The Damage of Masking and Undiagnosed Autism

Reading through my journals. I can see the pattern of damage that not knowing I was autistic did to me. Masking (trying to seem neurotypical) had a toll on me that I am still trying to get through to this day. The bipolar extremes that I felt about myself my whole life are products of me trying to suppress who I am while trying to figure out who I was. I think the easiest way to show the damage of masking and not knowing I was autistic can be described best by some of my old journal entries from the tortured soul who didn't know who she was [2003 to 2006]:

January 1st, 2003

Do I really fit in anywhere? Tell me this, the way I feel... when I read or watch a movie or am around people, I can feel them, kind of like they are inside of me. I can feel their feelings so completely...

Does that mean that all I feel is just a fabrication of what everyone else feels? Am I just a shell that collects the feelings of fictional characters and real people and magnify them in a vain attempt to relieve them of some of themselves. Am I just a collector who has no personage of their own?

No, can't be. I just seem to find the feelings that represent and are already in me and it just makes them clear to me. I am me, my own person. Aren't I?

Who am I? What am I?

May 9th, 2003

You know, life is too confusing. I've come to the point where I don't know what to think, and if I do, I feel that all I do and everything I pursue is somehow very wrong.

...I think that truly I have betrayed myself... I find it so hard to stay focused. I wonder too many things, I see things too differently.

I feel that if I turn around suddenly I'll see an unfamiliar face smiling at me in an all too knowing way.

I'm a little afraid of who I am. I feel that what I am, have become is not right... I'm not even sure what I want right now... Does loving myself make me a bad person? Does loving feelings make me weak? Am I so completely wrong? ... This world plague's me and I keep losing my strength, my resolve... My thoughts even contradict themselves. What am I supposed to do?

May 21st, 2003

I never realized this fully before, but they, everyone, cannot truly see me. They just cannot. For you see when I truly bare my soul and show them what I am, they scoff and laugh it off. Like it is some inconsequential matter, some eccentricity that pops up once in a while but goes away. What they don't realize is that the can't understand what they see, so they refuse to believe that is what is there!

I just guess I wanted to believe that one of them understood, but I know better now. They don't see it the same way, they never will and so they will continue to sluff if off and continue to ignore the true me...

That's why I never come out of my room because as soon as I leave it I end up pretending and hiding. Hiding even more than if I never showed my face, though to them I'm hiding when I'm in my room. Little do they know that it's the exact opposite. I'm only who I wish to be when I'm alone, everything else is there to make everyone else comfortable... well to my tolerance level. Never satisfied, none of them ever are, not until I've been sucked dry.

September 13th, 2003

I want to go back, back in time to when I made more sense and I could have turned out any way instead of what I am. I want to be invisible yet seen at the same time. I don't know what I want anymore, only that my mind is tormented with thoughts that I know are me, and yet I am frightened or worried, not by what they are, but what everyone else will see then as, what they have already told me they see them as.

May 29th, 2004

I'm less than satisfied with reality, it quite frankly is quite the disappointment, like a badly filmed movie or a poorly written book. Something no one on Earth would pick up and read.

I think my role in life was cast wrong, they chose the wrong person. You're not supposed to feel like you're acting in real life... are you? Every day that I deal with the people around me I put on my character and perform... well not really, just at work. Work is a performance. If you do well you proceed to the next day. If you fail you look for your next performance. It's worse than a ballet, it's unscripted on-the-spot ballet and you still have to perform your part in perfect sync to those around you.

August 24th, 2004

I wonder is it possible to fake, truly fake an emotion? What would be the purpose of faking it in the first place? So that you act in accord to the way you think people expect you to? First off there is no way to know what a person is thinking and second why would I care what that person thought anyway? So tell me why, why do I find myself faking fear? I think because I don't want to alienate myself further from the human race.

September 14th, 2004

I've been trying to figure out why it's so blatantly obvious that I'm different, weird, eccentric, however you want to put it... It's just strange to know that everyone around you sees you as strange. It distances them from me... No one wants to keep me around even if I would help the team because I'm too different and no one really cares to know me and not knowing me makes me an easy target to pick off because no one wanted to form an alliance with me.

September 18th, 2004

I don't know why I continue to try to fit in when I'm clearly an outcase. You think I would have learned my lesson by now... I've never felt so used by a person and yet I continue to subject myself to it. I'ts because I've got no one else, what choice do I have? ...I just don't know how to deal well with people despite my training from Jehovah. It all feels so fake, so forced and those are two things I HATE being... Maybe I should just resign myself to the ultimate outcome and just stop trying.

September 26th, 2004

Sometimes I wonder that if by writing all that I have down, my journal, my dreams, my books I have somehow instigated who I am, not shared or discovered, but created. Had I never done this in the first place would I be the same person? Would I understand myself any better?

