I feel like an outsider in both the allistic and autistic world.

Words cannot describe the magnitude of energy and effort it has taken to mask my autistic traits for decades. And yet, I feel like I don’t fully belong to either the allistic or autistic world 100%. I arrived late here, and I still feel a little like an outsider.

After spending decades white-knuckling through the allistic world trying to survive, I fooled myself into believing if I just pushed hard enough, I could. When I realized I was autistic, my brain couldn’t reconcile that I was able to mask for that long. Surely if I could mask so well, I couldn't really be disabled, could I? (cue: internalized ableism)

I never saw myself in the DSM’s autism spectrum disorder diagnosis. Yet, somehow I related deeply to autistic people in the real world. It took me a long time to finally believe that I could in fact be autistic based on what autistics call autism, not the allistic created DSM version.

Realizing that I was autistic has both made everything make sense now, yet I also feel more confused. How did they (the adults) miss that I was autistic? Would it have been better not to have been missed? Or worse? If I can fool people into thinking I am allistic, am I allistic? Do people think I’m lying about being autistic? Does it matter?

I felt like an imposter in the allistic world my entire life. Yet now I have found my people and I still feel a bit like an outsider. I didn’t grow up knowing I was autistic and therefore, my identity of being autistic only makes sense in the context of being late-discovered and PDA profile. I simply don’t fit the stereotypical idea of what an autistic person is.

It is painful to unmask and realize how uncomfortable I have been forcing myself to be this whole time. There was no prize at the end of the rainbow, just more masking and more pain until I couldn’t take it anymore. I used to pride myself on how good I was at masking and how I was able to push through immense amounts of discomfort. I realize now I was comforted by my ability to feel pain and do the thing anyway. As I find my place in the autistic world, the world that was built for people like me, I am learning that I don’t have to hurt myself in order to just be me.