On impostor syndrome, gratitude & life

 I'm gradually settling in my late 20s. It's 8:40 am, 3rd May, 2025. I just had a home lab test (a routine blood test) where the sample collector asked for my age and I said, 'twenty-six.' Not seventeen, or eighteen, or even twenty-one; I am twenty-six. A friend I sat beside in school is getting married in 6 days. I'm on the other end of the spectrum now. I visited a neighbour's house last evening, and their daughter is in 8th standard. If I spend 30 seconds to go back in time, I'm almost her age. I'm her. I mean, I was her for a very long time in my life. Thin, young, ambitious, quiet, fascinated by those older bhaiyyas and didis who lived outside, fantasizing a life like theirs, carefully choosing what I say to make them believe that I'm cool and interesting...all of it...the teenage turmoil, the sudden bursts of energy, the liberated creative sprees...and now, without me realizing, I'm this adult who visits home once in 6 months and makes these social visits where little kids look at me and talk to me with wondrous eyes.

I've been home for 18 days now (the longest since COVID) and the lahe lahe culture [check out my caption on this post for reference] has quickly returned to my life (quite a paradox!). I take afternoon naps now. I eat good food that my mom brings to me. I don't have to spend money on anything. I just exist, like I used to, eight years ago. This numbness of activity also brought with it the luxury of time to doomscroll, to go back to my old posts, to revisit social media profiles of faces forgotten in the chaos of survival, and all this brain exercise, particularly that of reading and re-reading my blog posts and Instagram captions, brought back to me all those struggles, joys, tears, triumphs, dejections, and just everything else that defined life two years ago, four years ago, six years ago, or ten years ago. Those captions narrated a story of struggle, a story of longing for a better life, and the story of telling oneself to be content and not be disheartened by comparing one's life with the seemingly flawless life of others. This is in so much contrast to what I feel these days.

Touchwood, my life has improved on a lot of levels. I like to believe that I have love, respect, ambition, and stability in my life right now. But often, when I wear a new outfit, take a trip, buy a gadget, eat at a nice place, or just do what I've always wanted to do, there is a sense of guilt, a fear of an impending remark from someone around, stating how I overspend, how luxurious my life is, how easy everything is for me, or just anything like that that can ruin a happy kid's pumped-up mood. This has been a pattern lately. These little remarks that I know people make unintentionally and without any bitterness in their hearts take me on a guilt ride, and I begin to question my worthiness for it all. The technical term for this is impostor syndrome. It's that quick run back to the main door to cross-check if you've locked it right, that constant need for reassurance and validation despite knowing that you are on the right track, doing the right thing, and deserving of all that you have.

I've been compromising with a lot of things all my life. And I am not here to glorify my struggles. My struggles often seem trivial to me, but being smaller than other people's struggles doesn't negate their role in my life as obstacles. This fact is something I am yet to internalize, but my point of narrating all this today is completely different. I want us to look at a theory I have been believing in since forever, a theory that is almost like a rule of life for many:

Into each life some rain must fall; Some days must be dark and dreary (HW Longfellow)

এক কাল সুখ, এক কাল দুখ

ज़िन्दगी की यही रीत है, हार के बाद ही जीत है

I'd like to believe that for 20-22 years, I lived a strenuous life, and I did consistently work on my thoughts and actions to have the little (not so much) stability I have found now in terms of turmoil. Karma's reward to me for being a good kid. But that being said, it's unfair that I refrain from being out there in my happy era, fearing that the sad times are just around the corner. And that's exactly why I think it's necessary that I come here today and write this. A lot of us live our lives without identifying this constant sense of guilt or self-doubt we experience despite getting things after perhaps the hundredth attempt (and not the first, because nothing ever comes easy to anyone), because no matter who comes and tells us that we are worthy, we somehow choose not to believe them. Another example in point is me in my late teens and early twenties, when everyone told me that I was beautiful and toned, but I chose to believe I was super ugly. Their combined voices of appreciation turned out to be weaker than my overpowering inner critical voice. Five years later, I see an unfit and seemingly ugly version of myself, and I don't feel the difference much because, to my mind, I was always this way. But an occasional glance at old pictures does make me see what others told me then and I didn't believe and I bet that the current version of me that I now (semi)loathe will seem perfect to me in another 5-10 years because this body will have decayed significantly by then and I would cherish all that my body is doing for me now. The technical term for this is: taking things for granted.

And that's another thing we are NEVER supposed to do. Be it human interpersonal bonds or our relationship with ourselves, none of the efforts should ever be taken for granted. Gratefulness is the key to peaceful living. And that brings me to my often unappreciated boyfriend of 9 years. Having spent most of our late teens and early adulthood together, my partner and I have literally seen each other grow through the many phases of life. He has tolerated my 'I gotta pocket full of sunshine' ringtone era, my black nailpaint obsession era, my skinny jeans with a front-open shirt era, my poetry era, my lovelorn era (for Mr. Unattainable ofc), my thin era, my unhealthy era, my content writer era and now my researcher era. Similarly, I've seen his many phases. We casually discuss how we missed our chance at getting to know anyone else because we've spent our youth being committed to just one person and not exploring the many metaphorical fish in the sea. But now, whenever I get a chance to reconnect with old prospects or perhaps interact with those who instantly strike the connection chord, it doesn't take me longer than 5-10 minutes to realise how fortunate I am to have ended up with whom I ended up with. There's perfection in all that occasionally drives me mad, and I think this deserves to be out there, just like all the negative things I frequently dump online. Beauty is prone to the evil eye, but keeping it hidden for too long makes beauty question its beauty; that's when these uncalled-for appreciations come in.

On that note, here is Dreamer Hello posting yet another reflection on life on a workday when she should instead be writing her term paper!

Toodles.