I dreamt last night that I ate a piece of prosciutto. Someone offered it to me secretly, under the table as if doing a cocaine transaction, and I gobbled it up like there was no tomorrow. My eyes scanning the room anxiously to see if someone was watching. Let me put that into perspective – the precious period of rest my body and mind get, those meant-to-be-blissful 8 hours of sleep, were drenched in guilt. Because if I eat a piece of prosciutto I will be hunted down by the vegetarian police, stripped of my precious title and locked up behind jail bars made of asparagus. I also occasionally smoke a cigarette, despite teaching yoga. (Call in Shiva, the god of destruction, to blow her to bits!) I translate current politics without actually reading the news. Ever. (Crap…they pay me too well for this work.) I stand for equality and strength of every individual, but find myself apologising like a teenage twat to a person who stepped on MY foot. (I completely baffle myself with this one, honestly.) I am not shy about listing all the languages I learned, but run away from any attempt at making me actually speak them. (Because I’m not bloody native-speaker-level fluent.) I endorse zero-waste lifestyles, but will clap my hands giddy with joy if someone gifts me a Kinder chocolate egg, devouring the chocolate and discarding guilt-free the rest. (I regress to an age of 5 at the sight of one.) I give people crap about posting articles they don’t actually read, but then end up doing the same and causing a mess. (Sorry, you know who you are.)
If I let myself believe that these things define me, which I surely won’t, I could actually think for a second that I’m a lousy vegetarian, yogi, translator, writer, daughter, girlfriend, friend, value-keeper of all things good.
I might believe it, if I forget for a second that I’m actually human, which sometimes means: complex, sometimes inconsistent to my words, exhausted, downright confused as to what I’m doing, prone to mistakes.
But, thankfully, I don’t forget that these are things that I do, not what I am. I am better and better at cutting myself some slack, and letting imperfection slide. I know I’m a “fraud” and am OK with it. And I know you are one too. 😉 What do you believe makes you a “fraud”? How about listing your fraudster crimes, privately or here, so that you can laugh at them and go “naaaah, I don’t buy into it, I’m still good.”?
I leave you with the lyrics of the song of Grace Petrie below: “Nobody knows that I’m a fraud, but I’ll get up underneath the lights until I feel adored, and I’ll never tell you anything I think you won’t applaud. Oh, it might not always be the truth, but it’ll have three cords. Nobody knows that I’m a fraud.” Sing along, everyone!
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