Published on 12, July, 2020
Does this make any kind of sense to anyone?
For me, society seems to be present me with a choice
1. Act normal, uptight and be accepted on the surface, as a walk down the street, but feel depressed, isolated because I have internally obliterated some of the essential quirky parts of my character.
2. Relax, act a bit quirky, and have people avoid me in the street, and be treated like some kind of rapist, mad animal or wierd alien sub-species.
From my own perspective, it seems that people outside have this extra, unnecessary layer, that is like an armed militaristic assault vehicle designed to convince people of their social status - it makes them seem fake, uptight and often rather reactionary, even if they identify as progressive or left wing, because they can't see past their social conditioning needs, that they push in my face at every possible mimenf. If I try to conform to their behaviours of physical uptightness, pushing out my personality like some kind of armed militaristic assault vehicle then my body has to become extremely tense indeed, it's like I'm absorbing all their uptightness, and externally I seem to go to the extreme of their behaviour and often appear robotic or irritable or unreasonably idealistic.
So, that's my dilemma either become robotic or be treated like a potential alien-weirdo-rapist.
Sound familiar, or not?
Reading the comments here, I think it's hard to give a meaningful answer as we all mask differently. I think I also mix with different NTs to many of the other commenters on this site; I don't see the extremes of conformity other people describe.
I do feel like some commenters here that I don't know where my mask ends. I think my external autistic behaviours are relatively subtle even without masking. My stims are quite subtle and while I can't make small talk, the rest of my conversation seems "normal". That said, I think people possibly notice something a bit "off" about me that they can't quite define if they talk to me for long. I struggle with eye contact; I can make it, but I have to force myself to do so. Likewise with ensuring I have suitable body language. I'm OK faking this until I'm stressed and overloaded, then it becomes painful.
I'm probably not naturally a "quirky" person. I have no real desire to be different for the sake of being different. I guess I do suppress a lot of my emotion and try to seem quite "blank" a lot of the time when I'm with people I don't know well or trust because I worry about saying the wrong thing. Likewise, I don't info dump people with knowledge about my special interests, but that's a problem if I don't share with people who would like to know and maybe would find me interesting company if I did.
I am more fun and silly with my wife (the only person I don't really mask with, or not much). I don't really feel the need to be like that elsewhere, though, and it would be inappropriate in the workplace or at my synagogue.
A lot of this is from bad experiences in childhood rather than adulthood (I haven't been bullied in the workplace, for instance), but it's hard to unlearn. I wonder if other people are the same, reading from an outdated script, but not knowing how to change.