Inner Child

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 So, I work/study in the science field, which is awesome, and a good portion of my day I know what I am doing and feel amazing at finally getting to contribute in a field I love.


Photo Credit: National Cancer Institute through Unsplash


However, there are 5-10 minutes every morning, where I wake up and it hits me that someone was fooled enough by my impression of a real adult to give me that chance. I have to go through the steps of reminding myself that I am an adult, that I worked for where I am, and even then it takes a while for the feeling to fade. This feeling is often described as "imposter syndrome" and is very common, but what I find myself wondering is if everyone feels this way occasionally.

I almost find the idea comforting, that Albert Einstein, or Marie Curie may have felt this way; people hailed so highly as major historical influences that sometimes we forget they may have had their own fears, doubts, and feelings of inadequacy. It calms my inner child, to keep the secret hope that instead of being surrounded by perfect adults who always know exactly what they're doing, I am really surrounded by people who might have their own hidden inner child trying to get through their day. When I get turned around in a new building, and the anxiety starts to build and I feel the childish impulse to hide until the panic subsides, I keep this hope. When I do ask for help, sometimes I can see I was right, and my thinly veiled panic is met with kind eyes of someone who has been where I am standing and won't call me out for being what my anxiety tells me is "a fake adult." In that moment, I feel like I have found someone else's inner child, peering out through their grown up face and pointing me in the right direction, with a quiet unspoken understanding that marks them as one of my tribe.

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