golden girl struggles

2023-10-17

Summer: Yes, "Octopus's Garden" is the best Beatles song ever recorded.
Tom: Why won't you say "Piggies"?
Summer: Come on, I love Ringo Starr.
Tom: Nobody loves Ringo Starr.
Summer: That's what I love about him.

• from 500 Days of Summer

PhD comics has the concept of a "golden boy/girl", someone who is constantly cherished by the advisor no matter what they do. In my mind, I see the golden person as someone that's good at what they do, but perhaps not to the extent of having such focus placed on them at the expense of everyone else.

the haunting

This concept has been haunting me for the past couple years.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm the golden girl and I just feel so guilty about it. I don't deserve this much attention! When it gets too much, I end up sabotaging myself to bring the attention away from me.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I've ever been the prototypical "golden girl". It's likely mostly in my head: a feeling of fear that marks any direct recognition of my achievements. I can't shake the feeling that I don't deserve it.

I wondered for some time if it's imposter syndrome, the feeling that you aren't qualified to be where you actually are. Some part of the guilt was that perhaps, but as I've grown in my expertise the imposter syndrome has mostly faded away. I think I do feel qualified. People even ask me for advice?

Nevertheless, I feel a twinge of guilt with each success. I think really, I feel guilty for having some success when my peers haven't yet. I'm not sure I am worthy of being on a pedestral, even though I would be a staunch supporter of my friends being there.

not sure if i want to be successful

What's going on? Do I want to be successful or not? I'm not sure. I think I want my work to be recognized, but stay in the shadows myself. I want to be some great person's side hand, the support, the secretary, the sidekick.

I want to be like Ringo. He was never the frontman of The Beatles, but he provided the structure for the band to play songs. Looking at him now, it feels like he's transcended the confines of his persona. He seems genuinely happy to sing a tune, yet can still craft such rich lyrics.

I suppose that's why I'm here writing anonymously. It's my way of portraying a part of myself, without it becoming a persona that I have to carry. This allows me to write and forget, to be open to the contradictions of my inner voice.

some new terms that helped me

All of the above is not quite satisfying in the end, huh? Sure, in this blog I can hide beneath the veil of anonymity, but in everyday life I don't have this luxury. How do I carry on?

I want to highlight two terms which have (somewhat) helped me process my fear of success.¹

survivor's remorse

One term that has been incredibly powerful for me is "survivor's remorse", a term that I picked up from an interview with Indya Moore:

"Pose" also brought me visibility in ways that I didn't expect and that I'm so proud of. I'm still trying to find my space in it, and figure out how to accept a lot of what I've received because [I ask myself] is it fair? I'm still struggling through survivor's remorse and still trying to understand the dynamic that I'm in and my friends are in and that I'm coming from poverty. All of my friends were poor or struggling to make a living, struggling to pay rent or to even live independently.

I feel that way in so many parts of my life in different ways. My dad's mother lived in a pig farm in rural Ukraine. I once visited her when I was a teen. She had a tiny house with a huge yard, an empty pigpen, and a dozen geese. I'm not sure to what extent she was happy living there. At the same time, my current life would feel impossibly luxurious compared to hers.

My mom's mother used to own a somewhat bigger farmhouse in a suburb of Kiev. When I visited that house over the summer, I would sometimes meet a boy of about my age that was fascinated with my life. "Yes, I've been beyond Ukraine, what about it?" I would say. "Oh, yes this is a video game." I sometimes think about that boy. Where is he now? Has he been fighting for Ukraine on the front lines? I feel some guilt for avoiding all of that and living as an American citizen.

Somehow, I ended up being the first graduate student to graduate from my lab. I felt anxious about leaving while my friends were still going.

I think there's two ways to help with survivor's remorse (beyond identifying it in the first place).

In the first, perhaps there's no guilt to be felt at all. Perhaps the people around me have been perfectly satisfied with their lives and I'm projecting my feelings on them from a different context, time, and place. For instance, maybe my grandma was really happy in her little house with her geese. Maybe my grad school friends don't really want to leave the comfort of grad school either?

But what if I'm not just projecting? What if I really did survive something? In that case, I once again find comfort in the words of Indya Moore:

I feel like what I can do is to leverage my success to benefit other people, to give other people a voice—with awareness comes responsibility.

tall poppy syndrome

Once, a friend of mine confided to me that they're also afraid of success. We talked about it. They told me that, whenever they experienced a bit of success, their friends would bring them down, feeling threatened by their success.

I think part of my self-sabotaging whenever I felt any glimpse of success has been due to a fear that this would happen. I often trivialize achievements, sometimes not bringing them up altogether, in some irrational fear that I could lose my friends. To clarify, time and again, my friends have supported me through successes. They have never done anything to warrant this fear. Nevertheless, I value my friends so much that I'd rather be seen as a failure than to risk losing them in the wake of some success.

The attitude of cutting down your peer's achievements to level with them is tall poppy syndrome: "the tall poppy gets cut down".

It's a toxic attitude. I've managed to avoid such environments through my anti-social nature and my natural fears of success, but I've seen it do a lot of damage to some of my close friends. The best is to get out of this environment as soon as possible.

For me, even the idea that someone could "cut me down" brings me anxiety.

I guess I still fear of being seen as a "golden girl".

#anxiety #inktober