Vegetable Soup

Today would have been my grandmother's birthday, so to honor her memory I made her delicious vegetable soup last night and told this story to my kids.

Once, back in the olden days (sometime in 2003), we went to see Grandmom Joyce at her tiny, perfectly clean house in Trenton, NJ. My uncle and my cousin were also there visiting. They're both vegetarians so when we asked what was for lunch, Grandmom Joyce said: "vegetable soup". When we sat down to eat, it was clear that the soup had about 6 pounds of delicious, tender pot roast in it. My uncle looked confused.

The ongoing struggle w Imposter Syndrome

----------------------------------------------
I originally wrote this in 2010 and came across it today. I really needed to read it. My life has changed a lot in the past five years, but for better or worse,  I'm still the same. So I updated this post to reflect my current reality in the hopes that someone else might feel better knowing they're not the only one out there pretending at life.
---------------------------------------------

Ever since I was a kid, I've felt like a faker. A big phony, as Holden Caulfield would put it. And that feeling persists. Throughout my life, on the occasions that I’ve done well or had people praise me for something, one part of me has always sort of felt like: “Well thanks, but if you had any idea of what I was really like…”  Let's be honest - I'm not what I seem.

I've always been awkward like that. I wore the wrong clothes, and I always said something completely random that made people wonder if I'd recently suffered some sort of head trauma.  I tried too hard when that wasn't cool, and I didn't care when I was supposed to.