#i never had the luxury of blending in from masking to avoid harassment. but i still experienced the exhaustion from masking

[autisticlee]

I always see autistic people say they either mask really well, or they can't mask at all so they never did.

where are my autistics who tried really hard to mask growing up, wasted so much time and energy doing it, but realized it was completely pointless when you got older because you were awful at it and it never worked once in your life. you were visibly autistic to everyone and played pretend alone for no reason 🥹 all in attempt to please people and get them to stop harassing, bullying, and punishing you for being "too weird/quiet/boring/awkward/scary/etc"

basically, you don't fit in either side of the perspective. you relate to both sides. you experienced the deep exhaustion caused by masking, but you experienced the harassment and unfair treatment caused by not masking. with the added trauma of the mask not working so you're exhausted from the effort and getting bullied still on top of it.

bonus points if all that wasted time attempting to mask, and failing, led to you not being able to form your own self/personality and you have no clue who the hell you are now as an adult. maybe you gave up masking once you realized it did nothing to help and only made things worse. so now you're an empty pile of masks that don't fit and there's nothing inside 😔

#autistic #autism #actually autistic #autism things #asking autistics #lee rambles #i gave up trying to mask one i realized thats whar i was doing and noticed how it never worked once in my life #i created a different self or personality for different situations and for different people #i don't know which if any are “me” and the will come out at different times to control my brain and try to fit the situation/person #but even with all that i still was obviously too weird and different for everyone and got bullied relentlessly my whole childhood #i obviously couldn't mask at all. i still cant. im 20 different people in one brain and theyre all too “weird” for anyone to accept #i never once fit in or was able to not be visibly autistic. that makes me stand out and get bullied and rejected from everything in life #it often feels like i have a huge target on my back and people see me as an intruder among them and go after me #i never had the luxury of blending in from masking to avoid harassment. but i still experienced the exhaustion from masking #with the added trauma of it never working and beating myself up over it :) #my masks all had names too and woukd take over when they were needed. i feel like i had so many names and lives all in one #but were any of them actually me? were they all me? none me? who are they? who am i? why am i like this fhdhjdsn why is this so hard #brains are confusing places