The Only Mind You Can Change Is Your Own
Dealing with Imposter Syndrome
I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember.
While classmates dreamt of being police officers, teachers, and lawyers like their parents, I dreamt of creating worlds and characters from nothing but my imagination. Those were the days when I was constantly scribbling in my notebook, sitting on a bench writing a scene instead of playing at recess, and begging my parents to stay up just a little while longer so I could type up one more chapter on the ancient family computer fixated in the dining room.
I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by age eleven that I was destined to be a novelist and that nothing else in life would ever sate my soul the way putting words to a page did. Students mocked me, teachers suggested I put my book down and engage with my classmates — a teacher even told me reading Shakespeare in the sixth grade would ensure I never made any friends — but I never once thought I should be anything other than what I was: a writer.
So what changed? When did I start to feel like an imposter in the same skin I’d been wearing my whole life? When did the act of writing go from being a joyous experience to one that carried doubt, fear, and self-loathing on its wings?
I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point all those comments about how strange my hobby was started to seep into the corners of my mind like mold. I grew up a little and traded my tiny elementary classroom for a high school with over two thousand students, a transition made worse by the need to use crutches for the foreseeable future. I was constantly on display thanks to the cumbersome walking aids. People would stop to stare as I hobbled past and suddenly I felt like a solitary fish in a kindergarten classroom bowl.
I was more aware of the chatter around me now that my hands were constantly in use propelling me forward instead of clutching a book with a whole world inside I could escape to. Everyone was developing their own labels. Jocks, artsy kids, goth kids, the variety went on and on and on. But I didn’t find any other writers. No one who’s love of literature fueled their creative fires and made them want to do nothing but tap away at computer keys or discuss world-building all day long.
I started to warp my own sense of self to cater to my surroundings. I began to change my own mind and believed less and less that I was meant to be a writer. I was also a smart kid from a driven family, therefore expected to succeed in all things academic. So, when I couldn’t find other writers, I fell into the ‘Smart Kids’ label and stayed there until it felt a little like that first skin I donned so long ago.
I did well in school, I checked all the boxes. I got good grades, always asked to be placed in the most advanced programs possible, and aimed for the highest universities I could. At some point, I changed my own mind about being a writer and said out loud, “I’ll be an editor. Clearly I’m not a writer, but at least I’ll spend my career getting real writers careers started.”
I said it over and over again. “I am an editor.” And like a lot of lies, once repeated enough, it started to take root in reality. The more I said it, the more that voice telling me to wake up every day and write to my hearts content sounded farther and farther away, until it was barely a whisper.
No matter how hard I unintentionally tried, the ember of that fire never truly went out. I always chose the most creative writing exercise, or the artistic approach to a school project, convinced that I had blended these two skins together to create a happy medium for my mind, body, and soul. But the skin always felt itchy, like a sunburn you keep spreading aloe on knowing it won’t make much of a difference because the damage is already done. I was an imposter in my own life.
I could blame the teachers that didn’t push me to write no matter who was commenting on it. I could blame my parents for not nurturing my creativity and instead pushing me to do better in academics. I could blame my classmates who bullied me into believing I wasn’t the very thing that had always felt true to me. But the only person who changed my mind was myself. I convinced myself that writing was the imposition, the cuckoo in the nest. I convinced myself that changing my personality and sense of self would help my find my true calling in life.
After all, no one finds their life’s calling at age eleven right?
I became more and more of an imposter as the years went on. I’d change my likes, dislikes, personality, even my tone of voice for whoever was occupying the same space as me. I grew comfy in this imposter’s skin, bumbling my way through late adolescence, the confusing college years, and then early adulthood. I fell into a job that paid my bills, had nothing to do with anything I studied in school, and for a time I believed I’d live a happy life if I never wrote another word again.
When a contemporary or coworker would ask me what my long term goals in life were — surely there was something beyond corporate hospitality that I wanted to do with the rest of my life — I would chuckle and mumble something about how I once had dreams of being the next J.K. Rowling. They would always nod and say something encouraging like, “You have lots of time to be a writer. You should do that!”