I always feel like I must prove to people... that I am in fact thinking my own thoughts and not just stealing someone else's.

November 13th, 2004

I keep thinking there is something wrong with me, there must be something wrong with me because I'm not like everyone else, I don't think like anyone else.

November 21st, 2004

Everything I've read about making friends from the Watchtower Society says I don't need to change myself to make friends, yet who I am, who I am doesn't belong in the Truth. I have no one to relate to no matter how hard I try and I have been trying REALLY hard.

January 2nd, 2005

People confuse me. I confuse me... No wonder I find it so hard to make friends. I never see myself there, I never explain my views, I never actively involve myself in the conversation. Partially because I'm too radical and it confuses people. I've come to understand this very well.

It also makes me hate the person I am in a crowd because I awalys try not to act myself so that I don't scare off people and instead start sounding obnoxious because I start spouting off random facts and talking fast and loud and completely out of turn. I always end up regretting everything I've said in the encounter.

January 27th, 2005

Dealing with people is way too political. Every word you say has potential to offend or stumble someone. I'd rather avoid it than get involved in the political struggle... Stupid group! I loathe thee! I'd rather do what I want on my own, I'd enjoy myself a lot better on my own than with others doing things I don't want to.... I don't like people. I wonder if I ever will. I really try to but I just can't stand the problems people interacting creates... Crowds are evil, pure evil.

June 17th, 2005

I hate myself at gatherings. I hate how I end up acting around others. Despite that I still want to be there, but every time I say something I feel like an intruder or that I'm digging myself into a hole and so I try not to say anything and end up just watching and not being included. Then I start to realize I don't belong and that leads to an extreme loneliness. The final conclusion is that I end up surrounded by people and ye more lonely than when I'm at home. But I don't leave... As I sit watching everyone talk it reminds me of how little I have in common with them. There is only so much I don't like but know about that I can talk about with them before I start going instance not saying everything I really want to say... I hate myself in gathering... I think I probably always will. It was esp[ecially bad tonight because yesterday's [journal] entry made me not want to be fake. I wanted to be me and no one there appreciates who that is.

August 22, 2005

I find myself upset because people like me. Why is it that I feel guilty when people give me presents? Because I feel I don't deserve it, that I'm a terrible friend. I like my solitude, I'll go for weeks without talking to my 'friends' and for some reason they still like me. Why do they like me? I don't understand. I don't give them a reason to. I don't understand why do they like me. I feel so guilty when people like me, maybe, because I feel I can't possibly like them as much as they like me. That makes me guilty.

I just don't understand relationships sometimes... Is quantity of time spent with the other what determines friendship? Is the amount of time not spent with them that shows the strength? Or is a true friend there whenever and it doesn't matter. Time doesn't matter? It shouldn't... I feel it doesn't.

[Friends] bought me a scarf. It's the second present they've boughten me. I feel so guilty. I'm starting to think they believe I'm someone I'm not. I don't know who they see when they look at me. Maybe I just don't understand myself well enough. I think relationships scare me because they all see me differently than I see myself and it makes me feel lost. If I don't know myself than who am I? Every person I spend time with makes me feel like I'm less and less me and that I've somehow been moulded by them. I'm constantly confused by how people see me. Every response I get makes some go "Is that really how I am?" And I step back and look at this person they've created and it;s not me and it scares me. I'm suddenly lost thinking "when did I become that?" It's not bad things, it's mostly good, but it's different than how I see myself. It's like I suddenly have been divorced from myself and I'm viewing me from their point of view. And every person sees me differently and I just keep shattering into thousands of pieces and I can't gather them up because I'm trying to collect from so many different places that I end up less myself than if I just left the shards blowing around. That's what people make me. They confuse me. People confuse me and so I feel guilty when they do stuff for me because I'm so scattered I couldn't possibly think of the things, the nice things they do... Relationships confuse me, shatter me to pieces. That's why I need so much time alone so that I can fit the pieces back together.

August 30th, 2005

...last Monday [my friends] bought me a scarf. You can't buy someone something and then turn around and treat them [horribly]. That's not friendship. I'm not sure what to call that. It reminds me of my relationship with my grandma. When she gives me something, she expects me to do everything for her. It's why I dislike our relationship. It's what I'm starting to feel [my friends'] relationship is with me... I have horrid taste in friends. I can have them as long as I don't mind abuse from them.

April 7th, 2006

I can't help thinking that maybe I'm a "Nobody", no heart, empty shell. Pretending to be real when I don't exist at all. A sad imitation...

April 13th, 2006

This life is a joke. A sick warped twisted joke. I'm the butt.

I hate feeling this way. I'm a mess. A problem that can't be solved. I don't know where I'm going... I'm a social defect. Rejected. I'm what's left over. A mess of the worst feelings and emotions. Worthless.

