Appalachia Year

It's something I constantly fear. That one day someone will just call me out as a complete fraud.

I have a degree in French but I'd really hesitate to call myself bilingual. Do I know what the French word for a tire iron is? No. Could I adequately express in French a complex existential crisis to a friend? Probably not with any success. When my French professors in college would give me good grades or scrawl complimentary notes at the ends of my papers, I'd think to myself,"are they ever gonna feel deceived when they put it together that I don't know what the shit I'm talking about."

Even in relationships. Some dude starts saying sweet things to me and it's like, just wait til you catch me hunched over, clipping my toenails over the trash can in nothing but my Laundry Day granny panties. Then who's beautiful?!

I lost my freaking car keys today and spent four hours looking for them. I turned my room, my house, my car upside down. I had to negotiate a delicate window: I couldn't call my parents too early with the news in case I still had a chance of finding the fuckers, but I couldn't call them too late and needlessly delay having new keys in my fist. My parents, bless their sermonizing hearts, you'd think no one in history of the world had lost their keys before. They echoed all the negative thoughts that had been poisoning my brain all day, cause, yeah, I should slow down and get myself organized and yeah, maybe I am too old for this shit, and yeah, they did help me a lot moving and getting settled last week and do I see how this would be a huge inconvenience for them?

I don't usually wear rings but I bought these this week since I've been in Athens and I keep catching myself staring at them on my fingers, spinning them with my thumb. They look silly on my hands, all bulging knuckles and gnawed cuticles. Like putting a bowtie on a dog.

Even taking this picture made me feel like a fraud; I had my crappy digital camera set to manual and I couldn't remember whether you increased depth of field by increasing or decreasing the f-stop. I looked it up on wikipedia. All those hours spent in my high school darkroom, stinking of fix and developer chemicals, fancying myself a photographer.

I think the breadth of my insecurities fall into the normal/healthy percentile. I'm pretty smart, I'm a good listener, I've kept all my friends around a long time, I'm friends with my exes, I get laid. Tomorrow's my first day of graduate school. I'm gonna keep faking it, I guess.