I’ve done it, I’ve solved Imposter Syndrome.
I haven’t cured it. And, no, I haven’t really solved it. I just can… explain it? Maybe? For me? I don’t know. Maybe it’s all meaningless garbage.
And to be clear, in this case, I’m talking (mostly) about that form of Imposter Syndrome involving membership in marginalized groups, not the older (original) form involving “I’m just not smart/skilled/whatever enough to be here in this career.”
Anyway, I lost my eye when I was a year old. I have no conscious memories of having two eyes. So it took me a long time to consider myself “disabled” because I’m just me. I don’t know what it’s like to be able to see in stereo, or to easily see things to the left of me, and this reality is as natural for me as most of your realities of being able to use both your eyes.
I mean, yes, of course I’m disabled, by which I mean, my left eye is as disabled as anything could possibly get. Kaput. Broken. Probably long destroyed. I hope it’s not in a jar somewhere, just staring out into the world, wondering why its brain hasn’t been talking to it for 54 years.
Oof.
Anyway.
The point here is… well, I think I made that point. I don’t know any other reality, so being one-eyed isn’t weird to me. Being TWO-eyed is weird to me.
And so back to the Imposter Syndrome. I think when we label something, we parcel it up. We have characteristics for it. We have a “this” and a “not this”, and when we go from being a “not this” to a “this”, I feel like something should change. Like a Magic Fairy should appear from somewhere and whack me upside the head and I’d see stars and then I’d be “this” now.
That never happened.
The cultural default doesn’t feel like a club the way that the marginal groups do. The cultural defaults actively resist being clubs: They’re not “straight” or “Allistic” or “cisgender”, they’re just “normal”. They’ve mostly accepted “straight”, but boy howdy are they ever fighting over “cisgender”. Because they don’t feel like anything in particular, they just feel like them.
But that’s me, too. I just feel like me. I don’t feel like part of any particular club, just like I don’t feel physically disabled. I haven’t changed who I am, I’ve accepted who I am. I’m a me. Why do I have to carry around nametags to clubs just because I’m not the cultural default?
The names we give our own clubs are nicer than the ones other people give them, but it still feels odd to have to be called something.
So, no Magic Fairy, no grand transition. Some transgender people do have medical transitions, but I don’t even know how it would feel to want, let alone need, to do that. But I respect that other people do feel that need, because… they’re not me. Their reality is different from mine.
Mainstream society doesn’t let us just “be” if we’re not part of the default. We have to announce ourselves, we have to glom together with others in our club. Because other people Won’t Understand Us.
Plus, there’s an aspect to not being enough. I spent decades of my life not being enough: Not man enough. Not normal enough. Not… whatever enough. So accepting these new labels, these new mantels, doesn’t mean instantly shedding this notion of “not enough”.
I said this would “mostly” be about the one sort of Imposter Syndrome, but I think this is where the other sort ties in. I’m not “smart enough” because my level of understanding is natural to me; when others struggle with things that come naturally to me, it’s easy to conclude that I must be missing something. It can’t possibly be this easy. I’m screwing something up, certainly.
But, I’m not, and I’m who I am. Is that enough? The only one who can decide that is me.