Feel like a fraud

Have you ever gone to work and had this absolute fear that someone was going to figure out that you're a fraud and you have no idea what you're doing?

Yeah, I feel that way all the time.  Every job I've had, everything I do from day to day, I don't really feel like I belong, but like I'm an outsider walking among you hoping no one can see that I have absolutely no clue as to what I'm doing.

I still feel like I'm not really a mom.  I hang out with my mom groups and while I feel like I fit in fine in terms of personality (well, sometimes), I also feel like they are real moms and I'm not.  Now if there is any title in life that I have earned and that is not a subjective thing that can change, but rather an absolute, permanent fact, I'm a mom.  I have children that live in my house, eat the scrambled eggs that I make (I magic bullet them with spinach so yes, I serve green eggs with ham sometimes) and they run to me to kiss boo boos.  I don't know what feeling I was expecting to make me finally feel like I'm actually one of these magical mom creatures, but I haven't gotten it yet.

I suspect it's like when a cardinal gets promoted to pope and finds out "oh shit!  I'm not feeling any more connected to God than I did yesterday!  I'm still just Joe Schmoe but with a fancier hat!"

There's an episode of How I Met Your Mother where all the characters are pointing out other characters gaps in common knowledge.  I can't tell you how that's one of my biggest fears, to be found out that I am clueless about something everyone else in the world knows.  What made me feel better about this?  I said something about this to my brother and we had one of those "OMG me too!!!" moments.

Grocery shopping?  Yeah, I don't know what to buy in order to have the ingredients to make a dinner later in the week.  I have no clue as to how to prepare or eat half the stuff in the produce section and very few clues as to how to pick something ripe.  When the power went out, the first thing I did was take a shower because growing up, if the power went out, we'd only have whatever hot water was in the hot water heater and it was now cooling down so use it or lose it.  Then K pointed out that we have a gas water heater so apparently we can still have hot water in a power outage.  I've owned this house for almost 9 years now.  I'd point out more gaps, but I don't really know what they are.  But they exist, waiting for that moment when someone goes all bug eyed at something I don't know.

That's how I feel a lot of days.  Like I'm still 18 years old, trusting that living life would provide knowledge and looking forward to having that knowledge.  Except I've been that 18 year old for 20 years now and uh, still waiting!  One day, someone is going to grab my chin and rip back the mask of this old looking face to reveal the stupid teenaged idiot hiding behind it like in a Scooby Doo cartoon.  That's not a mom, that's a child who's been pretending all along!  Zoinks!