Masking

I didn’t know I was autistic growing up. I was in my late thirties when I began wondering why I had so many struggles in common with autistic folk. It took having a nonverbal autistic child and an autistic friend gently dropping me breadcrumbs in the form of articles on autistic women, for me to realize that I was not in fact a broken person, I was a neurodivergent person. I did, however, know early on that I was different.

It quickly became clear around fifth and sixth grade that being myself was a path that was going to lead to social suicide. The more genuinely I expressed myself, the more hostile my peers became. My interests were “weird,” my manner of speaking and appearance were contemptible, and my efforts at befriending the kids at my new school were soundly rebuffed. The bullying was intense enough that my parents and the principle actually stepped in to stop the threats and violence when I was twelve. And although no one was threatening to pulverize me simply for existing any longer, I still had no real friends. I still felt utterly alone.

From junior high forward, I studied the other girls to learn the secrets of how to be normal, how to be “popular.” I would zero in on the “in crowds” and observe their clothes, their mannerisms, their interests, and their words. I changed myself completely. I became obsessed with designer labels, the intricate social hierarchy of my school, and the mannerisms and behaviors expected of the popular kids. I completely subsumed my real identity into my effort to fit the role of the popular girl.

Except it didn’t work. You can dress a sow in designer labels, but she’s still a sow, not America’s next top model. I approached becoming popular like I was studying a role in a drama, but ultimately I failed. I couldn’t quit being myself completely, and the weirdness, the otherness would ooze out around the edges of my façade. My tendency to overshare would bite me in the butt again and again. By high school, I had ditched the popular girl mask since it was so ill fitting, and donned the goth mask. If I couldn’t fit in, then I was going to embrace my differences aggressively, and wear my vulnerability like a shield. You can’t wound me with things I have owned.

As a middle-aged adult, I have internalized masking and scripting so deeply, that I struggle to know who I would actually be if society had supported my natural growth. Am I truly kind? Am I only kind because I have learned that kindness is an acceptable mask? Am I secretly a bad person under the socially appropriate veneer of the public face of Jennifer? Is my kindness manipulative so people will like me? The cost of masking is heavy for a child. You spend much of your adulthood trying to unpack the emotional baggage of unrelenting emotional and physical abuse, and I don’t know if you are ever truly whole again.

That’s not to say that we cannot be healed. I may never get to see who I truly could have been if I hadn’t been forced to grow in damaging ways that warped my sense of self, but I do believe I can, through introspection and therapy, heal and reach a state of self acceptance. I think that our goal as emotionally injured autistic adults is to accept that in the process of healing and self discovery, there is beauty. We can’t ever return to our unfractured state, but like the Japanese art of kintsugi, we can find our beauty in our healed selves.