The Game Called Pretense

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No one ever wants to be the object of pity. At some other times, one just gets tired of telling the same story over and over again of woes. So we each develop our strategy to enable us better cope with whatever challenge life throws us. One of such is to put up a smiling face to the outside world, while we are hurting inside.

A wise man said, “In the multitude of counsel there is safety”, and ‘no man goes to war without good counsel”.

In my life, I have played this game called pretense, and played it only to my own detriment. I remember when I had problems in medical school. When I failed four courses in my first year, which was above the stipulated 2 required to cross over t the next level. I had two options, either I repeat that class or I transferred to another department. For me, I thought myself a smart kid, I mean, after skipping a grade in high school in order to get a head start on my university studies. I knew that I would become a laughing stock, to those who always thought I was impatient.

I decided to try to informally contest my results. I got people to check my scripts, put my case forward to the Head of department about how well I should have scored in my subjects considering my high school background.

Meanwhile, I continued attending level two classes, even though I wasn’t officially registered for them. I risked being found out. According to the records, I was still in level one. I tried to live up to this expectation, I never told anyone save very few people about my actual ordeal, and when I did tell them, I made it seam like it was a piece of cake Meanwhile, I was crying inside. I would race to my room many times and wail. I had gone too far to turn back. A lot of people used to do what I did, but they got to themselves about the middle of the semester, and turn back. Then the class labels them as people who were once in those shoes who were pretenders. I didn’t want to be labeled that way, so it put more pressure on me to ensure that it works. I tried to pull every string I could (which was quite few), and nothing worked.

You know when you are doing the wrong thing, you always seek people who have done the same and guess what, you will hear those stories. I was encouraged-in my folly.

At the end of the day, what I feared most happened to me. I lost both ways. I finally had to re- write those exam papers that I tried to contest, and because I wasn’t prepared to sit them, I ended up failing the exams. This meant that I was told to leave the medical school. I then had to transfer to another department in the sciences, and the shame and embarrassment came down hard upon me. It was a huge disgrace to fail out of medical school. As the saying goes ‘what I feared most, came upon me’…….

 For almost a year, my ex-colleagues gave me the cold shoulder. The pretense was over, and everything was out in the open.

You see ‘there is nothing hidden except to be revealed’. If you put up a front that you are all well and good, and try to make everyone believe that nothing of your status has changed when that isn’t the case, you will be found out. When that happens, you will be worse off than you were at the start. The thing is that you would have wasted valuable time which could have been spent getting back on your feet, hiding from reality through pretense. When it eventually comes out in the open, then you will start the process of recovery. This may take up to a year as it did in my case. But that accounts for nothing but one year froth with regrets, which I could have spent getting back on my feet.

You see, pretense never does anything good for you; it only puts one under the pressure to live up to the act, which becomes more of an effort, especially when you realize that your act is taking you nowhere.