@actuallyautistic
As I continue my quest to understand and drop so much of the masking I have been doing for so long, I have come to understand something I've been kind of aware of for awhile. That whilst I have never cared about what strangers might think of me, in fact I've always considered this to be somewhat of a strength, I've also always been hyper-aware of how I might be being perceived. This, I now realise, is not the contradiction it seems. My not really caring is just my way of seeing the world. That how others see me is just their view. That it doesn't necessarily reflect me and that unless it's coming from someone I care about or respect, it's unlikely to affect me. If somebody doesn't like the colour of my hair, or the clothes I'm wearing, for example, well that's just their choice and nothing to do with me.
Constantly thinking about and trying to be aware of how others might be perceiving me though, was I now realise always about keeping myself safe. Not in the particulars but the overall. Is my mask (as I now know it to be) slipping, am I being too me, standing out, being too different. Because none of that had ever gone well for me. To give even a simply example, I literally can't even begin to count how many times complete strangers have called me rude to my face, simply because of my tendency not to speak much. And these sort attacks against my fundamental autistic self were always the ones that hurt. Because before I realised I was autistic I had no defence against them. No way of explaining, even to myself, why simply being me should offend them so and also why that shouldn't matter to me. Not on the personal level, any more than any other comment, but only on the "god, what an ableist git" level. But you can't get to that level unless you know it exists and you can't know it exists until you know why you're different. And that took me over 53 years, which is why I'm only just realising this stuff now.

#Autism
#ActuallyAutistic