hiimshayn

When I was four, we moved back home from Alaska, where we had previously been living. My mom had to make a decision about what school to send me to, and she remembered how awful things had been for her growing up.

She remembered not fitting in and being labeled as weird or nonconforming. And she remembered being bored all the time.

She saw her bookish little daughter who liked strange outfits and had a fondness for words like “precipice” and she knew there was no way I was going to a public school. Between her and my grandma, they were able to pull together the funds to send me to a private school, where the student-to-teacher ratios were so skewed that they had to combine two grades into each classroom.

I don't remember much of my childhood, but I do remember some things.

Some things I remember that are consistent with neurodiversity:

• I remember my grandma calling me a tomboy because I liked climbing trees and disliked wearing dresses and skirts.
• I remember how mean my female cousin was, and how she used to use sarcasm and obscure pop culture references to make me feel weird or disliked.
• I remember reading “advanced” reading assignments in third and fourth grade because the assigned reading was too boring and easy.
• I remember hating multiplication because memorizing numbers lacked so much context: there wasn't any reason why 7x7 is 49, so how could I be expected to remember it?

The interesting thing, though, is that for a lot of masked or late-diagnosed autistic people, it seems like they had a different experience that led to their masking. A lot of them describe the process as lonely, frustrating, and confusing.

But for me, I feel like it was different.

I grew up with a mom who took the time to answer my questions and explain why people did seemingly random illogical things. She was always intentional in telling me that sometimes kids say cruel things or tell you you're weird. But that's okay. Being weird just means that you're interesting and unique. And that doesn't make you bad or broken.

Despite being labelled weird, I always had friends in school and I was generally considered popular (mostly because there were so few people in our school and it was a religious school that prioritized kindness and compassion, so it simply wasn't feasible to ostracize anyone).

The way I learned to mask was different from the experiences I've heard of from other autistics.

My mom explicitly taught me manners: how to speak if you don't want to hurt people's feelings. I knew I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so I did what I was told, even if it didn't really make sense. I learned rules for how to talk to people.

The other ways I learned to mask were through teasing. I got teased a lot more when I displayed my ignorance of cultural things or when I was too literal or too imaginative about the wrong things. And I almost exclusively got teased by girls. The boys didn't tease me, but they would tease whichever boy spent the most time with me.

There was one interaction that's always stood out to me about the way I saw socializing. This one girl had come from a public school, so she was very competitive and mean-girl-esque. She was bratty and passive aggressive, and so I didn't really interact with her much if I could help it. For some reason, we had to interact for a while, and she kept getting more and more frustrated with me (I don't remember why). Finally, she huffed and said, as though it was an insult, “I don't like you!” And I replied, matter of factly, “That's okay. I don't like you either.”

Throughout all of this I learned some lessons about masking:

• People like you if you know about pop culture and social taboos
• People like you if you aren't blunt or direct
• People will think you're weird, and that's okay because they'll probably still be your friend (and anyone that doesn't want to be your friend is probably a jerk that you don't want to be friends with anyway)
• If you don't want to hurt people's feelings or offend people, you should learn the rules of what they expect and try to do those things as best you can

Because of all of this, I don't have the deep-seated depression or lack of self that I think a lot of other autistics have. I think my process of unmasking is less about “finding myself” or “defining myself” as it is a realization that I don't have to constantly bend over backwards to conform myself to society's expectations. I don't have to carry the exhausting burden of navigating social norms and unspoken rules of civility. Instead, I can ask that society accept me as I truly am and give me the benefit of the doubt. I can ask that society tell me the rules instead of expecting me to inherently know them.

Today I realized something about why I feel so overwhelmed by communicating with people over text.

I have so many unread messages sitting in my Instagram inbox, my Discord DMs, my email... it feels endless and inescapable. And I know I'll never be able to respond to them (and the new ones that will inevitably follow) in a sustainable way. I never have spoons for this kind of prolonged conversation.

But I now know why these conversations require so much energy from me.

It's because of masking!

I have conversational flowcharts in my head. I reference them during nearly every conversation I have:

• Start by asking how they're doing
• Respond to whatever it is that they say, specifically by asking them questions or by paraphrasing what they said and extrapolating upon it so they know you care and are paying attention
• Don't talk about yourself and the random ideas you have ping-pong-ing around in your head too much; they probably don't care
• If they share something they're interested in, always try to ask questions so they feel like you're interested in the thing they're interested in
• If they're having a hard time, offer support in some way
• If they express some kind of emotion, always try to paraphrase it or say something that shows you are empathizing with them
• If you say something direct, end it with an emoji or a “lol” so they know you're not being aggressive or confrontational

There are so many of these rules that I'm always trying to keep in mind during any social interaction. But when I look at that list all laid out this way, it's easy to see how exhausting that would become. It's easy to see why I would get overwhelmed and just drop it all.

But the thing is, usually the people that I talk with aren't neurotypical. They probably don't care if I do any of those things on my list. In fact, they'd probably be more comfortable if I didn't do them, because that would signal that they don't have to do those things either.

I'm going to try and keep this in mind. I'm going to try and explain this to some of the people I've been ghosting. Hopefully, I can stop resorting to my flowcharts and start relating in a more authentic way with the people I feel I can trust.

A few months ago, I wanted to leave my job.

