing otherwise would be a breach of etiquette (when I do slip she takes it in stride, at least). There are two people I can think of that I can let my guard down with, if only for a moment, and I've seen each of them for a handful of minutes, and never alone, in the last six months to a year.
To think I was wondering why I'm in so much pain lately.
I let my guard down with strangers at Burning Man, which is why I feel so peaceful afterward. I wonder whether there's an OKCupid equivalent for local Burners? I might have better luck there, if I can sift through the sparkle ponies and flakes.
I'm tired of pretending. I'm tired of editing. I'm tired of dimming my emotions to "acceptable" levels. I'm tired of hiding my flashes of inspiration under a bucket. I'm tired of putting up a good front all the time. I'm tired of seeming not to care. I'm tired of being politic. I'm tired of passing for normal.
I'm just... tired.
