Why the good days feel fake

Fraud. It shows up on the good days, not the bad ones. Someone says you're done with it, you nod, and underneath a voice whispers that you're faking. You're living free and feeling like you're getting away with something. The better it goes, the louder it gets.

Ask it for one fact. What did you do today that a fraud would do? It has nothing. It can't produce a single example, because it never brought evidence. It brings a sensation and dresses it up as a finding. Your record sits right there, plain and complete. One of those is evidence. The other is a mood passing through.

It's like moving into a new place. For weeks your hand reaches for the light switch on the wrong wall. Your picture of yourself lags the same way. The fraud feeling is the sound of that gap. It shows up only after you've moved faster than your old picture. It's the feeling of outgrowing yourself.

Let the voice talk while you keep doing what you're doing. When it says you're pretending, answer with a plain fact. What you did instead, and when. If anything was faking all along, it was the cigarette, posing as part of your personality. God knows which one of you is real, and He's walking right beside that one. The feeling's running late. You got there first.