my dreams came true, but so did the imposter syndrome

 i've worked incredibly hard for as long as i can remember. i tried to perfect my color-by-numbers in kindergarten. i asked my grandma to help me knit an entire stuffed teddy bar as big as my torso in second grade. i practiced the multiplication tables at home in fourth grade for weeks to impress my teacher and pass the test with flying colors.

there really was no reason back then. and maybe there still isn't. everyone looks for self-motivation, drive, ambition, a work ethic, the way that showdog owners look for the perfectly bred, big-eyed, curly haired puppy to groom and snip and trot to perfection. 

and i had all these things–the coveted discipline and the need to pursue perfection all the time, in anything i did–because i am a showdog. i am a rat in the race, and i can't tell how early on i became this. there is nothing particularly wrong with it, because i set some goals and worked hard to achieve them. the cruel joke is that i got exactly what i wanted and i am happy, but the imposter syndrome and the confusion and the why and the disillusionment strike like a scythe, culling down the ethic i worked so hard to cultivate and harvest over the course of the past decades. 

i'm overburdened and tired and everyone says it is within my control but if it was, then it would have been fixed. i'm exhausted and sleeping through the classes that i worked so hard to get into and that my family is working so hard to pay for and it does not feel like it is in my control, from an insider. i am happy all the time, i truly am. and it may sound like i am almost in the clear but still held back by a slice of the bounds of denial that dig into my skin when i strain against it but i am. i am happy here. it was worth it. but is it worth it any longer? 

i will work hard for as long as i live. maybe not as hard as i once worked, because i have become jaded and exhausted at this young age. maybe because i am a little burnt out. but that can be sorted. i will heal and bounce back with the force of a hurricane, tackling everything in my way because i have trained myself to find solace in pain and sulking for mere moments–long enough to write a message like this–and then to jump rearing back into the tumultuous ocean of neverending work. i will climb that glacier as it melts by the force of my energy, and i will redeem myself before falling back into tiredness.

i hope to break that cycle. but it is how i succeed the most, and success has always brought me great joy. not contentment, never contentment. but joy. it's easier to exist in the limbo of extreme emotion when one does not know how it feels to simply be content.