It seems like this is the first time I’m honest about the imposter that is in me. Or the imposter that has always tried to thwart the efforts of the real me. I’m going to write this article as a very raw honest letter to myself.
That is the first step here.
Here’s what I’ve learned
No matter how many people believe in you, if you don’t believe in yourself you’re fucked.
If you think you are not who you say you are, it is a sign that you are.
The only person stopping you is you.
If you believe the lie that you are not the awesome, fantastic person that you are, soon the lie will become true.
Life is an illusion.
So it’s okay to be a little delusional about who can become in this life.
For a long time, I faced self-doubt about my craft as a Rapper.
No matter how many people confirmed and affirmed my skills, I couldn’t affirm myself. I spent lonely day after day shrinking away, questioning my abilities, always wondering if I was good enough, and never believing I was what I was becoming.
But this imposter syndrome that I faced was not so apparent until after the depression.
In 2016, I caved into a shell of myself and began to spiral downward in melancholy and despair. This was not an isolated event. It was the result of feeling like I had failed my first album.
After my album release which felt like it had fallen on deaf ears, I took a step back.
I played the story over and again in my head, telling myself that I had failed. My album launch hadn’t done as great as I had expected. I knew my producers and I had world very hard on this project.
I had such high hopes for its release. But it didn’t move as it should have. To make it worse, I had run out of energy, fuel, and money to keep pushing my music as an independent artist.
I had worked tirelessly trying to be heard in a space where Rap wasn’t valued.
No matter how hard I tried, I was always running against myself. I was working on new hobbies to save my passion for music, and making money but never having money because it was all going back to the music.
I felt defeated.
I remember looking around me, at the smoldering walls of my one-bedroom shack, and feeling the deafening desire to escape. I wanted to run. Far away. I felt like a walking, manifested lie.
A whole fraud of a human being. Who was I to think that I was who I said I was?
That was the start of an almost seasonal depression that wouldn’t let go. For five years straight I went through this cycle of searching for myself. I discarded my identity like an old dress. I lost myself several times over and sought answers in the pages of ancient texts.
A spiritual awakening..
I didn’t come to this conclusion at the time, but in retrospect, this was also a real spiritual process.
As I allowed myself the liberty to be nothing and be no one, I also subconsciously began to allow myself to be free.
I would later come to understand this journey as my spiritual awakening journey. I was waking up from the illusion that is life, what you might call the matrix.
I was beginning to ask the hard questions, pondering on the answers, crafting my way, and trusting the inner guidance that was always there.
If you ever go through this process, you come to learn a lot about yourself.
You realize that you are your maker.
You are the one in the decision seat of your life.
You get to choose what you want to do with your limited time on this earth. You also get to take responsibility for what happens or doesn’t happen as a result of your actions or inaction.
In the beginning, I went through a shedding process where I let everything go.
I walked away from a budding music career. I dumped hobbies and passions that I thought were good for me. I left friends far behind in my past and I rolled up onto my couch to be with myself.