fraudulent

“I don’t know if you feel this too, but sometimes I feel like who I am now is a fraud. What if the growth I’ve attempted has been a lie? What if I’m the same person I now despise? And I think that part of us never dies. We simply learn to tame it. Surround ourselves by “better” people by also wanting to be better.”

There’s so much to unpack in such a small paragraph.

Rather than directly analyzing it, I’d like to start with a story.

When I was younger, I used to write really serious things, like stories about depression and death, my first published story was for my schools newsletter and it was literally just a conversation between a man and his therapist. The last award I won for writing was a story about a kid who went to work in a professional kitchen.

The first story took me weeks to hone, edit and finally after enough drafts publish. The latter, well it took me 40 minutes to write, and I didn’t even bother editing it when I got shortlisted, I just won.

Mind you… Back then. I thought I had something to say, I thought that only I understood this existential angst. That I was the only one who possessed the ability to see the worlds pain. I thought that I was broken beyond repair, not because I had destroyed myself then… that came much later but because I always found closeness in writing stories associated with some sort of pain. Where most writers are introduced to the world of literature by writing children’s stories, short works of fiction, adventure or even sci-fi… I met this world through writing about suicide, death, rape, infanticide, self-harm, torture etc. Later moving on to writing erotic novels as a profession. I only recently found out that I too could maybe, potentially… write stories that are just simply enjoyable, not because of the impact they leave but because of the giggles that they cause. I guess that’s why I struggle now with writing light pieces, though the dark ones drain my pens dry.

So then I’ll ask myself a question. Was I a fraud then? or am I a fraud now?

I hadn’t found substance abuse back then. I just had this pain in my heart that needed to be shared. I felt sad and I thought that, that was the default. Now after it all, after addiction, perseverance, sobriety, I now am learning to write and share the feelings I feel. The feelings of joy, empathy, kindness, satisfaction, contentment, love … and on and on… Does that mean that I am a fraud? That I am not staying true to myself?

Of course not. I don’t believe that for a second. People change, at the end of the day we all change, some later than others but we all do. My writing style, my tone, my decisions in what the plot line will be, they all stem from who I am in the present, though the past is never alienated. It is who I am, it made me just as I will make the future. Therefore calling myself a fraud is not fair, not to myself now or the past me. Definitely not to who I aim to be proud to finally be.

To my partner who brought those initial questions up:

What if the growth you’ve attempted has been a lie? What if you’re still the same person who does bad shit or dumb shit and manages to get away with it because you smile too brightly, or you look too fucking pretty?

Well then that’s pretty bad. We can be honest with each other.

Though that wasn’t the real question or the way you wanted me to interpret it, I believe you meant for me to understand that you meant, “what if I have been lying to myself about all the progress I’ve made?”

To that I have a phenomenal answer.

There’s two parts to it.

The first is, I’m sure the people around you don’t think that. I’m sure your chosen family know you better than you do at times. That’s not to say you don’t know yourself very well, but that’s just to say that sometimes we tend to not look at ourselves with our own eyes but those of someone who is designed to belittle us, weirdly enough we are the ones that design that fucker. So on the days you truly feel like you haven’t progressed. I’ll ask you to ask yourself one question, do you think your friends would be your friends if you were a piece of garbage?

The second part, boo-hoo bitch. You’re my good girl.

The second question that caught my interest, “what if I’m the same person I now despise?”

To be honest this is something I struggle with. The sheer amount of disgust and hatred I have for my past self constantly leads me to doubt who I am even today. It’s almost like no matter what I do, I can never shake him.

So we don’t shake the person we now despise. Rather we realize that life was never about making enemies, nor being hateful. Life was about embracing the weak and helping them become strong. The only way to do that is to first become strong. So rather than despising the old you, how about we give her a huge hug. Tell her that. “hey shit ended up working out and things are looking up.” She was weak so you could learn what strength is, I was pathetic so I could learn what courage is. Unfortunately, sometimes in order to become something strong you have to first break thousands of time. So you are still the same person you now despise. It’s just that you aren’t just that person. You’re the person that needs the hug, but now you’re also the person who gives the hug. You’re still the person who cared for people’s opinions too much, but now you’re the person who knows which people to actually hear.

You got this yeah.

I don’t think and this is where we disagree a bit. Maybe we don’t, maybe it’s just linguistics. I don’t think people are better than others. I’m also not someone who believes people are less fucked up. I’m not someone who believes any metric used to compare people ever holds value. We are all humans. We all worry, we all stress, we all eat that piece of chocolate on the counter, it’s just some have discipline and some are learning to. I don’t think you or I surround ourselves with better people because we want to be better, but rather I think we change as the tide at night, we recede into a calm and composed self. We grow as the day turns to night, and we open space, allow the beach to extend. Allow room for people to explore deeper without fear of being taken by our tide.
I think at some point, you only surround yourself with people you like and if you’re really lucky then the ones that want you to surround them are the ones you really like.

Thanks for letting me surround you.