One of the magics of the arts is that, from within our temporary, star-material, biological construct, the life force holding our construct together can create something that we hold out to other temporary, star-material, biological constructs, and we say, “This is how it is for me.” And that sharing implies a question: “How is it for you?”
In other (simpler) words, making things allows us to compare our experiences of reality.
I spent the first 30 years of my life masking my Autistic Self without knowing it, and without knowing that most other people didn’t have the same experience of being alive as I did. So, I love to ask people what their inner life is like, how they think, if they can see in color. I think if someone had asked me about those things, I might have understood myself sooner.
Today someone asked me, “How do you know when you’re masking?”
The answer is simultaneously intangible and one of the deepest, most known sensations in my temporary construct’s memory.
When I’m masking, my intellectual existence is at the top of a river. At the bottom of the river is my sense of being in my body, my emotions, my intuition. The ocean, perhaps, is also down there. The water of the river is divided into a series of locks, each walled off by a sluice gate. The boat starts at the top of the river. It enters the first lock, stops, and waits for the sluice gates to move. It moves to the next lock, stops, and waits for the next gate.
When I’m not masking, there is a river, but there are no locks, no gates. The water runs freely, taking the path of least resistance, to the sea. All the water is connected. It flows. It knows itself. It is a river and it moves like a river.
When I am masking, all my conscious awareness lives in the front of my face. I am focusing on the immediate moment. I forget I have arms, legs, a stomach. I forget I have emotions. I black out the temperature of the room, the glare of the lights, the feeling of the collar of my shirt against my neck. I leave my body to inhabit whoever I’m interacting with. I read their mood, their body language, listening with huge intent so I don’t misunderstand their tone of voice or miss a word.
I am an actor, sliding my way through a scene I have rehearsed but never performed in this particular theater, with these particular actors, one that I will probably never perform again exactly like this. Trying to blend in, to pretend I perform this scene every day. That this is all I do. That I, too, am a professional neurotypical human person. That every single word I’m saying, even the small talk, *especially* the small talk, isn’t something I rehearsed in my head the night before, muttering it on the way over to perform this scene with different intonation to see which feels the best in my mouth.
I am a spy behind enemy lines, avoiding detection. I am getting in and out, fast, no casualties.
I am burning out, because this conversation is taking way longer than I thought, and I never did figure out a sure-fire script to end every conversation politely and there are fluorescent lights flickering and a dog barking somewhere and the Glade plug in smells so cheaply floral-adjacent it’s a poison my lungs are refusing to accept.
And when my spoons are gone, I can’t get my eyes to focus on a page or a screen or my cat or the things around me. But thank fucking god because at least I’m home, though my brain is buzzing inside my skull, and if I could just reach in there and pull the buzzers out, I’d be myself again.
When I’m not masking, it’s not like that. It’s effortless, connected. Energy flows in a loop back to me. Water to water. River to sea. That’s how I know.
Allison Wall 