I am sometimes better at masking, and sometimes worse. On the days where I am worse, I notice people are a lot more hostile. Today, someone posted on Facebook asking peoples opinions on vaccines. I’m a pre med student so medicine is one of my passions and hyper fixations. I posted a longer reply and it turned out that person was anti vax and didn’t like my opinion. They told me to calm down, that I’m silly, to “stop yelling” even though I didn’t use all caps, and I also got told I’m immature. I genuinely just tried to give my opinion and some information and facts, but I got completely misinterpreted. I guess it may have been rude saying that if you don’t know what RNA is you shouldn’t pretend to know how RNA vaccines work. I know I should have expected some hostility, but I thought it would be more debate-like instead of personal attacks. I posted about it on my personal page because I initially thought it was funny that someone asked for opinions and got mad that I gave mine, and once again, I was told to calm down and that I am silly. All this made me go into defense mode and I started being mean back, which I really regret now. I wasn’t even upset until those people told me that I was. I feel like I can’t express my passions or give my opinions without being “too much”. I’m so damn tired of being told I’m too much and that I need to calm down when I’m calm. If anyone wants to reply, please no vaccine discourse, I respect your bodily autonomy to get them or not and I don’t have emotional energy for that anymore today, and please be nice because people have been mean to me a lot this week and I’m feeling sensitive. I just want some compassion from other people with autism that have similar struggles. I feel like I need to stop talking about my passions and opinions in order to mask better. Edit: heads up, I usually get too anxious to respond on here.
