The nail that sticks up gets hammered in. -Chinese Proverb
There’s a weird phenomenon that happens when you get people in a group. They start to compare stories, they start to try to out-do each other, and sometimes when they’ve been together as a group of friends or people for a really long time, they start to turn into each other.
I’ve seen it with friend groups, with couples who have been married for a long time, and even people who have worked together for years.
It happens slowly, over a period of time. Often, the people inside that group don’t even realize it’s happening. But someone from the outside looking in might find it very obvious – like, hey, all these people have the same kind of clothes, and the girls all wear their hair the same way, and they kind of talk alike.
As a person who identifies as autistic, I find these situations fascinating, and also very intimidating. When I was younger, I would often find myself unconsciously trying to fit in by studying and copying the moves and language of my friend group. I would lose myself trying to be like the others, so that they wouldn’t notice how different I was.
As an adult, I’ve learned this is called masking. It’s something that everyone probably does to some small degree in order to fit in, but for autistics, it’s something that we do every day, every time we go out in public, just to try to ‘act’ neurotypical. Have you ever found out that someone you know had something going on (either family stuff, or something from their past, or a sickness or disability) and when you find out, you’re like “I HAD NO IDEA!!”
That’s kind of the goal of masking. Women with autism are especially good at this. We bend and shift and cover up the quirks so that we look like every other woman walking in to work who seems to have it all together.
Recently, I turned 34. I had no idea I was going to be 34. I thought I was turning 33. Needless to say, this was a disappointment to me because I felt like I lost a whole year of my life. Also, somehow 34 feels so much older than 33.
But, in the last few years, I’ve grown more comfortable with myself. I’ve started pushing back against the need to mask who I am all the time. I still have to do it, like when I’m having an overwhelmed day at work and I have to sit in a meeting. I have to quietly fidget with my pen below the table to bring my drink to have something to occupy my hands, or bite the inside of my cheek when I feel like I need to run out of the room screaming because the lights are too bright and Mary chews her gum too loudly next to me.
But the everyday masking is something that I’m working on. I’m tired of losing myself to be like everyone else. I found that my true friends are accepting of me, even with all of my quirks. They’ve learned to work around some of my crazy routines and they know how to find me and drag me out when I’m not willing to leave the house.
Those are the friends worth waiting for.