Competence Becomes a Prison

You are the person who handles things, figures it out, and the person people call when they don’t know what to do. Being competent felt like freedom once but now it feels like a job you can’t quit.

Other people have given you the role of person who has it together and you have been in that role long enough that you don’t know how to step out of it. They need you to be capable, to have answers, and to handle the things that scare them.

What happens when you actually don’t know? Or what happens when you are scared too? The competence doesn’t allow for that. The competence requires you to be solid when everyone else is falling apart. The competence requires you to have answers even when there are no good answers.

You have gotten very good at hiding the parts of yourself that aren’t competent. The confusion gets hidden. The uncertainty gets hidden. The fear gets hidden. What’s visible is the capable version and that’s the version that people know and rely on. The other version gets smaller and quieter until it almost disappears.

The isolation comes not from being alone but from being constantly needed. People are around you but they are not seeing you. They are seeing the competence instead, or they are seeing the person who can help them. They are not seeing the person underneath who might need help too.

You can’t ask for support because the moment you do, the image cracks. You can’t admit you don’t know because admitting that means admitting you might fail them. You can’t be vulnerable because vulnerability in a capable person looks like weakness and weakness is not something people expect from you, and so you keep being competent, keep having answers, and keep handling things.

The weight of it accumulates but the accumulation isn’t visible to anyone else because competent people don’t show weight, but they just carry it quietly. The people around you probably think you are fine, probably think you are always fine because you have made being fine into an art form, or they don’t realize how much energy it takes to maintain the appearance of competence when internally you are struggling with the same things everyone else is struggling with.

You could stop, admit you don’t know, or you could ask for help. Admitting you don’t know means disappointing people who have decided that you do know. Asking for help means stepping out of the role you have been cast in. The role is comfortable in a terrible way. It’s uncomfortable and suffocating but at least it’s familiar.

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