TheBanyanTree: Early morning response

[Monique]

Written down only because it was in my head anyway . . .  
 
I’ve always known I was an imposter, pretending to competence when I’m
in over my head. I grew up with this knowledge and was not dissuaded.
Over time, I grew to largely ignore this particular knowledge, being
comprised of half-truths and lies as it is, and to act, much of the
time, like a reasonably competent adult, or at least one who can give
the impression of being a reasonably competent adult. In my worst
moments, I tell myself I have managed to fool a great many people,
including myself, but for the most part I know this particular piece of
knowledge for what it is: false information spoon fed to me before I had
enough of a self to defend myself from it.
            Occasionally it rears its ugly head, to use a cliché I’m
currently unable to find a suitable replacement for. And when it does, I
am momentarily devastated, as all those feelings of inadequacy that I
grew up with come racing back in, as if they had been waiting behind a
wall not nearly strong enough, or high enough, to keep them out. 
            My intentions are good, but the road to hell is paved with
good intentions, so that’s not necessarily a good thing. I try to help
my clients, and as I downsize my business in order to accommodate a
schedule that will allow me to attain some financial security I find
myself trying to adhere to a policy of “no client left behind.” I look
for alternatives for those clients I am unable to keep working for,
Those who say they cannot afford me as it is, and who are irregular in
that I don’t know if they will use me this month, or how much, or when
they will need me, or for how long, must be the first to go. It’s
nothing personal. It’s economics. Mine. I’m working on the policy that
it’s quite all right to think of one’s self in these matters, which is a
policy that clashes harshly with my usual policy of “help to all, no
matter how inconvenienced I may be, because only in that way can I prove
myself worthy.”
            So there we are, with my intentions and my meaning well and
my, as some might say, selfishness. And a client who needs help asks for
help, and all I have is Saturday, when I’d planned on clearing up some
backlog or getting some rest, and so I tell her it’s quite all right,
we’ll work on it on Saturday, because she hasn’t been able to find
anyone else yet. And on Saturday I wait to hear from her, to hear when
she’ll be in town. And when I do it’s late in the afternoon, and she
doesn’t have much time, but I log into her system and I look for the
problem she has described, and I can’t find where it originated. I am
not in charge of these books, the client is, and I think to myself,
“someone needs to be in charge of these books who is not the client,”
but it can’t be me because I don’t have time to do it, either to do it
right or at all, and she needs more help than I can give her on a
Saturday afternoon when she has many other things to do and it is
pointless for me to keep looking at her file when it needs copies of
prior paperwork to reconcile with. And I become frustrated because this
client keeps trying to do it herself when it’s one of those things she
should just have someone else do. It’s quite all right to have help with
these things, isn’t it?
            However, my response to my client, that I am unable to find
her problem, may have included some snippy information that wasn’t meant
to imply anything about anyone in particular, but to indicate why I’m
moving away from these sorts of things in the hopes she’ll understand
that it’s my economics that make it mandatory, but I apparently phrase
it poorly. Not only that, I email her instead of calling her back. Oh
sure, I am a coward. Why call and tell her when I can send an email? She
said she’d be in the garage working, and I didn’t want to call her to
tell her I was useless. 
            Her response was perhaps a bit more than I’d bargained for,
assuming I’d been in any kind of bargaining mood.
            I was told I was a coward, and useless, and an idiot savant
without a speck of the savant, unprofessional, and had never been of any
use. Of course, I paraphrased some of that. I’m the only one I know who
calls myself an idiot savant without the savant. Doesn’t matter, the
exact terminology. I was told never to contact her again, under any
circumstances, and that she would never even use anyone I referred to
her (my way of trying to make things easier for my clients) because I
was, well, who I was.
            Okay. So I was devastated. After all, here was confirmation!
Proof! My stepmother WAS right! I’d been found out. My secret is no
longer a secret. Why, once this gets out, I’ll be relegated to the ranks
of those we laugh at behind their backs, or in front of them, and I’ll
