I WAS THE CHILD WHO fitted in, but not quite. I had a loving family, I had friends, was a high achiever in school, and so, to the outside world, all was well. But all was not well within, and everything was a façade.
I learned from a very young age to hide my true [autistic] self to “fit in” – a common feature in autistic females. I hid the fact that I did not know how to stand up for myself, and that I liked things other people thought were boring and nerdy; I hid the music I liked, the fact I loved reading, and my strange obsessions and compulsions. I socially masked.
Social masking is where we mimic and copy our peers – a quick hair flick here, a quirky smile there, we check out what they are wearing and how they wear it. If you mask effectively, you camouflage neatly into the tribe, and they accept you.
But who was I fooling? No matter how many times I tried, I knew I didn’t fit in, and yet my masks were so well curated that at times I even fooled myself. Yes, mask – a social self, a work self – but what I’m referring to is amplified and is totally and utterly exhausting.
