For the Birds: Experiments in Unmasking

A triptych.

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Experiments in unmasking: a triptych

How much validation do you need that the sensations you experience are real? How many times does the magic need to visit you in a form that you recognize?

That sensation you have? It transcends physical language. When your tongue gets twisted and you cannot explain the thing, the moment, the feeling, the observation…that does not make it cease to exist.

~Gabi Abrão, Notes on Shapeshifting

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The most important message, I believe, in relation to masking is to listen to and believe autistic adults when they are able to articulate their realities. When someone tells us how exhausting life can be, let’s not force them to somehow prove it, but instead let’s accept that this is the case.

~Dr. Luke Beardon, Autism in Adults

ONE

All this talk about unmasking, taking the thing off, getting to the authentic version of you. As if it’s one big singular swooping gesture. No commas, no clauses; just a blunt statement.

Unmasking, I think to myself one grumpy Tuesday morning,

unmasking is simply noticing when you’re masked.

Period.

That this is the best I can hope for most days.

That even this, the noticing, can often feel like a stretch.

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TWO

Oh, I say out loud to M one day in the car. I am so much meaner than I let on.

It is a lightbulb moment of self-clarity. A naked thought, accompanied by a subtle yet undeniable shame. This secret cruelty I carry, all these ungenerous feelings.

It’s the thought’s neutrality that startles me the most.

Weeks go by.

Oh, I say out loud to M. No memory of where we are this time. I am so much softer than I let on.

And I feel just as startled, exposed.

Pummeled by the qualities I can’t change, all this perpetual vulnerability.

For a moment, I swear I miss the cruel feeling.

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THREE

It’s Saturday, late fall, and I’m at the Farmer’s Market.

Today is a headphones kind of day, not an earplugs kind of day.

I’m not sure how I know that, but I do.

My earplugs are small and stylish and, frankly, quite subtle. But my headphones? Clunky. Assertive. They tell the other person something.

I can’t hear you. My attention is elsewhere. I am busy.

Or, more truthfully, not right now, please.

I make the rounds & grab what produce I need.

Now I am waiting at the flower stand as a gentleman, also wearing headphones, puts together a multi-colored bouquet that I will carry home on foot.

Standing there in the grass, I stack and re-stack my $5 tokens in the palm of my left hand. They are smooth and wooden, the edges satisfying against my fingertips. One leg bounces. I am wearing my tiny backpack and holding a satchel full of peppers and potatoes and pears. I look around, not at anything specific. I look at shape, and movement, and background noise. Noise like seeing, which is dimmed by the headphones. I do not feel like saying hello today. I do not feel like saying hello most days. I move the tokens to my right hand, tap my left fingers on my leg, one after the other, racehorse fingers. I notice a bruise (where did that come from?). I worry, for a brief moment, that there’s a bug in my shirt.

When I hear stimming described as a self-soothing process, I am sometimes confused. I think of soothingness as a conscious experience, something that will register as pleasant and good. But I don’t always feel pleasant or good when I’m stimming. I don’t always feel actively soothed, made better, by fidgeting, or by my headphones, or my earplugs, or any of the measures I take in order to make myself feel—exist—betterly.

I think these measures are not always about better, about change.

I think these measures are sometimes about maintenance, about stasis.

About the experience of continuing onward without needing to make yourself all that different than you currently are.

Waiting for my flowers, I do not feel better. I feel awkward. I feel present to my emotional needs and jittery movement. I feel aware of my uncertain body. I feel just enough energy—barely, the narrowest capacity—to stand there until the flowers are ready, and then to leave the moment they are. I feel openly sensitive. I feel a mild, though primal, lack of cooperation with my surroundings.

It is a nice feeling.