At 20 years old, I’m considered by most to be an adult. I try my best to be one: I go to college; I have a part-time job; I have an internship; I have some idea of what I want to do (even if I have no idea on how to achieve it). Yet, I still feel as if I’m simply “playing” at adulthood. Like, at any minute, someone will just start laughing at me. When I come home to visit family, my childhood bedroom feels the same as I’d left it, and looking at my childhood mementos sends a sliver of nostalgia down my back. Recalling these childhood memories makes me feel like I haven’t matured past my youthful antics and emotions. At the same time, clutching these feelings also seems so frivolous and pointless in light of the more pressing “adult” problems I’m facing now. This contradiction convinces me that I’m not ready to tackle adulthood. 

This past decade has seen me through elementary school, middle school, high school, and the first half of college. With so much growing up in such a short span of time, I never truly processed my exodus from childhood into young adulthood. I now find myself feeling a subtle, yet omnipresent, attachment to my childhood self. This attachment flares up when I discuss politics or other seemingly adult topics, or when I go to job or internship interviews. The child, still very much inside of me, says that I don’t have the right to have an opinion about these things, or that I am never qualified enough. I can’t shake that I might be seen for what I believe I am: a child with undeserved responsibility. 

To make matters worse, I actually want to return to my infantile happy-go-lucky days. Growing up and maturing has, of course, involved becoming more cognizant of our present circumstances – political, personal, environmental, etc. While it’s great to be more knowledgeable of my surroundings, I find myself craving the years when I wasn't expected to be aware of life’s tribulations, of society’s injustices, and of familial hardships. This yearning for the care-free spirit of childhood also contributes to my personal sense of under qualification for adulthood. It’s hard to prepare for the future, for a career, when I’m still being weighed down by the desire to have my responsibility-free self again. It leads to the belittling and questioning of my abilities because I still can’t help but perceive myself as a 10-year-old kid who isn’t expected to have a care in the world. 

Of course, this kind of imposter syndrome varies from person to person. One friend of mine revealed she doesn’t feel burdened by feelings of inadequacy because, being the youngest of three, she tried her best to match up with her older brothers by being independent. As a child, she was always cleaning, doing laundry and so on, without being asked. As a result, she felt prepared to leave her small town to go to college in a big city. What were once arbitrary chores seamlessly translated into incumbent responsibilities in her young adulthood. On the other hand, another friend feels that her sense of under qualification stems from the societal expectation that young adults should have everything figured out once they’ve reached a certain age; almost as if childhood was the training manual on how to lead a flawlessly functional adult life. She added that this expectation has left her confused and lost because she always thought that adults had everything figured out growing up. But now she’s here, unsure of where to even start, and wrongfully afraid to ask for help because of how she’s constructed the idea of adulthood in her head. Like many of us, she feels as if she’s the only one who is unprepared for the reality of being an adult. A third friend has a different stance on her own imposter syndrome. She consistently undercuts her own achievements by falsely claiming she was undeserving of her success: either it was up to someone else; she had extrinsic motivations to accomplish it, or; it wasn’t her true desire to do it, regardless of any pride or gratification may stem from her accomplishing it. 

The phenomenon of imposter syndrome is not unique to me personally, but it’s reasons for existing so strongly within me seem to be. Whatever the reason for my present sense of inadequacy –from not enough responsibility, from being too aware of my present circumstances (both personal and societal), from simply not being properly confident in my own abilities and credentials, or a combination of all three– I know that it has resulted in a ubiquitous, underlying yearning for my childhood when not much was expected of me. When I go into work, or when I interact with professionals, I can’t help but hear my 10-year-old self in the back of my head questioning: “Why am I doing this?” “What gives me the right?” and “Who said I had the credentials for this?” Maybe she’ll never go away… Maybe I’ll never be able to fondly look back on my childhood without this sense of nostalgia overpowering my ambition for the future. Regardless, time doesn’t care, and will not wait for my childhood and adulthood to reconcile. I’m going to have to accomplish what I can, and learn to accept that the past will never again be my present circumstances. 

Modesty Sanchez is a writer and editor based in Boston, but is originally from Long Beach, California. She is Lithium’s Sex & Love Editor, the literary editor of The Haloscope Review, and a contributing writer to a myriad of online magazines. When she’s not doing any of these things, she can be found reading, traveling, going to concerts, or watching anything by Pheobe Waller-Bridge. You can see more of her work here: modestysanchez.com

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