Like I said, this life is a joke. All I can do is try and laugh my way through to the next one... I better not be doing this shit 3 years from now or I might as well call it quits and sleep until the next life... if I have a next life.

May 14th, 2006

How many times do you have to wish for death before it's finally granted? ...Life is pain.

June 5, 2006

I wasn't bred for this existence. I've fallen into the wrong time... place... I feel lost because I am lost.

Why is it reality feels more like a dream than my thoughts do? Why is it when I wake up and find myself here I feel so surprised. I feel like a mistake has been made, I'm no supposed to be here.

I'm flawed for this time, this place. I need to find the place, the time where I belong, where I am not an error, a random anomaly rejected into this world without purpose without earning. I'm supposed to be somewhere else. This body doesn't feel like mine, it feels borrowed.

My consciousness fled here because it had nowhere else to go. I wonder what happened to the original occupant, I wish I could find them so we could trade places, maybe they feel as lost and confused as I do. I'm an accident. I was never meant to be here, yet here I have been for 22 years with no idea of how to get to where I am supposed to be. I'm trapped. I wonder when I'm gone and the original occupant returns if they'll be horribly disappointed with the life I have left them to live. If so, I'm sorry. I was horribly inadequate at living in this place, this time.

I just wish I could leave now. Instead, I'm stuck in this prison, without the key, hell I'm not even sure there is a door.

June 8th, 2006

October 19th, 2006

Everyone sees my differences. Even my acupuncturist said I was an 'anomaly'. Is there nothing normal about me? Isn't there anything that defines me like the general public? Or do I not want that purely because I can't be that way? Have I fooled myself into believing that I want to be different purely because I couldn't possibly be normal?

...Define me. Show me who I am. Show me that it's all right to be this way. Accept me. Believe in me. Give me purpose, give me a path, the one I was following seems to have faded away, abruptly ended, left me stranded at the edge of a cliff. Do I jump? Plow on? Show me.

Let me sleep. Please let me sleep... Let me sleep, I beg you, let me rest...

November 9th, 2006

Why am I so unable to be true to myself? Is who I am so unacceptable to the world? To Jehovah?

Why can't I stop questioning the world? Why can't I stop questioning myself? Why can't I just accept?

Because that would be defeat and I can't accept that. Ever. Call it stubborn. But I'll call it strength. I'll call it faith. I'll call it hope. Anything to justify the resistance of such a soul as me. Anything for purpose. Anything to be of worth. Anything for someone to see worth in me, instead of just an anomaly that can't be made sense of. I'm tired of no one seeing and everyone expecting.

I can't stop, because who I do, there will be no more I. There will be someone else in my place. A new Brandi, the one that finally devours me. I'm scared of that. I'm so scared that I'm only one step ahead of her. I'm scared that if I make even one wrong move, I'll be surrounded and devoured whole. The husk remaining, but a new inhabitant in my place. I can see her almost as vividly as I see myself. My replacement, the one I've been filling in for. She's ready to come back, and I'm helpless to stop her regardless of how much I screen and fight. I'm being eaten alive. So I run, I always run. I run to Yuki, to Sakura, to Xenosaga, to Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Stargate, Pretender. I run to those things that remind me who I am. I run to those things that can keep the imposter away for another hour, minute, second. I don't want to be her. I want to be me. I'm so scared of disappearing. I don't want to disappear. I just want to be me. I want people to see me.

Keep writing. Keep writing so that when I finally disappear back to where I came from, I'll be remembered. I'll be proven. I'll be known for who I am , who I will always be.

December 3rd, 2006

I'm still here...

December 5th, 2006

I've stopped looking in mirrors. I don't know the person staring back at me, she's a stranger. So if my reflection doesn't show me, where am I? Who exactly is that face in the mirror that mimics my moves? The other me taking over? No, she's not there, unfortunately. I think she will never come. She's too terrified of the mess I've made of her life. She's left me to enjoy my screw-ups. No, what I see is a shell, a non-existant person, a shadow pulled forward against her will. I can't stand to acknowledge that pathetic figure is me.

Is there something wrong with me? Would there be something wrong with me if I told you there were 4 people trapped in this shell? There is me, this shadow person, lost and confused, the one that has contact with this world. Then there is the other side of me, the one that talks to me and either lifts me up or pulls me further down, always and ever rational.

Then there are Riumi and Reniko, two other voices that beg me to release them into this world [by writing their stories].

It's noisy in my head. The only time it's not noisy is when I am doing this, writing, or when I flood it with stimuli it can't ignore, like music, stories, school. Then they quiet down, let me breathe, but it only takes one momentary pause for them to return and then the face in the mirror becomes unbearable to look at. I can five the mirror self only a seconds glance or I realize how pathetic a shell I've become.

Oh how I repeat myself. Over and over. Over and over.