OPINION COLUMN #29
Two months ago, I got the big news: “your short stories are about to be published”.
A week ago, I signed my first contract with an editor: it made that announcement a bit more solemn.
Two days ago, I announced my book on social media: it made the project a bit more official.
Despite all those steps, it still feels so unreal. So far. That dream came true stayed so long in the limbos of my hopes, it struggles to reach my understanding. Yet, I have held my book in my hands!
Something is moving inside though, something is intertwining with my being: I feel more legitimate like sweet honey in my blood.
I feel like I have become “somebody”.
For the last weeks, I have spent a lot of time thinking about my child’s dreams. About those foolish promises one makes to oneself. In the middle of my crazy project, I did have some serious ones: hairdresser, teacher, kids doctor and probably “like mum”. Soon enough though, I said: “when I grow up, I want to be an actress”. This leitmotiv has never left me. But I clearly remember now, coming from nowhere, I once thought in secret: one day, I’ll write books and I’ll be published. I was 13 and I scribbled diaries with banalities. My actress dream was as loud as it could be, my author dream was more private, I never spoke of it.
Then, have I just realized not only one but two child’s dreams?
I keep struggling against abstraction and some interactions help! My students’ words for instance: “we today have a new author among us!” and the applause coming with it. Am I really new? I have spent the 6 last years calling myself an author. Yet, this student is right: I am “new” because being published has made it official. Has made me more legitimate to myself. Now, there are no doubts left, not even I can question it: I am a “real” (and new) author!
And it’s true, this “real” boils into my soul like a new truth.
I felt the same as an actress and director. For a while, I was working in the theater field, but was it really my job? was I legitimate? was I a “real” actress? In 2017, I got my professional status and I couldn’t doubt it anymore: my passion was paying my rent; I was a “real” actress.
Now, 9 years later, as I have signed my first contract with an editor, as I can hold my book in my hands and as my author rights are creating a little treasure (more like pocket money than stock exchange though), it seems I have become a “real” (and new!) author.
I have always said I didn’t care about fame, I wanted, I needed, to be seen. Now, this need is fulfilled, I only need a few more weeks to imprint my new definitions.
Let’s just hope the impostor syndrome doesn’t knock me down like last time and I don’t end up sabotaging myself because I don’t allow myself to live my dreams instead of dreaming my life.
And before leaving you, I share the last blurry words I received to shut down my abstractions.
Now that I have been crowned “real” actress and “real” author, making two dreams come true, I realize my luck, I honor my hopes. Making one dream come true would have been wonderful! Living two is just insane, what a dizziness! I feel like I have become “somebody”. Yet, I have always been somebody, like I claimed so many times! I feel like I have “succeeded”. Yet, somebody who has known me for a while told me today I have always succeeded in everything…
Now I look at my life through a new lens, I can tell how much that somebody who has known me for a while is right, I was not wearing the right glasses, I didn’t have the right stance. And I am not writing this like a vanity, “I have always succeeded”, I am writing this like a gratitude for my struggles, like a tribute to my doubts.
And before leaving you, I also want to thank you all, for your foolish words spread into the web and my heart, for the last couple of days, for the last decades; they have helped me to see clearly.
Now, I feel like I am somebody, I feel like I have always succeeded, I am a “real” author, but before, I may have been the only person to doubt it?
Justine T. Annezo – September, 25th 2026 – GTM+2
