What makes it so hard to believe?

One of the ironies of the validation trap (and what makes it a trap essentially) is that the hungrier one is for validation, the more starved one feels for it (and vice versa). I feel this way recently, despite the fact that by all accounts it has been all around me. Today was more than a perfect example, yet somehow the inadequacy somehow shines through and I feel like an imposter.

This morning I had an interview for a somewhat senior contract job at a major hospital in my city. I have been out of work now for several weeks (months) now and having already turned down at least one job, and having been offered another one earlier in the week, I found myself suited and tied on "casual Friday", and meeting with a likeable Irish recruiter in preparation for my time on the hot seat upstairs with the client. When the time came I found myself sitting through a committee-style interview with the department head, the team lead, and the "mobile" point-man (woman). Nonetheless I felt confident and I really knocked it out of the park, even while feeling like I had flubbed it.
This afternoon I met with a recruiter for another job, and once again I approached it with that confidence which really changes everything, and I managed to put myself out there for a job for which I might not otherwise have the qualifications.
This evening I attended an event at my club, which was sponsored for delegates to the national convention. I went with M., my friend and partner in crime, and as is our custom we made the best of the room. We ended up leaving with some other folks from the national council and stayed out for a bit at a bar around the corner from the club. I was delighted to have met a very interesting woman, C., and enjoyed the opportunity I had to connect with her.
And just when I thought the evening was over, as I drove home from downtown to my apartment in the west end, I bumped into my roommate, and between the two of us we actually managed to solve the problems of the world, in an hour, or two. In fact we shared a great deal more than that and  more than I ever imagined we would.
So why am I still so convinced that something is missing? What makes it so hard for me to believe that this is actually working, that life is good?

The greatest compliment

Last year I moved to the west end, to a neighbourhood with which I was already quite familiar. I had actually lived there once, over 20 years earlier, as a teenage high school dropout sharing a basement apartment with another misfit friend. Despite having lived mostly in the east end when I have been in the city since then, I had several strong connections to the area, including a circle of friends who had grown up and remained there, the members of my hockey team mostly drew from that area, and I had also worked at an office there for three years starting up until a couple of years previously.
The office was oddly situated: it was part of a mixed-use development of 1990s vintage which had repurposed a narrow strip of industrial land tucked up against a railway corridor as a set of subsidized-housing townhouses and the commercial building in which we worked. The surrounding neighbourhood was mostly residential, with a large scrap yard a couple of blocks away as a reminder of the area's industrial heritage.
The company had hired a woman, J., who lived in one of the run-down rental houses across the street as a sort of part-time cleaning lady who would take care of the office kitchen as well as help out whenever there was some kind of catered event,  such as little pep-rally type things they would have every quarter, or a barbequeue on the lawn in the summertime. She stood out as rather working class in contrast to what was otherwise a rather homogeneous professional culture in the office, and she mostly kept to herself as she went about her work. Nonetheless, I learned her name and would engage her when I ran into her as I would the other people whom I knew in the office, as well as when I saw her outside in front of her house with her family and elsewhere.
I enjoyed chatting with her and we would talk about our lives and relationships, or gossip about comings and goings in the office. I would help her when she had to move furniture or load cases of drinks or things like that for an event we were having. It was a pleasant and seemingly unremarkable friendship.
Fast forward to a few months ago, just before Christmas I think, and I, now living in the neighbourhood, bumped into J. at the grocery store. We had a brief but nice chat and caught up a bit, and before we parted she paid me a tremendous compliment by way of relating to me a conversation she had recently had at the office. She still worked (and still works) at the company where we had met, some three years since I had left. She had recently brought in someone, a friend or family member, to help her or fill in for her or something like that, and she had been showing the new woman around and the ropes. The woman was surprised and remarked to J. how impressed she was at how well she knew everyone and how comfortably she moved within what was for both of them a rather foreign space and culture.
Her response to her was that she had actually been very shy, uncomfortable, and intimidated in the office when she first started, but that then a certain man, and she said my name, started working there, and he, alone among the entire office, engaged her and treated her as a person worthy of attention and respect. And that consistent respect had given her the confidence to engage with others there to the point that long after I had left the company, she was comfortable there in a way she had never been before.
This is how I want to make a difference in the world.