I don't know when it started or how to end it. I literally live by the words "fake it 'till you make it". I feel like I've been a fake my whole life in everything that I've ever done. I literally feel as though I don't have the qualifications to do anything in my life. I think my friends all secretly hate me, I really don't know how to do anything related to hair, I'm not a real Asian, and I definitely don't belong in my major.
I know my friends definitely like me. We want to see each other virtually through either zoom meetings or on our animal crossing new horizon islands. They make an effort to reach out and likewise to me, but what if… it's all a hoax? What if they're doing it out of pity? I always feel like I don't make strong enough emotional connections to people. But I know the friends I have, in all my circles of life, enjoy having me around but I always have thoughts that I'm the annoying person in my group of friends. Or perhaps that I'm the friend of a friend that just happened to join along. Like I could be the one that someone last minute invites because it slipped their mind as I'm not important. I'm constantly feeling like a side character.
As someone of Asian descent, I speak Cantonese as a heritage speaker. Meaning that I learned the language and spoke it mainly at home and with extended family but no one where else. A native speaker speaks it both at home and every other aspect of their life. So as a heritage speaker, I definitely didn't retain a lot of the language and I can say, with hesitation, that I speak at a first grade level if you compared me to a native speaker. And I'm about a month away from being 23. I feel as though when I relate back to my culture, it's like sourcing an incredible blog. I've never been there, I don't understand the language jokes/puns, I don't have many friends that are East Asian or even Asian in general. I'm whitewashed and I get made fun of at home for not speaking the language well enough but then I get laughed at school for when I don't understand something that's typically American (I was a very sheltered kid). I'm the opposite of a Hannah Montana song, I'm the worst of both worlds.
It's a common thing among females in my field to have impostor syndrome. I'm a computer science and engineering major. It's most definitely a predominately male major and I can count on one hand the number of female students in my upper-level Computer Science/Math/Engineering courses. I see a lot of the same faces and I know most of them. It's still a large major nonetheless, but I know a good number of the same faces that I constantly see over and over again. I just don't belong in this major sometimes. People are always talking about the latest data breach, newly implemented technology, a breakthrough in the AI field, everything across the spectrum. But I feel as though someone shipped me to Russia and I don't understand a single thing they're saying. I'm so out of touch with the latest and newest thing that's going on in the field. I have interest elsewhere but it feels wrong.
Worst of all, I feel like I'm lying to myself the most. I always claim that I'm bisexual but I've never dated any that wasn't male in my entire life. To also be fair, I've had like one and a half previous partners. But I always match more with males on dating apps than anyone else. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Do I not look queer enough? I'm not checking any of those stereo-typically boxes. I cuff my jeans and I've got some artsy activism stuff going on, but that's not enough I guess. I want a cute partner that isn't male to flirt and talk with. I'm sick of cis-het men thinking I'm one of them but I'm not. But it's also so easy to flirt with them because they all share one brain cell. Maybe this article is just one big shitpost where I find someone who's willing to deal with a 5000 level class case of Impostor Syndrome.
