An Attempt to Lift My Superficial Mask

I have a difficult time fully expressing my positive qualities and suspect that many others may feel the same. Admitting that there are aspects of ourselves that are redeemable, if not impressive, sometimes feels a bit egotistical.

Even deeper within this problem is the concept of imposter syndrome. No matter how well I do in life, no matter what I accomplish, there still exists an aspect inside that believes I don’t actually deserve it. It feels like I’ve tricked everyone into believing I deserve whatever I have and I am terribly afraid they’ll find out I don’t.

Graduating from college soon I worry that I didn’t actually do enough to get to where I am. I feel as though I should have done… more? Or maybe I never did anything at all in the first place?

I worry some official person (whoever that may be) is going to, one day, knock on my door and tell me that they know I am a fraud. They will take away my college diploma and I’ll have to live on the streets. Or something. I don’t know.

Maybe I cannot accept that aspects of myself are positive. I feel okay praising someone I admire for all that makes them amazing, but doing so for myself feels completely unnatural. And I don’t think it matters how incredibly smart or talented someone may be; they might still have difficulties with feeling like an imposter.

I think this all stems from having a difficult time fully assessing myself as a person. I cannot ever objectively see what is good nor bad about myself. I think I know myself, but the judgements I have are likely to be inaccurate. Or in the least, these judgements may be exaggerations which give me a skewed version of who I am.

How can we find a way to objectively understand how we are, from an outsider’s perspective, if we are always living with ourselves? Are the judgements of others more objective than our own judgements of ourselves? Or are they also just another version of skewed perception?

Perhaps this is why we care so much about what others think about us. We believe that they know us better than we know ourselves. We let their judgements form the basis of our personalities. We worry about showing others the negative aspects of ourselves, but maybe also the extremely positive aspects at the same time. From these interactions, those around us don’t really know who we are either. They only know the little we choose to share.

We go out in public with a mask. This mask maybe contains certain parts of who we truly are; but it is thin and superficial. We cover our faces with this mask everyday. Others expect us to be a certain way, based on their perception of who we are, and we follow suit. We take all of the weird, interesting, amazing and terrible parts of ourselves and simplify them, creating a thin facade, while continuously fearing that this facade may eventually rip and they’ll all know it’s not real.

Maybe we hide the positive aspects so much that they don’t make themselves apparent to outsiders. Or maybe outsiders see them, and we are really bad at creating this mask. Maybe the mask is not really for others, but for ourselves.

If we create a mask and stick to it, we won’t need to dig deeper into ourselves. Digging deeper is hard. Sometimes you find really ugly parts, those parts that we promise to never let ourselves look at. But, in doing so, we also prevent ourselves from seeing the beautiful parts.

Maybe ugly and beauty are one in the same. One could not exist without the other. If nothing is ugly, we can never know that which is truly beautiful. Maybe if we accept that we are ugly sometimes, a fuller, more accurate picture of who we are will emerge. Through it all, humans are complicated. Experiencing the depth of who we are will be uncomfortable and painful at times, but what is life without a little bit of suffering along the way?