Having only been diagnosed autistic about a year ago, it’s safe to say that I have been masking my entire life without even knowing it. Masking, for those who don’t yet know, is what an autistic person does in an effort to survive in the neurotypical world. We pretend to be “normal”. We stuff our feelings. Contrary to popular belief, we are not robots. Not only do we have feelings, but quite often we feel much more than others do. It’s just that those feelings don’t always show up in our faces, our body language, or our tone of voice.
Now, before I go any further, I should say that no two people on the autism spectrum are alike. I’m not speaking for the entire community. So I’m going to make myself extremely vulnerable here and stop hiding behind “we” and switch to “me”.
I act like I’m coping well with overstimulation when in fact I’m freaking out inside. I pretend that I want to go out in the world and do something even when I’m in the midst of a massive autistic burnout, and really all I want to do is sleep, or starfish on my recliner. I pretend that I understand jokes that have actually gone right over my head. I try (usually unsuccessfully) not to overshare. (My interests often bore people.) I try (completely unsuccessfully) not to ask “why” when someone thinks or does something that seems devoid of logic to me. I force myself to make eye contact much more often than I want to.
I attempt to look like I’m able to focus when in fact I’m receiving stimuli from 100 sources at once. Neurotypical people seem to be able to block out the humming of the refrigerator two rooms away, and the traffic going by, and the smell of a coworker’s lunch in the microwave, and the fluorescent lighting, and the high pressure weather system that’s passing over, and the way the floor shakes when someone walks down the hall. How do they do that?
I’ve yet to be able to explain this adequately, but even when I seem like I’m not paying attention (often so as not to absolutely lose my mind) I’m still taking it all in. All of it. So it’s sort of a focused lack of focus that’s hard to explain. I hear what you’re saying, and take in all the other things, all at once. I really do hear you. (In fact, I have an uncanny recall of dialogue.)
But at the same time I’m having to run on this hamster wheel, here, to keep everything sorted out. So forgive me if I have a blank expression. Forgive me if it seems like I’m ignoring you. Many times in my life I’ve been accused of being a snob, or of being heavily stoned. Neither could be further from the truth. It’s just that while I’m taking every single thing in, I don’t have enough extra energy to send anything out.
I am tired. And by that I mean I’m exhausted all the time. When you have all that stimulation and still have to appear like you’re coping with it like everyone else seems to be, it takes a lot out of you.
Before my autism diagnosis, I thought everyone was exactly like me inside, and somehow I missed the class that teaches everyone how to cope with this riot of stimuli. And yet everyone around me seems to have passed that class with flying colors.
My whole life, I wondered what was wrong with me. How come I couldn’t be like everyone else? I’m only just realizing that not everyone has the overstimulated nervous system that I do. It must be nice, having a quiet interior. I can only imagine.
Now that I know I’m on the spectrum, I’m having to change my self-image quite a bit. I’m not broken. I’m just different. And it’s time to embrace that. It’s time to show the world the real me, and if they don’t like it, that’s just too bad.
Easier said than done. I’ve been masking for so long without knowing it that I’m struggling to determine where the mask ends and I begin. It feels like I’m trying to find true north, but the compass needle keeps wobbling because I’m wobbling. Sometimes I think it takes just as much energy to be myself as it does to mask. I’m hoping it will get easier with time, though.
Part of the challenge is trying not to be angry all the time. I have quite a bit to be angry about. As I unmask, I get to see and experience all the intense societal pressure that forced me to mask in the first place. I get fed up with all the microaggressions. The eye rolls. The impatience. The advice. (“If you’d just try karaoke, you’d love it!” “I’m going to break you out of your shell!” “Why don’t you want to go to that party with me? They’d love you!”)
The bullying. The intimidation. The ostracizing. (A study should be done of all the kids who are last for a school yard pick. I bet the percentage of kids on the spectrum is much higher in that group than autistic people in the general population. I’d stake my life on it.) And most of all, it’s the constant drumbeat of being misunderstood.
So, between figuring out who I am, and trying not to scream at the world, this unmasking attempt of mine has lacked nuance. I have yet to fine tune it. I mean, yes, I should be me, but that doesn’t mean I get to run amok. I should still demonstrate that I’m civilized enough to avoid incarceration.
A perfect example of this is the day a barely legal skinny blonde girl named Kendall plowed into the back of my car on the interstate while I was simply minding my own business and trying to commute to work. Needless to say, it was a high stress situation. I think that’s the definition of a bad day, mask or no mask.
Now, the old, heavily masked me might not have been able to avoid shedding a tear or two, but she would have stuffed all the rest of her emotions and behaved as one should in these situations. “Is everybody okay? Nobody hurt? Not to worry. These things happen.” All the while I would have been freaking out inside. But I wouldn’t have allowed myself to completely lose composure until I got home. By that time the pressure would have built up so high that my meltdown would have been epic.
But on this day, I was unmasked, baby. Naked as the day I was born, in an emotional sense. Not a filter to be seen.
I pulled the car over. Saw that it’s most likely totaled, and burst into tears. Kendall approached, apologized, said it was her fault, and I spun around and screamed, “WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING, YOU STUPID COW? HAVE YOU CALLED 911? THIS WAS YOUR FAULT SO YOU CALL 911! NOW!”
Needless to say, Kendall practically soiled her size 3 jeans. I think she would have run away if we hadn’t been stuck on the interstate, backing up traffic for miles. A tiny little voice inside me was whispering, “You really should apologize.”
And to that I thought, “F*CK YOU, TINY LITTLE VOICE! I’M SCARED AND ANGRY AND OVERSTIMULATED AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO AND I CAN’T AFFORD A CAR PAYMENT AND THERE GOES ANY CHANCE OF FOREIGN TRAVEL EVER AGAIN AND OH MY GOD I WON’T MAKE IT TO WORK AND EVERYBODY IS LOOKING AT ME LIKE I’M UNHINGED AND, OH, GOD, HELP!”
I think we all can agree that that foray into unmasking lacked subtlety. And I think, since it was my very first unmasked catastrophic experience, I kind of threw the kitchen sink at poor Kendall. All the anger and frustration and confusion and fear and mistreatment came out in the form of one completely whacked out old(ish) lady, screaming and bawling on the side of the interstate like she was about to throw down.
Fortunately, I did manage to call Dear Husband, and he came to my rescue. He’s really starting to get the hang of this autism thing. He hugged me tight and reassured me and just let me word vomit all over him until I was too tired to do more than sit in his car and blow my nose.
So, yeah. Unmasking appears to be a fine art. I’ve yet to master it. But at least I know enough to try, now. That’s something.
And yes, my car was indeed totaled, and the amount I’ll be getting for it will hardly pay for half of another drivable used car. I did nothing wrong and I’m the one who will be punished. I’m emotionally exhausted and I’m not functioning well, but I’m putting one foot in front of the other. Under the circumstances, I’m patting myself on the back for that.
Drive carefully, Dear Reader. There are a lot of Kendalls in this world. And while you can’t always mitigate the damages they cause, you can at least remember to keep Kleenex in your car.
Like the way my neurodivergent mind works? Then you’ll enjoy my book! http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5
Leave a Reply