When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
Let’s talk about the impostor complex. Who me? You talking to me? Thinking that your work sucks is baby stuff. I’m talking deep, ingrained, institutional self disgust. I’m talking about a baggie and a twisty. A-list celebrities going down on you. On page 1: Bruce Springsteen sprinkles gold tarnished fraud. I wish I could be Bruce Springsteen for five holy minutes. The better I feel the worse I feel. I hear that senators and kings suffer. Bradley Cooper. The twins. You say we’re all impostors. You say everyone thinks about it. Ashton Kutcher. This is what you say when you leave the office meeting dinner elevator:
When do you feel like an impostor?
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Betsy Lerner 
I’m grieving over the loss of the “love is a corn chip” line.
Yes! Where’d it go?
I want to do enough to have something to feel like a fraud about.
I also want to do Bradley Cooper.
I’m not a fraud. I’m a real one of whatever I am. Even when I’m secretly being that woman who writes the books that sell best for me. Her readers would be shocked to see the size of my balls. (Then again, I’ve known women with more balls than I’ll ever have. Just sayin’. And you know, I almost didn’t say balls — I almost said beard. But again, I’ve known women who…hmmm, best not go there.)
Pen names. Screen name. Telling my father, over the phone, that I was my sister cuz I didn’t want to deal. Lying to the priest in confession when I was eight.
It all goes way back…
Every single millisecond of my life.
Even I don’t know who I really am.
So, I had to look that up. And weirdly, or maybe naturally, most of what I read on the ‘net had to do with writers feeling this way.
Like you said, there’s no one out there who doesn’t think like this at one time or another. Except Kanye West.
When I attended SIBA last month, I was on the Southern Reads panel. It came to the intros and I listened to our moderator read through an extensive list of writing credentials, and publications for each of the other authors around me. He came to me. Wow, I have a background in IT. He read about the “B.S.” degree. Cracked a joke about I was only one qualified to shoot BS b/c I had a degree in it.
We all laughed, while I thought, what the hell am I doing here?
In front of a classroom
I am a full frontal fraud when confronted by the aggressively and tenaciously stupid or dangerous. I will smile, nod, and save my energy for something useful. Sometimes I act brave when I’m scared shitless, or confident when things are iffy. Oh yes, I’m the great pretender, the real one.
Nope. I wear honesty like a breastplate, only it doesn’t usually protect me.
Yep. Me too, in front of a classroom.
When I smile. I swear, only about 20 percent of the time it’s genuine. But I keep doing it. I can feel like crap, the whole fucking world going to hell in a handbasket and I’ll still grin like a genial Uncle Idiot and say Have a Nice Day. For some reason I think it’s important not to contribute to the negativity and if I can appear happy and pleasant, it will make things better.
With you on all that, Mike.
I have never felt like an imposter. Even when I’ve been an idiot or a fool or in way over my head or a manipulative cad or an angry baby or a lying sack of shit, I have always felt exactly like myself and felt I was being more open about it than I could manage to hide. I suspect this may mean I’ve never achieved anything transcendent.
No, I’m wrong. Even when I’ve achieved something transcendent, I’ve never felt like an imposter. Just lucky, I guess.
When I think about people thinking about me. But that might be an innate mirror move that is rooted in the innate desire to be more than what I am. And sometimes I think I might just be God and it makes me happy. I would be a kind, just god. Love would be second-hand.