never be able to convince anyone again that I have any idea what I’m
doing!
            Granted, my initial reaction may have been extreme, but this
is why I am who I am. It’s an ongoing battle with me.
            And I realized that my client must not know me very well if
that’s how she thinks of me. And I wondered why, if I had never been any
help, she had kept calling me, instead of looking for a better
alternative. And I thought that she had no doubt been highly frustrated
and perhaps had other things going on in her life. We all do, after all.
And I know her books irritate her, and I know it’s one of those things
she should not be doing herself because of this, for one thing. And I
resolved to just let it go.
            My fiancé wanted me to contact her again, to set her
straight as it was, but she’d said I wasn’t to contact her again, and I
didn’t feel any need to. If she felt as she did about me, it wouldn’t
matter what I said. A parting of the ways was fine. 
            Of course, when I went in to work the following Monday, I
had a rather severe case of confidence crash, that feeling that tells me
that I’m totally unsuited to be working at all for anyone, that I’m in
over my head and I should just give up now, before it becomes apparent
to the world, that feeling that makes me feel I just want to go home and
hide from everyone so my secret can be safe. 
            And then I got over it, pretty much, and by the next day I
was back to feeling somewhat confident in my abilities and determined to
do A GOOD JOB. (My life’s goal is to DO A GOOD JOB.) The knowledge is
still there of course, since getting over it means pushing it to the
back of my mind, somewhere in an old trunk that will hopefully be lost
forever underneath all that other psychic overflow. It does get easier,
with time and space, but it’s still one of those little surprises that
can pop up anytime. 
             The next day the client called because she wanted to
apologize, because she hates ending relationships that way. Admittedly,
it’s not my favorite way either, but I felt no need to talk about it. I
accept that she may have overreacted and may not have expressed herself
in a totally nice way, and I accept that sometimes we’re all shits
because, well, this is part of being human. But I have no wish to have
someone who thinks I’m an incompetent unprofessional idiot tell me that
they’re sorry they feel that way because, frankly, I’m just not that
interested. I have come to terms, over the past few decades, with the
knowledge that some of us are good at some things, and some are good at
others, and that it’s best to seek out those relationships we can feel
good about, whether it’s work or social, and best to let others fall
away. No one can be all things to all people, and there are far too many
people in the world to worry about it (for long, anyway). 
            Some of my clients love me. I think they’re demented, and I
don’t hesitate to tell them that. Those that don’t, I have no problem
with letting them go, and hoping they find what they need elsewhere. And
in order to protect myself, I have to regard these situations as just
business, because personal attacks like that would really make me feel
bad. 
            (I was once a columnist for a fairly large publication,
where my mission was to stir things up, be irreverent, cause
consternation, sometimes sympathize with my readers, sometimes anger
them, and all of this I did so well that I was universally loved and
despised for different columns. I loved it when I received fan mail, and
hated it when I received hate mail, and at first, it being my first paid
writing job, I took it quite personally, but I always tried to tell
myself, “it’s just the writing, it’s what I’m supposed to do, it’s not
me they hate,” but it was still difficult to hear what they said about
me, and to read what was printed about me, online and in the
publication, where everyone could see it, could see what a loser I was.
I still cower when faced with large groups of people who were my target
audience. Just business or not, it’s still difficult to separate who one
is from what one does, and I’m not sure if that’s because, in my
particular case, I grew up with the knowledge that I would always be
substandard.)
            Whatever. I feel no need to talk about it, or to verbally
accept anyone’s apology so they’ll feel better. I don’t want anyone to
feel bad either, I just don’t want to put myself in a position to be
magnanimous because I just don’t feel like it, I don’t want to say,
“It’s okay to insult me, I’m sure you didn’t mean to,” which has always
been my inclination in the past, to make everyone else feel better no
matter what I was accepting, but I’m not so much inclined anymore to
take on that responsibility. Let’s just move on.