A Bittersweet Epiphany
In this extract from my work-in-progress second novel, Andrew discovers the source of his impostor syndrome.
Each of us has a moment when we’re in the spotlight, on top of the tree, breasting the tape and looking back or down as the rest of the world catches up. For some of us that means being first in line for a water pump after walking through the night to an arid and stinking crossroad; for others, it’s the one time they’re able to stand and ask ‘what’s everyone drinking’ instead of waiting until a few have gone home and the rest have slowed down and will only want a half to top up their final pint. But whatever your circumstances, I am convinced there will come a time – it may only happen once, so be sure to enjoy it – when you don’t feel embarrassed to share the same space as the younger, wiser, richer, healthier, better looking, more successful, community minded, more fulfilled, happier person who for some inexplicable and, of course, unlikely reason has decided to call you their friend.
This morning I experienced a Proustian moment which became a bittersweet epiphany upon hearing a middle-aged comedian refer to his BAGA badges on one of those middle-aged podcasts to which I have of late become addicted. This took me back to a pair of washed-out blue cotton shorts which in the 1970s will have been as brief as memory suggests. The waist elastic was stretched and withered, but as I have no memory of jeering classmates – not in relation to the shorts – I assume they never fell loose and settled around my ankles as I stood to perform a forward roll or waited my turn to attempt the vault.
The crucial fact about the shorts is that they weren’t mine; they were what we called hand-me-downs, which was the first problem. These days, in an attempt (a pointless one, I suspect, and doomed to failure) to spare blushes and indignities and to distract antagonists, the preferred expressions are pre-used or pre-worn. Hand-me-downs bore the stain of poverty in my childhood, even though most of us wore them and some items, like the metallic red racer with white wall tyres and gears I inherited from my brother, would have passed as new if your friends hadn’t seen it flashing around the neighbourhood the day before it came in to your possession.
Like the bike, and my Cub Scout cap and jumper (and garters) the shorts had belonged to my brother. But unlike the thick green jersey, from which my sibling’s many badges had been unpicked hours before my debut in front of the pack, the Stage One and Two British Amateur Gymnastics Association badges had not been removed from the faded cotton shorts. And this returns me to this morning’s jarring realisation about the source of my impostor syndrome: those fucking badges. I was never going to be a gymnast and I knew it; I would have pulled them off myself if they hadn’t been sewn on so well, but I would never have asked Mum to remove them. Did she leave them there for a reason, or was she too pushed for time? I was eight or nine years old, for Christ’s sake, and even then I was second guessing motives. But hey, as I used to say to Dr. Robinson, I’m nowhere near ready to go into that. I used the same line with Sally, but I’m nowhere near ready to go into that either. You see how these things snowball?
What I’m trying to say is that my name is Andrew and I’m an impostor. I’ll wager you are too, because we all are. At certain points in my life I have been fortunate enough to occupy the top place on the podium and for the rest of the time I’ve been winging it. Only, it turns out that some of us wing it better than others; there is more than one podium, so to speak, and I have conquered this shadow-world, this alternative dimension where bluffers and mountebanks can pass for decent and successful human beings. The trick is to fool yourself before you attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of those around you.
The mistake I made – the biggest one – was in thinking it would last forever.
The problem with pretence is that at some point it moves from second nature to primary instinct. The lines between the person you are and the person you would like to be comingle to such an extent that your life is no longer a lie. Or perhaps you’re in so deep that the lie has become your version of the truth and a much more palatable one than that which came before. At which point, if you had the nous or courage, you might ask, what was wrong with me in the first place? Why did I need to change?
Con-fucking-gratulations to those amongst us who are content with their lot.
Because I call dissatisfaction what others would describe as ambition; or vice versa. To look at it in biblical terms, somewhere along the way I was cursed or condemned to wander the earth, or my little patch of it, in search of I’ll-never- know-what. I stumbled upon friendship and after a thousand false starts and as many dead ends I unearthed and misplaced a soul mate. Never once did I think I was worthy of any of it, even though, as Fred, my ailing friend, likes to point out, everyone apart from me had accepted I was good enough. Perhaps it’s that word: enough. If only I could defeat my ego once and for all and settle for being sufficient.
But there are times when enough is enough; when the inexpressible subtext runs deep: ‘I’ve tried so hard to be good enough for you,’ for example; or ‘you’re more than good enough for me’; or ‘no one has ever come close to being good enough’; and ‘your good enough is too much’. Why could I never say any of this to Sally? This all seems so obvious, now that it’s too late. Why? Because the best I could do was a passable impersonation of someone who was good enough for the one person who was so much more than good enough for me.