An Imposter

Imposter

As a “writer” I call myself to be, I’m always stuck after a few chapters, I cannot move forward, the words that once flowed through me at the start of the book, slowly evaporates and becomes draught. I have the idea, I know the beginning, middle and the end of my story, the story I want to write, the story I want the world to read and cherish like I do about most of the authors, I want to be them and yet I’m stuck.

It makes me wonder what if I am not who I portray myself to be, what if I’m not the writer I made everyone believe, including myself . What if the ideas that spark, the chapters I write are only a temporary spark in my creativity that dims as fast as it sparked.

People call this imposter syndrome, the phase where you feel like you’re not good enough, you’re never good enough. Everything you do feels mid, despite the warm compliments you receive from your friends and family about the thing you created, you always feel like anyone else can do it too, that your work is nothing special, you are nothing special. While everyone else thinks your work to be something good, something great, you feel it to be something mid, something anyone could write. You think to yourself you could’ve written it better, you could’ve, would’ve, should’ve been better.

At that moment you feel like a fraud. You feel like you’re fooling everyone who believes in you, including yourself. You feel guilty for leading them on into believing something you know you can't give them, guilty for something you thought you could do but ended up failing miserably. 

The feeling of being a failure, being an imposter, being a fraud gnaws you, rips you apart and tears down every single hope you had held on for so long. You see your dream falling apart right in front of you but you can’t do anything because it’s your fault that your dream is being torn apart. 

Listening to your friends and family encourage you and tell you that you are enough, that they genuinely love your work, a part of you feels happy listening to them, the other part of you though, refuses to believe it. It tells you that they’re lying, that you’re not enough, your work is mid, you’re not who they think you to be. It kills you inside out and all it takes is one flick, you crumble. You break, break, and break until there’s no part of you left to break. You fall into this black hole where there is no hope left inside you. You don’t believe anything good anyone says about you, the voices in your head grow loud and you give in, you believe those voices.

It takes a lot of strength and courage to get out of the black hole, to find something that gives you hope to hold on to. Something that will make you feel that you’re not the imposter, you’re not a fraud, you’re not not enough. 

When you find it, grab it with both your hands and hold on to it. You’re stronger than the black hole. Believe in yourself before you make others believe in you because, one day you’ll turn back and realize that you weren’t an imposter after all, you were just stuck.

To everyone who relates with me, hang in there, it’s just a phase. YOU are not an imposter, YOU are not a fraud and YOU ARE ENOUGH.