I am an Aspie… (Aspergers). I spend most of my energy and time masking. Masking is when you’re not neurotypical and fight to align your behaviours to “normal” to blend in. It takes a lot of effort and I’m exhausted by the end of a few hours. Sometimes I can’t even do it. Sometimes I’m okay. No one makes allowances for people who mask to survive society. We get this. We know there won’t be slack given. We’ve gone through that kind of thing since school. It’s easier to shunt aside someone on the spectrum who is struggling to learn masking and other coping mechanisms, especially in a crowd or school environment.
I’m sorry that it has to be that way but that’s the way it is. It doesn’t mean spectrum-typical people aren’t assholes, manipulative or any of that. We’re human. The first thing we do as babies is learn that crying manipulates our environment and can even learn to lie-cry to be picked up. It’s our first humaning skill.
But there’s no one who “teaches” you how to mask successfully. You just have to try your best and learn how to manage the energy depletion. We’re not introverts per se (although some are), mostly we’re trying to mirror the people around us and fit in because we know we don’t. Trust me. We KNOW. We FEEL wrong. We don’t FIT into the lines around us. What we do when we mask is try to keep our colouring inside of the lines, and those colours are actually ourselves.
