Do your friends and loved ones know your identity in this place?

No but we have to remember it is a public forum. i hope no one has worked me out.

Me too.  I am a little more paranoid that most....perhaps.  it is actually those OTHER than my neatest and dearest finding my thoughts on here that concerns me the most.  I would definitely not wish for that.

There's nothing on here I wouldn't say to the people who know me well altho i do tend to overshare on here. I also think it'd be an eye opener. I also know they are probably not things that anyone I know would find interesting. I think a lot of people don't over analyse themselves like I or maybe other autistic people do. They don't need to go on forums to work themselves out. They don't need clarification from others about their experiences. 

Exactly.

Facing the truth isn't all hardness and disadvantage, It seems to make it easier to be happy with ones self, and make you end up surrounded by the people who can "take it" without melting down.

I used to need people to tell me I was O.K. Now I don't. I know where I'm O.K. and where I need to do work. And that massive workload will keep me busy until I die. It's my one job.

I Sperg said:

Those sad people caught up in currents of mendacity, and fear of discovery, trying desperately to cobble together a fractured and compartmented reality I feel so sorry for

Well - that's me chap - to a large degree.  50+ years of not knowing who the blazes I am = mendacious attitude towards oneself is a kind of inevitability?.......but I do feel sorry for myself about it (and for those around me on this crazy journey too.)   Thankfully, I think my core character has survived the obfuscations, but more importantly, that core character isn't as horrific as I feared it could have been.

Retired user gave my answer too better than I probably would. 

I'd add, that my policy of trying to be as truthful as a machine (except to those who lie routinely to me, they get what they get, in my interpretation of "give unto caesar what is his") makes me not require privacy from those close to me.

The policy has a spin off, because it literally means I can't allow my self to do anything I'd need to hide from my nearest and dearest, so many of the usual relationship destroying mistakes don't get made by me. 

I'm pretty sure I'd have quit the pot, if I'd had to try and skulk around hiding it.

I don't like having to "watch what I say" it feels like a psychological strait jacket, so I organised my life so I don't have to. 

I do however have enough connection to reality to know that for some people (possibly the majority) they live complicated lives full of half truths and misunderstandings, where they have to routinely lie in order to not be hammered or taken advantage of by those around them.

Those sad people caught up in currents of mendacity, and fear of discovery, trying desperately to cobble together a fractured and compartmented reality I feel so sorry for, but often they don't feel sorry for themselves, so there isn't much can be done, except to try and step around their delusions carefully, a task that seems ever growing, as the "post truth society" hasn't yet had it's day. 

A very good point well made.

A very good point well made.