"Masking" Is Not A Crime 🎭

I was 20 years old when I decided to really start working on my “mask”, and that work ended up being one of the most important things I’ve ever done.

For those not familiar, “masking” (basically) means making an effort to present as “normal” despite one’s autistic tendencies - often for social reasons.

Some of my fellow autists object to this idea of trying to pass as normal on principle - “Why should I have to change to please others?” - and boy, do they love to tell me as much in the replies to my videos.

The funniest part to me about the objections they sling? I’ve made the same arguments - from the same side! But eventually, I saw just how hollow they rang.

In this post, I’ll share a personal story from my second go at community college - mostly about the attempts I’ve made to become better at masking my autism, & how they’ve played out for me.

Then, we’ll look into the arguments I used to convince myself that I needed to let go of my “authentic” autistic self (sometimes), and how that decision set me on the path to a happier, healthier, more balanced social life. You ready? Let’s dive in.

I was nineteen or twenty years old when my dad took a big bet on my growth and helped me move to the Santa Barbara, CA for my second attempt at community college. When I first moved in, I was excited beyond belief!

This was my chance to reinvent myself! I got a new haircut, changed my name (I told people to call me “Blue” for a solid year and a half - what was that all about?), you get the picture… I was going the whole nine yards to change.

It quickly became clear that Isla Vista (the college neighborhood I was living in) was heaven on earth for college students… except for me. I was miserable.

Why was I so glum? Well, the students of UC Santa Barbara & nearby Santa Barbara City College knew how to party, and me? Well… I didn’t!

I’d only recently started learning how to socialize with “normies”  after spending my last two years of high school living amongst 20-ish of my autistic bros in residential treatment… So going to a school filled with popular people was a leap into the deep end - sink or swim. Unfortunately, I was drowning.

After a solid start + making a few (real) friends in the first month, I made some serious blunders (brandishing a knife as a joke was the big one … what was I thinking?!?) that found me where I had spent most of the last 10 years… Once again, an outcast.

Something had to change. I needed to either shape up or ship out - and I had already bombed out of so many social environments by that point of my life... I was desperate not to give up on this one right away. So? I got to work.

As I was starting to do this, though, it remained infuriating to think that I was the one who had to change… for the same reasons it always had been before.

I had (and honestly? Still have…) something of a superiority complex - and while it has never served me well, it causes me the biggest problems when I’m doing what I can to try and “fit in”.

The hard truth is that you cannot fit in while also seeing yourself as better than everyone else - if you see the people around you as dumb or uncultured or whatever, they won’t like you, and (sometimes worse) you won’t like them!

You may well be smarter than them (odds are you probably aren’t, at least according to the only real test of intelligence - see below), but if it’s social connection you’re after, instead of, e.g., ability to solve difficult computer programming problems, how does knowing that fact serve you?

If you don’t like the idea of changing how you present yourself just to be likable I’ve got great news! You don’t have to if you don’t want to!

The consequences, though - should be obvious. People won’t like you.

What should you do then? You learn. You use that beautiful weird autistic brain to start recognizing patterns like it does, just in a more challenging domain.

If you want to be liked, you can be - but high-minded principles about being “authentically yourself” aren’t going to get you there.

If i’m being honest with myself, those principles were a cop-out, anyway.

I was scared to spend time with people who might hurt me. I was scared to be rejected. I was scared that I’d never learn or grow into a more capable person.

Life is scary. Growth is scary.

Fortune Favors The Bold.

Fritz Johnson, Signing Off