You are an impostor.
Fake it until you break it.
Impostor Syndrome is a term referring to succesful individuals who feel they don’t deserve their success. It’s particularly common amongst highly successful women, partly, I have to believe, because we continue to treat women like shit almost all the time. But generally it’s the persistent sense that your success is down to luck and external factors rather than any merit of your own.
Depression and anxiety look at Impostor Syndrome and ask, “Wouldn’t it be fun if you experienced that not only at work but also in social situations?” And the answer is, yes, it’s a riot.
I first noticed this feeling when I moved from Montreal to Vancouver, and went from being a well-liked exceptional student to an anonymous nerdy (Chinese) fuck up. The shift was a bit jarring. In Montreal I had three friend groups. I performed in the school musicals. I won awards. In Vancouver I had a bad haircut and glasses. You can see where that might have been a problem.
Hey, you’re Chinese, said almost everyone. Prior to moving to Vancouver I’d thought about my ethnicity approximately once, when a boy in a pool called me a chink. I don’t think he even meant to do it; he just reached for a hurtful word and that came out. I shrugged it off and basically never thought about it again. Montreal, at the time, was a multiethnic hodge podge and our little English enclave in Pointe-Claire basically banded together in non-French solidarity.
Ironically, it wasn’t until I was surrounded by Chinese people that my race became an issue. You’re Chinese – you must be good at math. (I was pretty good at math, but base-6 totally flumoxed me.) You’re Chinese – no wonder you need glasses. (I thought it was reading in the dark.) You’re Chinese – here is that food you love. (Is this… a vegetable made into meat?) And that was just the Chinese people.
Except, I didn’t feel Chinese. I felt Canadian. I played hockey. I ate maple syrup. I spoke half-assed French. But by looking mostly Chinese and wearing glasses and being an acceptably if somewhat bafflingly above-average student, I was thoroughly placed in, what at the time felt like, exile with the rest of my Oriental brethren.
There is something very odd about being told you’re something you don’t feel. People do this a lot. “You’re angry,” they’ll say, and when you protest they’ll reply, “Hey, don’t be angry!” It’s like someone asking why your leg hurts, you saying it doesn’t, and then hitting you with a crowbar. So in time, despite not feeling Chinese at all, I became entirely Chinese. The strangest part was when my academic abilities were tied to my race. In Montreal, I was just smart. In Vancouver, I was one of those smart Chinese people. It was fucking weird.
All of this wrecked havoc on my social confidence. I had my first real kiss when I was 9. I wouldn’t kiss someone again until I was 15. Maybe that seems like no big deal, but at 9 I assumed the future would be a series of increasingly passionate kisses, not a self-esteem wasteland where, as the Chinese guy, I had no chance of ever kissing anyone, ever. (I wrote about the lack of sexy Asian leads in Hollywood movies here.)
Eventually a thought started to creep in, and once it did it basically set up house and never left: No one actually likes being around you. I would guess most people have thoughts like this, maybe fairly regularly. It’s part of being a modern human. Put enough people together in enough different situations, as cities constantly do, and some of those people are going to feel a little unsteady about it. I’d go so far as to call it normal, as in, generally the case.
It doesn’t really become a problem until you link “no one really likes me” to “I shouldn’t exist”, and your thoughts turn into an armour against genuine human affection. Then you’re digging a hole, filling it with water, and holding your own head in it. Every social interaction is a puzzle, like Tetris, where you try and piece together evidence that people want you to be there into something solid. And I suck at Tetris.
When I discovered people thought I was funny I tried to be funny all the time. When I saw some people found my thoughts on life interesting I tried to have ALL THE THOUGHTS. Poetry was a big win and suddenly I’m writing poems on the bus and handing them out to strangers. (There’s a nicely awkward story on that one you can ask me about.) People like to drink? I like to drink! Look how much I love to party! Look how much I love Jesus!
Look! Look! Look! I am one of you and belong! Accept me!
Eventually none of these tactics could keep the thought in the forest. So I settled on a new one – form incredibly unhealthy intimate relationships, aka Operation Make People Fall In Love With Me. Unhealthy in the sense that they weren’t based on mutual care and affection clearly leading to a supportive relationship, but rather the singular desire of one party to use that affection as a giant, human-shaped bandaid.
For years I styled this behaviour out as “that’s just who I am”. Just a poetry/song writing, long walk taking, building your dreams around you nice guy. And I guess there’s a version of that where you are just a nice guy, but in my version I was not. I was clearly, undeniably an asshole. A not owning my own shit, mental illness what mental illness, flaming asshole.
You burn a lot of bridges doing this. Some beautiful, incredible bridges. But as long as you keep building new ones you don’t notice, not until you’re on a disconnected island and there are so many burning bridges the island is on fire and you’re on fire and it’s all fire.
Amazingly, some of these bridges still exist in my life, and connect parts of me that I thought long destroyed. This is pure luck.
I didn’t realise any of this until very recently, after a series of unfortunate and yet somehow timely events made it impossible to ignore. There was a fork in the road. On one side, you’re an asshole. On the other side, maybe you’re not an asshole. I chose the asshole less certain. We’ll see.
