Imposter Syndrome In The Time Of Coronavirus

Are you failing at handling the pandemic? Don’t let perfectionism ruin a good isolation.

How did I not know that Natalie Frank, Ph.D. was hospitalized with COVID-19?

Can’t I even do this pandemic right?

There I was, stewing in my own overwhelm, alone in my smallish, one-bedroom apartment without a deck or back yard to get some fresh air as the experts recommend, trying to put on a good face. I had stopped reading some FaceBook posts and missed my friend’s crisis.

You know me, I’m the badass octogenarian who can handle anything, with a laugh and an F bomb no less, staring out the window like I’d just been double-dosed with Thorazine.

I was trying to come to terms with the fact that a tiny microbe was holding the entire planet hostage like some third-rate science fiction movie I’d seen in 1950 where the whole 7 billion lot of us could die and let the planet the breathe again. If that happened, who would feed the dogs and cats we humans, in our hubris, had domesticated? Had we thought of that?

That’s what was on my mind as I wandered from room to room, afraid to touch any surface where the virus could live for three to seventeen days. Even though I had barred the door for the last thirty-one days.

But suppose it had snuck through on my mail my neighbor Beth had been leaving outside my door, or the broccoli or celery Susy on the first floor had been buying for me? Or the pink carnations Sarah upstairs left for me.

Sarah! OMFG. And I had just complained that she made too much noise the week before the sky started falling. What kind of ungrateful shut-in am I? I’d almost deserve to get infected. Except, please all that is holy in the universe, don’t let me get it.

That’s all I can think about as I don my industrial-strength rubber gloves that I bought ages ago and hold my breath as I open my door and snatch the mail and food and gifts my kind friends have left for me and slam the door shut in case a virus should whiz by me unnoticed.

And I stand there panicked, holding my treasures in my begloved hands. What do I do next? If I wash the mail, I won’t be able to read it. I can scrub cans of beans and soup, but broccoli and celery? If I disinfect them, will I poison myself at dinnertime?

Should I just stand there holding them for three days and wait for any errant virus clinging to my utility bill or groceries to die a natural death and then resume my life? Until the next mail or grocery delivery?

I rendered that choice unwieldy, so I proceed to scrub and disinfect every surface as best I can, and then every surface these items touch, and then the gloves and then the hands that touch the gloves and the soap with an additional bar of soap until I am in a frenzy of disinfecting a piece of junk mail that should have just gone in the trash in the first place.

Since I don’t have a hand-washing complex, I don’t know when I’ve done enough. I’m mostly pretty lax when it comes to cleaning up. Reading and writing take precedence over housework for me.

So after my mini-obsession with ridding my stuff of the virus, I return to my computer where I’ve been sitting since I awoke to stare at the blank screen again and berate myself for not writing, for not cleaning my closets, for not finishing my last novel, for not starting a new novel, for not calling my third cousin four times removed to see how she is doing, once I find her address in my late mother’s old address book.

Other people are getting loads done, according to Twitter. Which I scroll almost as obsessively now as I scrub my mail. Why am I such a slug? Medium certainly hasn’t gone into isolation. It is pumping out the usual billion or so articles every hour, mocking my lack of productivity. Perhaps that’s why I don’t even read any of them. Too shaming.

This mental drubbing occupies the hours until dinner, which I’m afraid to eat in case it has remnants of the virus from the person in the grocery store that touched it or the incomplete disinfecting on my part, or the disinfectant I used that will kill me.

So you see, no time for actual writing.

No time to post something uplifting for my friends, telling them that I’m meditating, and exercising, and thinking positively, and that we’ll get through this and giving them some bullshit about how I’m using my time alone to think deep thoughts to connect with my inner blah blah blah.

Because I’m afraid to let them see how fucking dysfunctional I’ve become.

Because the first two weeks when I was down with a mild case of shingles, I was counting the days I would get back to my normal life again. At the end of the first week, I went to the grocery store, but wearing clothes next to the lesions was too painful, and I was too tired to carry groceries, so after that, I was happy to stay home and chill. It would only be another week. I could do that backward and in heels.

But then, just as I was healing and ready to go out in public again, the virus became real, and my city was put on lockdown. First in the nation. But that was fine with me. I can do this for another few weeks, I thought. And I really was fine. I even posted some articles about dancing through the pandemic and such.

But then the news got scarier and scarier. And the reality hit me.

I’m going to be in this apartment, watching the sky fall for months. I’m high risk. And I’m not going to take any chances on going outside until this thing is under control.

That’s when I hit the wall. In my own, quiet, wise, old lady way. I’d have moments where reality seeped in. A headline would reduce me to tears, or a video of the Italian air force flying the colors of the national flag to bolster the citizens. I’d remember a client in Italy and come undone.

