How Being Authentic Makes You Belong More than Perfection Ever Will
Sharing my existential crisis grounded me in my identity
Something surprising happened when I stopped sugarcoating who I was.
I wasn’t lying necessarily. Just not letting on that my life wasn’t perfect. That things weren’t going according to plan.
I was worried about being judged, criticized. Laughed out of the room.
What happened was the opposite. I found my people.
“So, tell me about yourself.”
You hear it in interviews, at parties, on first dates, writing a bio.
This question paralyzes me. I go into the downward spiral of an existential crisis.
Who am I??
Are they asking you about your hobbies, where you live, your favorite ice cream flavor?
I wish. No, they’re asking about your job. You know what the expectation is. They’re taking a microscope to your entire life. Using this one isolated piece of information to make assumptions about who you are. Your value. Whether it’s worth even continuing the conversation.
It gets a little more complicated when you don’t have one.
Unemployed. Fired. Haven’t really figured things out yet. Starting a business but not really in business yet.
I’ve been every single one of those things. And it was mortifying.
How much of yourself do you have to reveal? When all you want to do is hide.
I panic and tell the sweet story that ties everything into a neat little bow.
I was content with the box this story put me in. Smart. Professional. Has her shit together.
There was an emptiness within me. A frailty. An ugliness that was covered up with a hastily painted lacquer.
I struggle to dig deeper into the specifics of my background. It’s so personal. Raw.
My history is a series of false starts and unfulfilled dreams. Some not necessarily my own.
I was supposed to be a doctor. I mean, I am a doctor. But I don’t actually do the doctoring.
It’s hard to take care of other people when you are sick.
Red hot lightning bolts shot through my body without warning. Swelling. Weakness. Deformity. I went from being a 3-sport varsity athlete to not being able to lift a glass of water or walk.
Don’t tell anyone. It’s not a big deal. Just keep going.
I fought through. Pressured to become someone important. Valuable.
I pushed and pushed and struggled and barely made it through. At the end, there was nothing left.
I hated being a doctor.
I hated it even more as a patient seeing both sides of the equation. The ultra-competitive, over-intellectualized, soul-sucking rote, bureaucratic nature of it. Everyone was so. damn. miserable.
You’re not supposed to say that, though. It’s such a noble profession. Don’t sully it with the truth.
So I mostly kept it bottled up. I chalked it up to it “not being the right fit.” That still brought questions, but I could easily deflect or change the topic.
Everything is great! I’m fine.
I got another degree, in the Ivy League at that, but still felt inadequate.
Because now I had two graduate degrees and I landed in the middle of the recession without a job. All that education but no real-world experience. Unemployable.
I could lean on those achievements as the shiny objects distracting from the harsh reality.
I’m just looking for the right opportunity!
(Read: I was desperate to fill the ever-widening gap on my resume.)
I got a job that completely underutilized my talents. My boss was a toxic nightmare and I got fired.
Meanwhile, updates came in about my medical school classmates. Getting great jobs, publishing, making it big. I skipped our reunion.
I pivoted, reinvented myself. Into one industry, and then another.
Finally, the dream job came along. It brought together all the disjointed pieces. Connected the dots. I was elated, sharing the news far and wide. I couldn’t wait to hold the elusive success I had been chasing. Celebration ensued.
Everyone loves a story of triumph, a happy ending.
The job lasted only 7 months.
A failure. A fraud. A phony. An imposter.
The seams holding me together were strained beyond capacity. The threads gave way. I burst open.
I had no choice but to tell my truth.
I was spinning. There was nothing left in me. I had no idea what to do with my life. I was supposed to be the smart one. I’d gotten fired more than once. I was traumatized. Bullied. Broken.
I laid my shame on the table like a smorgasbord. Here I am. Go ahead. Judge away.
It didn’t happen the way I feared.
People started approaching me with their own stories.
Health issues invisible to the public. Terrible work environments. Wanting to quit the thing they despised but feeling like they’d invested too much to follow their real dream. Setbacks. Struggles that they, too, had hidden.
The same as me.
I felt seen. My rawness connected me to the people who needed to know they were not alone.
I built community around the things I would normally hide.
The culture of perfectionism is a mask, forcing us to wallow in shame and self-doubt.
Sharing your identity is about telling your story. Embracing your whole self. Not just the gold stars but the skinned knees and dried up tears.
THAT story? The one with the hard edges and the flaws and the mistakes? Where you figure your shit out and move forward and survive? That’s the one that people want to hear.
Because when you do, you find your people. You experience belonging. You’re finally part of something bigger than yourself.
Instead of fitting yourself into a box, you’re creating a whole new damn box — and inviting others to join you.
Perfectly imperfect. Real.
