The masks we leave behind

This is my blog's manifesto. This is what I have to contribute to society. You're welcome and I'm sorry.

Mask on.

I feel like I’ve spent my entire life jumping from one mask to another, trying on new personalities like Halloween costumes and then quickly discarding them when they don’t fit, or offend the Native Americans. 

Masking isn’t fun. There’s no Cuban Pete, no king of the rumba beats. No chick-chicky boom, chick-chicky-boom, chick-chicky-boom. 

Masking is *actually* a lot of fucking work. Just existing in a room with other people drains my battery. I’m in low-power mode by lunch. I’m at one percent by dinner. Maybe God gave me a shitty brain on purpose so I’d have to buy a new one every 30 years. That’s how They get ya.

I feel like I’m two people, there’s me— the little Plankton in my head, pulling the levers of my brain— and then there’s this spongey flesh creature I inhabit, who has all these inconvenient needs and emotions. 

My life has been like an episode of Prometheus and Bob. I’m an alien, trying to teach a caveman how to do shit and failing hilariously, over and over again.

I’m the Cleveland Browns. I’m the Bad News Bears. I’m the Washington Generals. I feel like I was put on this earth to fail and then share my experiences with other autistic people. Otherwise, what the hell was the point of any of this? 

---

Rethinking Failure

I was raised by a god-fearing, type-A corporate lawyer, so naturally— I struggle with perfectionism. Truth be told, I’m terrified of failure because every time I fail, I have a Vietnam War flashback to being 8 years old and hearing the words, “Dad wants to talk to you.”

Still gives me the heebie-jeebies

Our conversations went a little something like this:

If you weaponize shame whenever your child fails, they will grow up to be terrified of failure. It’s a pretty simple equation. When my boss gives me some innocuous, negative feedback at work, it’s pretty much impossible for me to not regress into that younger version of myself. Instead of letting it roll off my back, I get super defensive, because again, in my head— failure means I’m about to get dressed down for my lack of “effort and stick-to-itive-ness.” I’m about to have my nose rubbed in shit like the family dog. I’m about to get humiliated by a half-naked man in dress socks.

As a child, failure meant I was in trouble, which meant I was gonna have to talk to my dad, which meant I was going to get in an argument with my dad, which meant I was gonna have a meltdown, which meant I was gonna get grounded and punished even further. So now, when I fail as an adult, my nervous system is fooled into thinking dad’s gonna be home any minute and I spiral into a meltdown. I know it sounds silly, but whenever there’s conflict, I feel like I’m *actually* about to die.

To avoid these unpleasant feelings, I cling to this perfectionist mask. I know it doesn’t sound like the worst coping strategy. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be this perfect?

this is me

I’m joking, of course. Perfectionism doesn’t *actually* lead to us being perfect. If anything, it makes us want to curl up in a ball and *actually* die. As people with rejection sensitivity get older and our responsibilities grow, we stop putting ourselves out there, because we know how much failure (and the corresponding meltdown) would derail our lives at that current moment.

“I don’t have time to have a meltdown right now! I gotta walk the kids and take the dog to school! I gotta call that guy about the thing and pick up that thing from the guy. And then on Friday, I’m getting brunch with Susan to tell her about my lobotomy— I’m booked solid! This difficult conversation that might end with me experiencing personal growth is gonna have to wait until next month, sorry!”

There’s got to be a better way to think about failure.

I’ve settled on this: Failure is just the shedding of a mask. It’s the death of a way of being that no longer serves us. We can learn a lot from overturning rocks, but most of us are too afraid of the centipedes. It’s like being a scientist, fine-tuning a rocket ship, only we’re also the rocket ship, so when our calculations are off and we explode— it really fucking hurts. 

I think if we get good at enduring that pain and rebuilding our rocket, we can achieve a lot of growth in a very short amount of time. 

Unfortunately, most people never test their rocket. Or, if they do, and the rocket blows up— they just get super mad and double down, deny their shortcomings and project their rage onto other people. If you stay in that shame headspace long enough, it starts to become your reality.

People get stuck in their masks, unable to acknowledge the cracks. How many (probably autistic) boomers do you know, who in recent years have just become a parody of themselves? It’s a little sad, but not entirely their fault. 

Masking is an entirely subconscious process. Just like SpongeBob isn’t aware that he’s being controlled by Plankton, we’re not aware that we’re being controlled by our mask, that is, until we see a crack— until we fail. 

You just have to have the courage to pull that thread, realizing that you might not like what you find when the whole thing unravels. 

Why I Write

I feel uniquely qualified to be the village idiot— or shaman, depending on your perspective. I think I’m a teacher, in a very Socratic sense. You learn from watching me, not necessarily from listening to me. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about the “self-righteous” label, which my writing has gotten before and will no doubt receive again. 

I think what people perceive as self-righteousness is just me creating my own social language. I don’t care if anybody listens— I’m autistic. Nobody has ever listened to me. When I’m up on my bully pulpit, waving my dick around, I’m talking to me more than I’m talking to you.

I grew up Catholic. For the first 13-ish years of my life, I really thought that everything would be fine so long as I just followed all the rules. As long as I was perfect like Jesus and didn’t masturbate, my spot in heaven was locked up. As a straight, white, upper-middle-class kid— I could fall into that beanbag chair of suburban bliss, fully secure in my knowledge of how the world works, always having my basic needs met, lay your weary head to rest, don’t you cry no more.

Then I woke up.

