Do you ever feel like you're faking it? No, not IT, get your mind out of the gutter! I mean in general! Life. Do you ever feel like you're faking life? That one day everyone around you is going to wake up and realize who the real you is? That they won't like that real you? That everyone around you will realize that you have no clue what you are doing? I feel like this so often. There have been so many times when I have been with friends and wondered if they truly liked me, if they are just keeping me around to laugh at me when I am not there. It's the worst form of anxiety and self-doubt. And as soon as I have these thoughts, I usually dismiss them because I know that it just isn't true. But it doesn't stop them from coming back. Truthfully, I hate it. I hate feeling this way. I hate driving somewhere to meet up with friends, and having that brief feeling that they only invited me to "be nice." I am pretty sure that this all comes from high school and feeling like I was always on the "outskirts" of things. Always a floater, never fully accepted into any one group. Over eleven years later, and high school is STILL affecting my self-esteem? Kind of ridiculous, if you ask me.
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| "Faking it" in the classroom |
This "faking it" feeling has invaded the rest of my life as well. When I was still in the classroom, I felt like I was faking being a teacher. Most of the time when I was working supply, I WAS faking it! When you walk into a classroom expecting Grade 3, and are indeed met with Grade 3...a Grade 3 MANDARIN program (when you don't speak a word of Mandarin), well, pretty much all you can do IS fake it (and be honest with the students that they will be working in English that day--as if they couldn't tell when they walked in and saw you!). And now that I am a parent, I am definitely faking it. Every day. I don't know what I'm doing as a parent. I still can't believe I AM a parent, let alone, a parent of TWO children. When the heck did that happen?!? I still picture myself as a teenager, or at least in my early twenties. I definitely do NOT picture myself as someone who has two children, is married, and is turning 30 in, gulp, less than six months. I am officially at the age that I still picture my mother to be! (It always surprises me when I see her and realize that she's not 30 anymore--she still looks great, by the way!)
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| My momma when she was about my age..isn't she pretty? |
I often wonder if my mother and father felt the same way when they were my age. Did they just guess their way through the days? I have a feeling that the answer is "yes." In fact, I'm pretty sure if I were to ask any random parent and that random parent answered truthfully, they would say "yes" as well. Do any of us really know what we are doing on this parenting journey? I don't think so. I think we know what has worked in the past, and what is working at that specific moment in time, and, of course, what isn't working. And, honestly, I don't think it matters. All that matters is that we love our children and are trying. As they say, "Fake it 'til you make it!" And as for my "faking it" feeling with my friends? I am willing to bet that a lot of them feel the same way from time to time. So, I'm going to take a breath when these thoughts come about and dismiss them. Because I like the real me, and as long as I like her, others will too. And if they don't, then I don't really want them in my life.
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| Having fun "faking it" as a parent |
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