Daily life, post diagnosis, 8 months on.
Wow! This has been a rollercoaster of a journey, and I'm still on it, being spun around like my entire universe is in the middle of a spin cycle of the cosmic washing machine, and something somewhere is on fire.
Months before official diagnosis I'd been reading and absorbing knowledge about what masking is, why to stop and how to continue life. The diagnosis hit me in the face with all the pleasant (sic) sensations of an exploding weasel at point blank range. For me... I was all like 'I'm prepared for this shit", but no, not at all.
Masking, for me, in my personal experience is the act of performing beyond the expectations of a normal neurotypical person, I'm a high performer, a high achiever. It's been said that my 60% is a neurotypical 100% in terms of output and general performance in whatever I do - I'm driven to produce excellence and accuracy far beyond what's typical. I think it may be typical of a subset of the wider autistic community for those of us with low to medium support needs anyhow.
I managed for years with coping mechanisms and techniques which would allow that level of function, and a large part of it was positive (I know, unusual to think of masking that way!). The 'tism captures information, and whilst some processing may be delayed, the detail level is always close to critical mass, the density of information coming in and being stored is almost infinite. Learning how things work is much of an act of absorbing the information akin to a hyper-sponge-on-crack; it just happens, you don't have to try - then there's the processing which takes place afterwards, that can take some time, but it will be done to a higher degree than a neurotypical can.
The information absorption can and will allow a higher level of function, I think potentially this is a learned hyper-awareness-trauma-response, having to survive on DEFCON-3 as a base level, and the way the brain is simply wired uniquely goes a long way to an explanation. Anyhow I wander - the processing we all do as autistic people, said to be 40+% more mental activity means we're experts at mimicking, so in addition to high performance, we're all great actors.
The de-masking for me was and is trial by fire. Trying to be kind to myself, being aware of the costs of the information absorption, the processing costs, and the costs of outperforming expectations by a wide margin (trying to meet, not exceed expectations is a thing!). Additionally I have grief to deal with, so when my safe person was no more, my central strength was simply gone. So yeah, costs... When my life was together, a couple of years younger I had the energy to do all of the above, all day, and maybe fall asleep on the couch of an evening. No more.
After waking around 04:30, I'll go through he day, come 14:00 I'll start to lose executive function, this isn't fixed, and it's in varying degrees but communication difficulties kick in. An hour reset helps and sometimes I'll be able to continue the day for another couple of hours all good. So being kind to myself, de-masking internally, letting down some of the acting externally, not being an extra 40%, that's it, and it's fucking hard.
I honestly don't know at this moment if de-masking is worth it. When masked, when just powering through the days, life was easier (rose-tinted-glasses?). I had additional support back then, and life was all together. I've been trying to strike the balance and give some allowances, like (almost normal) wearing noise-cancelling headphones, taking breaks, changing activities etc... So semi-masked most of the time. The energy cost is up, I'm going to be honest and say it's exhausting some (most) days. Recognising the edge of burnout, daily exhaustion is a thing, and resetting the brain also helps prep for the next batch of masking... some activities, gaming, blogging, napping, gardening, cooking, cwtching cats - they all help, so does a swift shot (or 4) of vodka - at this point I'll take a reset by whatever means over a meltdown.
I almost wish I'd not dived headlong down this super-hyper-'tism-rabbit-hole. Would I be better living in ignorance, and not knowing why I appeared broken? Would the trauma of discovery and looking back on life through the 'tism lens have been skipped... Don't fucking know, either way time is one way so I'm stuck with it, the invisible passenger in my life since birth.