One of the managers at my workplace — a woman known for having a volatile temper and a way of derailing everyone while they were trying to do their work — had just been on a phone call with me. During the call, she talked over me, constantly had to stop herself from saying the work I was trying to do was “stupid,” and repeatedly insisted that the fact that one of our team members had shared feedback RE: communication improvements meant that he was betraying the agreement they had that he talk with her directly about any issues he had.

I had recorded the entire conversation while on speakerphone, which meant that as it was happening, my partner heard everything. As soon as I hung up, he said what he had just heard was ridiculous and that a manager should never act that way or be so unprofessional. I broke down crying.

While that conversation was happening, I hadn't realized it, but I my nervous system had gone into overdrive. I became hyper-rational and calmly addressed every one of her tirades with the measured tone and strategic word choice of some kind of robotic litigator. I said things like,

“I understand how a betrayal like what you're describing would be really heartbreaking. That would feel awful. Do you not feel that his desire to bring up ways that we could improve is evidence that he believes in the company and wants us to be the best we can be?” To which, of course, she declared that no, of course not. He didn't want the company to be better, he just wanted to cause drama.

My partner said he heard me specifically asking her throughout the conversation to clarify what she was saying. He said I was doing an excellent job of forcing her to double-down on her assertions.

And I realized I was good at this because it's what I had been raised to do. If my dad was in a tirade, the only way through it would be to calmly address the feelings of betrayal that were overwhelming him. The only way to feel safe was to try and de-escalate his anger while validating his emotions. I had years of practice at this.

---

But I digress.

The point I was getting to was that I wanted to leave my job. If my position was now going to require that I find myself in fight / flight / fawn / freeze, I knew I would have to leave. I knew what years and years of a dysregulated nervous system looked like.

But the problem was that job searching felt hopeless.

Not because I don't have demonstrated skills or experience or because there weren't opportunities out there. But because my non-traditional career path meant that my best hope at finding a good job was through networking.

And networking, for me, feels impossible.

---

A few years back, when I was running my small business, I took a course on scalable business foundations. It was a good course, and a lot of people I knew had success with it; however, when it came to the part of the course where you have to market your business, I tanked.

The prescribed template advocated by the program was to spend an hour or so reverse engineering social connections and then put time in each day to nurturing those connections. Having conversations. Empathizing. Making friends.

The other people in the course seemed to be unfazed by this. They connected easily with people who would help to promote their business.

But I found myself exhausted, burnt out and buried under a pile of conversations that had dead-ended because I didn't know how to “make friends.” I didn't know how to chit-chat or carry on a “normal” conversation.

The closest I would get would be to comment on something about them that I was genuinely interested in. We would talk eagerly about that thing for a while, and them the conversation seemed to suddenly run dry. I didn't know what to do. We had already talked about the one interesting thing, but now what was I supposed to do — ask about the weather??

I was at a loss.

This, to me, was what all networking felt like. A never-ending series of people ghosting me because I wasn't able to participate in “normal” conversation patterns. Leaving me always exhausted with nothing to show for my efforts.

---

After realizing I needed to leave my job, I found myself sobbing into my partner's shoulder, telling him I didn't know how I would make it through the networking process. Telling him I'd do anything not to have to go through that again.

I felt desperate, alone, and utterly hopeless.

Everyone around me would say things like, “It's easy, you just go out there and make friends, and then people will think of you when they hear of opportunities that would be good for you.”

But the thing is, no matter what they said, I knew it wasn't easy. Not for me.

Turns out, it was autism.

Remember in like 2001 when you could create a Blogspot account and just write random bullshit that was on your mind? Or you could write some long-ass Myspace content that was unnecessarily cryptic and referenced song lyrics we thought were deep?

Well, I kind of miss that.

Not the nihilistic narcissism and the pretentiousness, but the feeling that you could unknowingly find yourself in the midst of someone else's story. Not just their witty Tweets or filtered photos — but their story, told in long-form, in their own words.

These days, the closest I've been able to find are the rare YouTuber who dares to be authentic despite threats of demonetization or the apathy of the algorithm. Occasionally I'll find a web development blog I like.

But the stories I seem to be missing are the ones that tell stories of (mostly) unfiltered personal growth. Stories of ugly mistakes and the things we learn or don't learn from them.

And I want to write stories from my own life that I wish someone had told me ten years ago. Lessons that I wish I'd learned earlier. Or lessons I'm excited to be learning now.

What to expect from this blog

The goal of this blog is to share some of those personal growth stories as someone who's doing a fuck-ton of growing lately. You'll hear stories about common themes and topics that come up in my day-to-day life:

• Queer culture
• Decolonization
• Indigenous culture
• Mixed-race culture
• Gender identity
• Polyamory
• Psychology
• Neurodiversity
• Web design and development
• CPTSD
• Knitting, crocheting, and yarn crafts

Along the way, I'm sure you'll hear a lot of other stories too. Hopefully some of them will resonate with you and who you are. Which brings me to my next heading...

Who am I?

TL;DR: I'm Shayn, a mixed-race agender person who grew up in a small town in Hawaii and recently moved to the PNW. I'm currently studying to become a full-stack developer. And I'm probably autistic.

Okay, that's it for now. Hopefully more soon.

💜