Never Quite Good Enough
The Impostor Phenomenon And Its Effects
My father, like a boozy Old Testament patriarch, pronounced what he believed were blessings upon my sisters and me. We were complaining about something one afternoon in our tiny Texas town, the smell of sulfur and oily rags from chemicals at the refinery making us crabby and mean. He waved the hand not holding a beer and said, “Y’all hush and start thinking about getting out of here, ok? Don’t be like me and your mom stuck in some crappy little town.”
He gestured toward my youngest sister, Melanie. “You’re the pretty one so you don’t have to worry at all. You’ll get married to someone with money and be fine.”
To my middle sister, Rondi, he said, “Now you, you’re the athlete. You’ll always find a place because there’s not a game you can’t win.”
To me, the oldest, “You’re the smart one. You’ll go to college.”
He didn’t mean to, but he cursed me with these words as much as blessed me. The smart one meant that I would always have to work to maintain this title and because my father was the one who said it, it felt like God himself had reached out and put a halo around my brain. I was not only the smart one, but the one who could shift his attention towards me, towards my siblings, with achievement.
