Fucking Imposter Syndrome

More than one fellow writer has joked about the therapeutic effect of writing through one’s neuroses and trauma, and perhaps I wasn’t meant to take it to heart. But here we are, so we might as well lean in, right?

I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but all too often, the imposter’s voice competes with my own as I evaluate and interrogate my work. What a terrible compulsion, in a world that will push you down at every turn, to hand defeat victory in your own brain. Fucking Imposter Syndrome grew from the zygote of the idea that maybe, if Imposter Syndrome were a person, it would be easier to combat.

Clearly, my brain had other ideas about that.

~Fucking Imposter Syndrome~

I felt The Imposter with me all day, her cool touch on my shoulder, a breath on my neck as I bent over my laptop at the coffee shop downstairs, tediously eking out sentence after sentence for a story that held no joy in it for me.

The Muse was long gone. She’d disappeared and left behind her half of the closetful of clothes, a half-drunk bottle of kombucha, and my bruised ego.

And The Imposter.

The coffee shop closed at six and I moved back up to what was again solely my flat. Clack, clack, clack, each keystroke inched me towards the elusive accomplishment, a finished manuscript, and the switch from sleepless nights agonizing over the story, to sleepless nights agonizing about rejections.

I looked up from my laptop to see the room growing dark around me as the sun sank behind the mountains. I glanced at the clock. Eight thirty pm. Joints creaking, I untwisted my pretzled legs and scoured the kitchen cabinet for coffee. The muse had always made sure I had decaf for my late-night hankerings. I filled the single-serving filter with medium roast and brewed a cup. What the hell. I wasn’t planning on sleeping anyway.

The Imposter was there with me as I stood over the coffee maker, her palms almost palpable under my shirt, over my ribs, an imperceptible graze of fingers over my taut nipples as I watched coffee pour from the coffee maker into my mug emblazoned with Edgar Allen Poe quotes.

“Quoth the Raven, I muttered to myself as I turned the mug in my hands, “what the fuck am I doing?”

I’d written a hundred thousand words sitting at the low coffee table, The Muse lounging above me on the ratty sofa we’d found outside the day we moved her into my apartment. Fingers in my hair, Bob Marley on the record player, The Muse would softly hum along as she read books of poetry from centuries past, her long legs splayed over the threadbare cushions, toes twitching in time to some internal rhythm that matched nothing I could hear.

Now, I sat at the kitchen table made for two and plunked out syllables like I was panning for gold in a dry riverbed. Chapters crawled out of my head slower than I’d taken to work up the courage to ask The Muse out for drinks for the very first time.

That night was etched in my head, taking the place of the story I’d been hired to write. The light played off a heavy gold chain The Muse wore with the tiny burgundy dress that rode up her thighs and into a silky puddle between them when she dropped into the chair next to mine.

“You don’t mind, do you?” She asked when I gaped at her. “I’d rather get a feel for your energy from close up.” She’d hitched the thin fabric up far enough for me to see she was wearing nothing under it and my mouth went dry. The Muse was everything I could never be. Confident, sexy, beautiful… and voracious.

No one could eat as much, drink as much, get as high, or fuck as hard and as long as The Muse. I was desperate for her and she reveled in it. My fingers would go still when she entered the room. I would stare as she walked naked across the cheap laminate flooring to the kitchen, measured herself a tall glass of vodka, and poured it down her throat. Then she’d stalk back into the bedroom, this tall, languid, fascinating creature, lit golden by the dim hallway lights, always certain I would follow.

I always did. My laptop would go dead as I spent the next few hours between her thighs, under her, inside her, obeying the slightest shifts of her body, her softest sighs as though they were commands. Her body was my idol,anyway and I worshipped from her tightly curled black hair to the Bowie tattoo on her ankle, and everything in between.

I couldn’t understand why she’d chosen me. Mousy brunette, average height, size, talent…Every time her eyes met mine was a gift bestowed. Nor was I her only acolyte. Too many times I’d found myself bereft of her heat, only to have her come home, still covered in the smell of sex and sweat, laughing when I cried.

Sometimes her lovers came with her, more beautiful than me, richer, more fashionable. They’d drink my booze and rest their Doc Martins or their Louboutins or kicks on my coffee table as I tried to work. They’d mock me for not protesting their presence, or for railing against her bringing her toys into my home… She never stood up for me, but I would never see them again.

And every time she chose me over them, my dedication to her every pleasure was renewed tenfold.

Until the day she didn’t come home. One day turned into three, then seven, then two weeks, and I knew. The Muse was gone. I refilled my glass from the nearly empty bottle of whiskey resting by my elbow, spilling on the table and in my lap.

Never mind. No one was here to see anyways.

No one but The Imposter.

The Imposter clung to me, from my first publication to my first award. She knew what The Muse had seen in me, and why I was alone now.

“Too little,” the whisper licked at my ear. “Too much. No talent, just luck.” Those invisible fingers plucked at my nipples as the imaginary breath tickled my neck. “It’s just us now. You and me. The way it should be.”

The Muse had never been mine. I was just another toy, left with half of a closet of clothes made for a long slender body, expensive, exotic perfume I would never throw away, and a silk pillowcase I was saving just in case.

In case she returned.

But The Muse wasn’t coming back to her mousy little writer this time.

I laid down on the bed and closed my eyes as fingers slid under my panties, spreading my legs as I listened to The Imposter’s voice. “Just luck. You knew she’d see through you.” I trembled as I felt that cold touch on my clit, whisper-soft at first, then rubbing my shy little nub to attention and past the point of aching.

“Just leave me alone.”

The voice fell into a sigh that sounded like my own as two fingers slid inside me, my panties completely pushed out of the way. “You were always mine. You should never have tossed me aside. I’ll never leave you.”

I came, panting and quivering, pussy soaking the sheets beneath me. “I hate you.”

“You need me.”

The bedroom door creaked, and I looked up to see The Muse, her head cocked to one side, bottle of my favorite gin in her hand.

“You know…It would be easier to stay if I didn’t have to share you with that bitch, she sighed. She set the gin on the dresser and walked out.

I curled on my side and tucked my knees into my chest, sobbing, as The Imposter held me tight.