But I Don't Mask?

Blog Post #4

One of the most common things I hear about autism and late diagnoses is masking. And often, it is something I can't relate to.

I cannot look at myself and say "I am a totally different person around neurotypicals," and neither can I say "People would tell me to stop doing this and so I did, and I developed a mask because of it."

HOWEVER, this is not to say I don't mask. I can recognize now that what I thought was depressive episodes were really burnout. Burnout comes from not embracing your autism and hiding it, ie masking.

Not to mention, my whole Misdiagnostic Journey, which made me realize that I must mask and present neurotypically, because I don't look autistic to people I've just met and/or are not comfortable around.

This is to say, that my mask is entirely subconscious.

Furthermore, it's highly possible that there were people telling me to stop doing things and so I did and developed a mask; I just don't remember these instances because my brain was so hurt by them that it has decided to throw it into the darkness. (I'm not sure if this is an uncommon experience, or something that is just left out of viral videos)

These instances, though, must have happened when I was little and more easily influenced. Because nowadays when someone tells me "don't do that," I'll give them a mental middle finger and do it again with a smile. (Ex: a retail associate told me to not buy pants and buy skirts because people would make fun of me at my all girl's highschool, so I promptly bought 3 pants.) [why would the issue be my pants and not the people making fun of me?]

Nowadays, I have a small friend circle, which is also a common trait of autism. I'll make a post about autistic friendships later.

This combination of childhood trauma and don't-give-a-fuckness of my teen years to now is why I did not realize I was autistic until trying to enter the professional (white collar) realm during and after college. I'll get into this later in the article.

Another reason why I have a hard time relating to masking, I think, is due to the word choice.

When thinking of masking, I think of a tangible difference. A thing that goes over the real thing. The person putting on the mask and those around them can see the mask, the difference. Furthermore, it's associated with a conscious act of putting it on and taking it off, which, as we've established, I don't do.

A better word, I believe, is camouflaging:

Images of Spiny Chameleons, I believe. (Wikipedia & National Geographic)

When I camouflage, I blend into my surroundings. I'm not aware that I'm doing it. I can't look at myself from outside myself, so I don't recognize I am camouflaging. Let's imagine I turn purple around NT's (neurotypicals). Someone who knows I'm not supposed to be purple would be able to identify that I am camouflaging. NT's, however, think everyone is supposed to be purple and think nothing of it. Furthermore, camouflaging in animals is a defense & survival mechanism; fitting, right?

Eventually, I will be able to turn my camouflage into a mask, coincidentally, I think it'd be purple; eventually, I will be able to recognize changes I make around people and, if I'd like, stop putting on a mask.

So, camouflage is a defense mechanism. And while becoming more independent, I stopped consciously camouflaging. I didn't have a desire to blend in with "normies". Afterall, being normal is boring. And in comes professionalism to ruin my career (ironic haha).

Despite being extremely skilled in my field, I had an extremely hard time getting picked for interviews. And when I did get picked for interviews, I could feel that something didn't go right, even though I couldn't tell exactly why.

The "issue" is my inability to mask. Professionalism has a lot of strict codes and standards, many of which are rules that are "known without being said" (how anti-autism of them). People saw me as unprofessional and thus a bad candidate. (which is something I will never understand. If you are hiring me for a skill-based job, why does anything else besides skill matter?)

And this is one of the reasons why I began suspecting I was more than just a weird-o. I could turn the weirdness off, like my hate of businesses caring more about success than empathy, but that still wasn't working.

And thus: