The quickest route between two points is a straight line. The quickest route between a fantasy and reality is a straight up lie.
I’m an imposter and you can be too!
Self-loathing makes the world go round.
Fraudulent is the new black.
Fake it till you make it — or until you get caught.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
When I was in my early 20s, I attended a women’s safety presentation at the local police station with a few friends. There were about 40 women of various ages and walks of life in attendance..
The female officers in charge went over the basic safety fundamentals for walking alone on the street or in a parking lot. I.e., no headphones, no ponytails, be aware of your surroundings and have your keys ready to be utilized as a makeshift shank if the need should arise.
But all throughout the presentation I couldn’t help but wonder if I was thinking a little too highly of myself? Did I need to be there?
Am I too quick to assume that any potential predator would single me out as his “prey of the day?”
Sure, I was cute but so was every other woman there. Sure, I was just as helpless as the next distracted girl with the audacity to walk around her city at night, so why didn’t I feel like I was good enough to be abducted? I’ve never had to use the pepper spray I carry in my purse.
My younger sister had a quasi-stalker during her first few semesters of college, yet there I was at 24, and I had never had one! Do murderers take into consideration whether or not you have a great personality?
Where do these serial killers get their confidence from? Most of them are 4’s at best yet they have incredibly inflated taste and somehow believe they deserve 9’s and 10’s.
Was I jealous of some hypothetical POS because I might not be his first choice to star in his future True Crime documentary? Would he really be that picky? I mean, what was so great about him, how was he good enough to deserve to violate me?
If my lifetime collective hour of therapy has taught me anything it’s that you must reach out to find an outside source, something out of your control to blame all of your problems on. It may require you to truly dig deep and soul search, but the answer is there. Normally I’d blame my parents but, in this instance, I went with the internet.
Millennials have weaponized social media as a way to receive widespread validation while simultaneously feeling inadequate while scrolling in our sweatpants.
We are all living double lives online and are more than happy to dwell in the shared delusion. It’s important to remember you are only seeing the moments people want projected, which have most likely been cropped and filtered to within an inch of their lives.
Luckily, as they were passing out the rape whistles, I remembered a creepy man who clearly needed a shower and an exorcism calling me ‘Boo-Boo’ in the QFC parking lot earlier that week. He had yelled from his car that I had nice legs and asked a crude question about the connecting parts of my anatomy. This gentleman reminded me that no matter how out of place I may feel at times or that I don’t stack up to others, I lack nothing, and I am enough, I only ever have to be myself. What an insightful guy.
My generation seems to be brimming with self-confidence while at the same time possessing zero self-worth.
Think of everything we could each accomplish if we stopped settling and truly believed that we were deserving of the best for ourselves, just like a murderer feels entitled to.
