Hi friends

I wrote a Substack Note recently that seems to have resonated with a few of you:

If you know, you know, right?

When I was an insufferable little kid whose middle name should have been ‘Actually…’, I would insist that I felt much older than my peers. As far as I was concerned, they were all into childish things like makeup, the colour pink and Robbie Williams. Ugh! I couldn’t wait to grow up and be in year six.

I had far superior, more refined interests, so I thought. I read the newspaper when I visited my grandparents (it was the Daily Mirror’s sports pages but it wasn’t Mizz magazine so it still counts).

I followed British politics with a fervour that was, if anything, creepy for a child of any age. Why does this child know so much about the national minimum wage and Sure Start centres?

I also had a set of reference points that were from a cultural zeitgeist of about twenty years before I was born. My life up until the age of 8 was filled with VHSs of An Audience with Ken Dodd, Dame Edna performing at the Heinz Factory in Wigan, the BBC2 quiz show Call My Bluff, and endless Bob Ross re-runs.

My version of Britain was my nan’s version of Britain - as a kid I knew what a union was, I knew what the miners strikes were about and importantly, I knew we voted Labour in this house. (One of my earliest core memories is waking up after election day in 1997 to my mum blasting ‘Things Can Only Get Better’.)

I seemed to be drawn to old media from a very young age, and so because that’s what I consumed, that’s what I tended to refer to in day to day life.

One time, as I was trying to fall asleep, I heard my mum’s laughter from downstairs. Feigning illness, I went down to investigate. She told me I wasn’t allowed to watch the TV, and made me lie down facing the back of the sofa. What I heard changed my life, no exaggeration. It was the comedian Victoria Wood, another ‘An Audience With…’ from 1988. She was singing one of her songs, probably ‘The Ballad of Barry and Frieda’. I had no idea what any of it meant (good! I was 8!), but the rhythm of the words, the way she delivered them, the way the audience were in fits of uncontrollable laughter. It was magical. The power of words.

That week in school we were asked to make a drawing of what we wanted to be when we grew up. Amongst the vets, doctors and teachers, precocious moi wanted to be a ‘commideon’

Nothing delighted me more than parroting a joke I’d heard from a 70s sitcom and having the adults in the room roar with laughter while the kids looked at me like I’d just landed in my space ship.

‘She’s an old soul.’

‘She’s old headed.’

‘She’s been here before.’

It didn’t help that I had no shared interests with the other girls I went to school with. We’re talking about an only child who grew up around adults so, go figure.

I was just fiercely, unashamedly me until sometime in my teenage years when I learned to mask. I’ve written about it extensively on this newsletter before; I learned to mask to survive.

Let’s fast forward to discovering I’m autistic and ADHD a few years ago, the period of autistic burnout I went through and the unmasking I have done since then.

When masking, I policed myself, my words and actions to a frightening degree. Unmasking in safe spaces allows me to stop thinking about my behaviour constantly, which saves me a lot of energy and stops me from burning out.

Unmasking meant examining how I packaged myself up to be palatable to others, and reclaiming my neurodivergence; the behaviour that comes naturally to me. The monologuer. The fidgeter. The unabashed pedantic nerd. The eye-lid talker. The back-and-forth rocker.

Apparently, unmasking makes me appear a bit childlike. Childish, perhaps.

Good!

I like that I’m no longer self-policing all day long, wearing myself out and tying myself up in knots questioning if my behaviour has been acceptable to others, replaying conversations in my head constantly, looking for any signs that I have misstepped.

Equating being openly neurodivergent with something that society views negatively in adults (i.e acting too young and ‘immaturely’ for your age) is ableist.

Masking made me appear ‘conventional’. Masking also made me very unwell. Maybe unmasking makes me appear younger and ‘immature’ because it gave me my sense of fun back, the one I haven’t had since being a kid? Unmasking made me a happier person.

This joyous person was me all along, hiding under layers of masking and fear and shame.

I know who I’d rather be.

I hope you enjoyed this one! If you did, let me know in the comments.

As ever, if you wish to support me, check out my Patreon for bonus newsletters, access to my entire archive, and some digital zines I have made (including my first ever poetry booklet).

Take it easy,

Ren