Hi everyone!

Before we get into it, I want to let you know that for the rest of June I am offering a 20% discount on annual subscriptions to Wavy Thoughts, meaning a whole year of everything I produce on here for just £32 ($43ish). That’s £2.67 a month! Less than ONE Tesco meal deal! And they’re pretty shit!

The subscription gives you full access to everything I write for the next 12 months, including my self-publishing series, and future additional posts about neurodivergence, queerness and potentially a podcast (if you would like that? Let me know!)

20% off an annual subscription!

Thank you for the amazing reception to my last post, which was kind of wild for my standards. If you missed it, you can read it here:

Tomboy - by Ren Riley - Wavy Thoughts

The joy of realising that who you are is not who they say you are.

Devoid of Energy, No Strength to Mask

Sometimes when I write about my experience as an autistic person with ADHD, I can come across as a bit of a grump.

I picture a neurotypical person stumbling across my posts via the Substack app and reading with ever-growing disbelief that someone so unbelievably grumpy could exist. ‘Do these so-called ‘neurodivergents’ have to complain about everything?’, they wonder, as they flick back to YouTube for another Jordan Peterson video (I jest).

Reader, we know this isn’t the case. I am perfectly capable of being lighthearted and even, dare I say, amusing. Whether or not I intend to be funny in social situations is another matter, but I am funny either way you slice it. In fact, I think we all are, to a degree. (I’m always reminded of that fantastic meme that goes something like ‘Autistic people can have a sense of humour. Maybe you’re just not as funny as you think you are?’)

My online grumpiness is sadly a reflection of the sorts of topics I write about, and it can’t really be helped. It is my truth after all! But it got me thinking about real life. I think the only times I come across as a grump in real life are when I have totally run out of energy to mask. Let me explain.

I know exactly how I come across. I’m blessed/cursed with being a self-aware autist, constantly thinking about what my behaviour could suggest to other people, and the best way to push through situations that make me panic, i.e generally being alive.

Over the past few months of my unmasking experiment, where I have tried to consciously unmask as much as I can, within reason and with my safety in mind, I have found that this tendency to try and present myself in an acceptable light is almost hard-wired in me. I can’t get myself not to care about what other people think of me.

I care a great deal. I was worried for a long time that this level of caring about how I come across borders on narcissistic. Whether it is or it isn’t, I’m no expert, but I do know that it is a super common preoccupation amongst both neurodivergent and neurotypicals alike, for different reasons.

I don’t care about what other people think of me out of some narcissistic sense of ‘I’m different and superior’. I wasn’t a ‘I’m not like other girls’ sort of person growing up. If anything I desperately wanted to be one of the other girls (until I realised I was never going to be one of the other girls because I was never meant to be.)

Perhaps the reason why I care a great deal is a consequence of the classic late-diagnosed autistic experience: growing up not knowing why you are the way you are.

As a late-diagnosed AuDHD person, I am someone who lived their first 29 years believing they were intrinsically different, broken, and somewhat incompatible with the majority of other humans.

It felt like I was almost constantly told questioned by children and adults alike when I was growing up. Every single day.

‘Why do you speak like that?’
‘Why do you walk like that?’
‘Look at me when I’m talking to you.’
‘Why are you so scary and mysterious?’
‘You’re so weird.’
‘Why are you like this?’

Looking back, this incessant questioning and side-eyeing from others about how I existed was traumatic. To keep the questions and unwanted attention at bay, I learned to be a people pleaser. Behaving as they would behave. Doing what is expected of a ‘normal’ person. Blending in as best I could.

So far, so ordinary. This is what masking looks like for lots of people.

But what does it look like when you don’t have the energy to keep it up?

It might be hard-wired in you now, but it’s not something you find instinctual. It isn’t intuitive to you, you have to work at it.

There are days where I simply cannot do it. There is no energy. The exhaustion of daily living appears insurmountable. There is no way I can move through life, which includes going outside of the house to earn money and run errands, while also affixing and maintaining a mask that is quite heavy to carry around. It is too much.

The lack of energy I experience these days often ends with consequences that are both embarrassing but often, in hindsight, quite funny.

For the neurotypicals around me, it must look like I’ve taken part in some bizarre form of Stars in their Eyes1 - an odd transformation of the person people are familiar with - ‘Happy Smiley Ren’, to ‘Ren the Grump’. This unmasked, exhausted version of me has had it and can’t hide it from anyone, try as I might.

It means I can’t hide my dissatisfaction if something isn’t right with the environment, or if I am overwhelmed. My facial expressions, my tone of voice, my body language, they all betray me. In these situations, I have lost control.

Like I said, looking back, I can see how my loss of mask must be amusing to others. It’s so unlike me to be this way! My behaviour is almost cartoon like when I can’t mask anymore. My face just screams ‘get me out of here I have no more to give!’ It’s a total 180, and if you don’t know I’m autistic it could also be a deeply unsettling thing to witness.

It is deeply unsettling to experience. Lacking control is something I find extremely challenging. I strive for autonomy over my life, as we all should. Having no energy to mask, which is essentially a survival mechanism for us autistic folks, can be terrifying.

We arrive at a state of low or no energy either because we are not in the position to rest, or we have not allowed ourselves to rest, or we feel society has not given us permission to rest. We have pushed so much harder than anyone could ever give us credit for, because most of the fruits of the hard work go unseen (it is masking, after all).

I am trying to train myself to recognise the lack of energy as a big warning light I need to take notice of. The problem is when you have no energy you can’t recognise that you have no energy. The catch-22 of masking.

I’m lucky that the people in my life know that when Happy Smiley Ren goes away, something is wrong.

On Substack however, I make no excuses about how I come across. Being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world inevitably leads to friction, and I write about the friction!

A big thank you for taking the time to read my work.

If you’d like to read more, please consider subscribing to Wavy Thoughts. Paid subscribers receive all my work, including my series The Book Diaries where I am writing about trying to self-publish a book of essays on autism and ADHD.

Here are the Book Diary entries so far:

The Book Diaries #1 - Self-publish a book with me!

The ADHD is ADHD-ing!

The Book Diaries #2 - A Realistic Self-Publishing Plan

Time I stopped living in cloud cuckoo land

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Ren's Tip Jar

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Let me know that I’m not shouting into the abyss by pressing the like button or leaving me a comment, I love to hear from my readers!

Take it easy,

Ren

PS. If you liked this one, you might also like:

How does someone mask their autism? - by Ren Riley

Listing the main ways I masked my autism

Overachieving is a form of masking - by Ren Riley

Head girl energy is literally just autism

I unmasked and no longer knew who I was - by Ren Riley

Taking off the mask as an autistic person to find no one there is frightening