I Just Want To Belong…

imposter syndrome as a warrior

Sometimes I feel like an imposter with Sickle Cell. When I was younger and would have sudden pain crises after being perfectly fine playing, people would say I was pretending. There was never a way to prove it to them, but if they truly knew me then they would know that I would never dream of faking that type of pain to get out of school activities. I so badly want/wanted to be part of the group that I would go above and beyond to participate in physical and social activities even at the cost of my health. And nothing has changed up till now.

As I got older and had more pain while meeting others with the worst consequences of this disease, I felt almost as if my pain was inadequate compared to theirs even though I have been through my fair share of debilitating pain, months of hospitalizations and multiple surgeries. But of course, everyone experiences pain differently and that doesn’t make anyone’s experience less valid. Whether mental, physical or emotional.

Survivor’s guilt

I think that’s where the survivor’s guilt comes in. I’ve been so blessed that even though I have Sickle Cell Anemia, I don’t have it so badly that I can’t be successful. I worry that I’m not doing enough for the community, for my friends, for my family. How can I give more and more of myself, but not so much as to lose myself? I find myself comparing myself, yet again, to everyone, people with or without Sickle Cell. I admire all that they do, even while experiencing worse pain than me, and start to feel like I’m not doing enough. Once again the pain could be either physical, emotional or mental.

Even though I’m still reasonably young and trying to do my part to better my community through a non-profit I started with some amazing friends, I can’t help but feel that I’ll never be doing enough, in all areas of my life. I look at everyone around me and they have got achievements to be proud of while I still feel like I haven’t achieved anything besides surviving day to day and I am simply in awe of them. How do they do it all? While working full time, with multiple jobs, being parents, and even through various life crises.

I just wonder when I will be able to feel like I have achieved something, something to be proud of, made people proud. I know I have but why don’t I feel that way.

Expectations

As I grow as an advocate, son, partner and human being in general, I hope I can keep up with everyone’s expectations. But I guess that’s the point. All I can do is my best and believe that is more than enough. But one thing I’ve learnt is that you cannot please everyone, you have to be true to yourself otherwise all the above starts happening to you. The guilt of letting people down, the feeling that you don’t belong anywhere, the feeling that you will never be good enough for anyone or even good enough for yourself.

Expectations are a bitch! In your mind, everything should go according to your “plan”. A plan that no one knows about and yet, you assume they already knew. Now this seems like a path towards insanity, where you have plans (both major and minor ones) which involve everyone around you but you don’t feel like telling them. When they don’t do things or act the way you expect them to, you feel upset, disappointed, left out, anxious, angry and depressed. At this moment, damage has been done. Done by yourself and no one else is to blame but yourself.

But I think I have reached a conclusion about expectations. The thing we’re missing in this equation is communication. In a lot of these scenarios, In order to make your expectation a reality, you really just need to communicate better. Most of the time, it’s about letting someone know what the expectation IS so they can act accordingly, right? The other person or people usually don’t know you’re having this entire play by play in your head. Share it. Not like a psycho but like a grown up mature human being who is willing to compromise in order to achieve the expectations of others.