My ability to put on a good face deserted me. I couldn’t think of a thing to write.

And then, I began to feel like a failure because I wasn’t handling the crisis well. I wasn’t doing my normal, kickass thing.

So a week went by when I slept for hours during the day. I’d start an article and run out of steam after a few lines. I’d wander from room to room in a daze. I’d do my cleaning ritual when someone would drop something off outside my door and talk myself out of a panic that they’d let the virus in.

And then it hit me. I was dealing with a virus of a different order.

I’d been infected with the the imposter syndrome virus.

It had haunted me as a mother. As a wife. As a writer. It would deliver in many different ways the same message. I wasn’t doing it right. I wasn’t good enough. Old news, though. I’d worked all that out of my system I thought.

And here it was again. I wasn’t doing the pandemic right.

As though there is a way to do this catastrophe right. I didn’t see the pandemic coming. None of us did. And I just wasn’t prepared for something this massive. So I wandered around in my isolation, trying to find my touchstones. And they weren’t there.

I couldn’t see my daughter, my son-in-law, their dog, Jack. Our weekly family dinners that give me such pleasure and comfort came to an end. I have no idea when I will see them again.

Ask any therapist worth her outdated magazines in her waiting room, and she’ll tell you it’s stress, normal actually in these unprecedented times.

But since I’m not seeing a therapist, or anyone else for that matter, I have to search inside myself for the solace that will get me through this time.

Meaning, I have to kick the imposter syndrome to a virtual curb (I live on the fourth floor, too far from an actual curb). I realized an old pattern of thinking return to crush me with feelings of inadequacy because I wasn’t doing the pandemic right. I was letting it get me down, interfere with my normal productivity. God forbid this paragon of badassery should come to the first-ever pandemic in anyone’s lifetime without her high heels, pearl earrings, and perfect attitude in place.

But as someone once said, I’m done with all that.

I’m not going to let imposter syndrome ruin a good isolation.

This is my time, me-time. I have one job, and I will do it to the best of my ability. My duties are to 1) to stay healthy.

I can’t afford to trip over a cord and require a trip to the ER. I can’t afford to eat too much junk and weaken my immune system. I owe it to the rest of my peeps (meaning everyone in the world) not to be an unnecessary drain on the health care system or worry my daughter, son-in-law, family, friends and neighbors taking care of my needs with any unnecessary illness or injury.

Second part of my job is to stay mentally healthy. If I get depressed and can’t cope, I put a burden on my loved ones to go out of their way to keep my spirits up, when they are turning themselves inside out just to face the day.

So, while I clear away any clutter that might trip me up in my apartment, I make a note to disinfect my thoughts. Of course, I will have moments of feeling blue and dejected. This is a scary time. But I’m not going to judge myself for that, not anymore. This is a time to shut down useless thoughts like I’m not doing the pandemic right.

Nobody is, or everybody is, however they are doing it. Except for assholes who hoard toilet paper or take road trips and put their families at risk.

The rest of us are doing our best, despite inner gremlins who need a platform to criticize us. Nobody wrote the handbook for dealing with a shutdown of our lives by a deadly pathogen. No one prepared us to deal with our loved ones by remote in case they infect us or vice versa.

So we’ll do this as best we can, and it will be brilliant. If you’re crying, have the best cry of your life. If you’re bingeing on Netflix when you think you should be finally cleaning your closets, make sure you’re real cozy on your couch with your favorite snacks. The closet will wait until tomorrow when you have more psychic energy to think about cleaning or writing your novel or calling old friends. Cleaning closets is not important. Unless cleaning keeps you sane.

You’ll never have today back, to live it as best you can.

That’s always true, of course. Just don’t let fear of screwing up your pandemic let you forget it. What we need to do to get through this time of uncertainty, fear, and grief is exactly what we need to do.

We’re all in this together. It’s no longer a slogan; it’s a lifestyle. We must take care of each other, and most important, ourselves.

So excuse me while I make another batch of popcorn to watch with Netflix this afternoon, and give that voice that says I should be writing the middle finger.

You got it right. I’m gonna watch some daytime TV. Tell the gremlins. They’ll have a field day judging me.

#Stayhomesavelives.

I’m an editor and writer on Medium with Top Writer status. I’m also an editor for the publication, Rogues Gallery. I’ve published 55 titles on Amazon and edit for private clients. If you’d like to hire me as your editor for fiction, non-fiction, or business writing, please contact me here. If you’d like to read more of my work on Medium, click here to sign up for my newsletter. I’ll make sure you don’t miss a word. Thank you for reading.