I started noticing patterns. Hmm, for a man of God, my dad sure does love screaming at me. Hmm, for children of God, the kids at my school are pretttttttty racist. Hmm, for a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values, we sure do love bombs. I got a whiff of America’s farts and my intuition went, nah, fuck that.

I hate submitting myself to such an abusive and elitist culture, but my neurodivergent brain craves structure, so I have no choice but to create a new set of rules that are more aligned with my values. I have to try to recreate some of that certainty and security that I felt as a child, otherwise I will *actually* go insane. 

I write self-help content in the truest sense of the word.

And yeah, I know words, I have the best words. Me writing is perfect. I make joke, haha. But don’t mistake my populist swagger and pseudoscientific pop psychology for medical advice. I’m an entertainer. I’m a time-traveling visage from Christmas’s yore. I’m not interested in fame or parasocial relationships. I just genuinely enjoy expressing myself.

I believe in telling (what I think is) the truth. Am I wrong (often)— yes. But at least I’m failing in the right direction. I have my vector pointed on a pro-human trajectory. I’m making up for lost time at the library, I’m working on my relationships, I’m working on myself— ask my therapist! Ask my psychiatrist! Ask my wife! All three have told me in the last month that they’re proud of me. I have so many good boy points. I’m gonna eat so many tendies.

I’m a writer at heart. I enjoy talking shit. It’s a helluva lot better than blending into the hull of the Flying Dutchman like Bootstrap Bill. I need to write about something. They say to write about what you know, well— I know how to fail, that’s for sure. Maybe if I can piece together the shards of this broken life, I can provide a roadmap for people who are working on the same puzzle. The right person will find it. Just like I’ve found so many autistic writers who’ve helped me. 

If you’re reading this, I’m glad you found me. I’m glad I found you. I can’t be your best friend. I only have so much bandwidth. I’m not gonna help you move, but I can help you groove, baby. 

The thought process behind Autism After Dark is this: If I can get really good at this one thing, I can be a place of refuge on somebody else’s journey, someone handing out water bottles along the marathon route. It’s not gonna save the world, but it does help. I genuinely think this is my calling, whatever “this” is.

After struggling for a bit, trying to figure out what this blog is going to “be,” and after the first draft of this article was 7,000 words— I think I’ve finally settled on an answer. I don’t need a 5-part, 10,000-word article. Each of those parts should be its own article. This whole blog should be about the masks I’ve left behind.

Autism After Dark is going to be me reaching into the darkness of my life before diagnosis, pulling out some failure, placing it on the autopsy table and poking around until I arrive at a place of self-compassion and closure. Hopefully, other autistic folks can learn from this process, and if not, hey, at least there’s some fucking SpongeBob references.

I need to eat food and live indoors like the rest of you. I’m rebuilding my life after a physical disability led to unemployment, which led to autistic burnout, which led to the mental hospital, which led to an autism diagnosis, which led to the strange predicament I find myself in today. 

If you want to give me money, it would genuinely help a lot. I’m DoorDashing on a bum hip to make $200 a week because that’s literally the difference between us eating or not eating. So, if out of the goodness of your heart, you’d like to make my life suck $5 a month less, I truly, highly, BIGLY appreciate it. 

The Role of Shame

Caring about your reputation just makes you easier to control. 

Like if I say, on a public forum, that I’m attracted to women, and it doesn’t matter to me whether or not they have a dick— the footage the CIA captured from my front-facing camera of me jacking off to an Izzy Wilde gangbang compilation suddenly holds considerably less weight. I enjoy prostate stimulation, you got a problem with that, brother?  

I get that people don’t want to know this information, but guess what? I’m tired of being ashamed of it. I’m tired of pretending to not be a huge slut. And for what? So I can barely fit into our society’s rigid definition of masculinity? At the end of the day— it’s my dick. Why should I have to fuck the people that you find attractive? Isn’t less competition better? So what if I’m getting off to Marilyn Mayson futa videos? I pay my taxes. I recycle. I’m sorry, I thought this was America. 

Perfectionism, performative masculinity, professionalism, beauty standards, the Protestant work ethic— these are all powerful forces in our society that share a common goal: Heaping shame onto other people as a mechanism of social control. 

What happens when you operate with no shame? What happens when you preemptively trauma dump like Eminem in 8-Mile? What happens when you display your festering wounds proudly for the world to see? I guess we’re gonna find out.

It ain’t easy, being cheesy— but at least I’m free. 

I’ve been doing this kind of writing for over a decade, I just never really had the courage to share it with other people. I was still operating out of that “reputation preservation mindset,” worried what my family, friends or potential employers might think if they caught me dissecting my childhood trauma on the internet. 

Then, about two years ago, I fell into autistic burnout. I went to the mental hospital, quit my job, lost all my money and decided to kill myself. 

Alright… Friday, I said. On Friday when Abby leaves, I’m going to get black out drunk and run the car in the garage. 

Friday came and went, my flesh body survived, but part of me did die that weekend— my inner Plankton— the part of me that needed to control everything, the part of me that wanted to be like everybody else, the part of me that ran away from shame. I decided, if I’m going to stay alive, I need to start paying attention to my body. I need to start accommodating my sensory needs. I need to stop worrying about being perfect and living up to other people’s expectations. I need to untie this knot of repressed trauma so I can show up better for the people I love. I need to write about the masks I’ve left behind, because it makes me happy and because I need to lean into that joy.

I might fail. I might *actually* die.

But that’s OK.

Because as far as I’m concerned, I’ve been dead for a while.

Fuck it, mask off.