I’d go home at night, turn on the TV, and stare longingly at my laptop as if it would sprout legs and walk over to my lap, open itself, and start typing up the next great American novel. Facing what I knew deep down to be my true self when I had spent so much time developing this imposter’s skin felt like showing up to a loved one’s funeral after a twenty year absence. I would be full of regret, all those lost words I never wrote down, those characters I never let have a voice of their own, the worlds I left crumbling amongst the mold of self-doubt in my mind.
Sometimes, I wonder if I would feel like such an imposter if writing had found me later in life. What if I had just gotten my masters in English or History, become an educator, done the career thing, found it joyless, and then sat down to write my stories? Would I have felt like something was missing, like a puzzle without the last piece, until I sat down and wrote that first story? What if writing never found me at all? Would there have been some other calling? Or would I have continued to live this life I’d designed around a skin that didn’t really belong to me?
Eventually my imposter’s skin started to get itchier and itchier. I was in my mid-twenties now, and floundering. I had friends buying houses, friends getting doctoral degrees, friends starting their own businesses, and discovering their passions for the first time. I knew all the mantras like “life is not a race,” “your finish line is not theirs,” and “it’s never too late to try something new,” but that self-doubt never wavered. I’d changed my mind, and there was no changing it back.
Slowly, I can’t pinpoint when, I began to read again. I don’t know why or when I stopped in the first place. There was the occasional book here and there, vacations filled with tasteless romance novels and murder mysteries set in sleepy towns, but I went from being a voracious reader to someone who read less than twenty books a year.
As I read more, I felt that tiny ember of creativity start to spark for the first time in a long time. That ember turned into a glow, and eventually I heard the first crackle of a log fully on fire. Reading reawakened in me something I thought I’d destroyed a long time ago. A piece of my imposter’s skin started to flake away from my body.
It happened so slowly and all at once, the way I’ve always described falling in love. One day there was a blank page and one day it was full of words I’d strung together all on my own. More and more pieces of my imposter self started to flake away to reveal that first skin, the one I’d never really taken off. Suddenly, it all seemed so foolish. The fact that I’d let all those voices erode my confidence, make me believe I was anything less or different than what I was this whole time.
I’d just finished my third short story when an old friend sat down at the table of my mind. She was an old character, fierce and damaged, with a half-told story about being an imposter I gave up somewhere in the 10th grade. We reacquainted ourselves, as old friends might, like no time had passed at all. I was slightly afraid she would hate me for leaving her half-finished for all these years, but she felt more familiar to me now than she ever had before.
It was like she’d patiently waited for me to grow through my own life so I could understand her more. I wasn’t ready to tell her story back then, but was I truly ready now? We both felt scared, lost in the overgrown neglected gardens of our stories, unable to find our way back to those stepping stones that could lead us somewhere new.
“The only mind you can change is your own.”
I didn’t trust or believe in myself when I started to re-write her story, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I needed to write it anyway, no matter the outcome. It was time to accept that all this bumbling around, all the years of self-doubt, torture, and depression was just me walking through my own garden, trying to find the right stepping stones to lead me somewhere new.
Gone was the regret of years spent without writing, the regret of losing my sense of self and purpose, the regret of disingenuous relationships and jobs that took me far from where I currently stood. Regret left me altogether. What power did it have over me when I finally realized all those moments were leading me back to this place, back to feeling like a writer again.
I still find myself battling with the Imposter Monster, fearful that skin will glom itself back onto me and choke all the creativity out of my being forever. But every day when I get up to put words to paper the monster gets smaller and smaller. There are still days where I feel like the world is going to swallow my voice up and never let me speak again, but I still put words on paper. The words get better, they become more confident. In turn, the words teach me to be more confident in the person who writes them down.
I’ve finally changed my mind once and for all. I am a writer, and there is nothing else in this world that I would want to be.
