I’m increasingly understanding why the idea that some of us with neurodevelopmental disorders are considered “high functioning” is basically crap.

Recently, by myself, I managed to unmask pretty much completely and … in that moment had anyone seen me they would not have considered me “high functioning”.

I speak two languages and yet I felt like speaking none. I gave up any pretence of trying to act like *them*, and it was liberating.

And it gave me a level of relaxation hitherto only achievable on amphetamine (I’d dropped into the unmedicated state when I did this).

And that’s when it hit me. There’s no difference in kind between me and a “rain man” stereotype. No. Some of us in infancy are pushed into masking as a necessary but ludicrously expensive survival mechanism and some are not.

And masking works, and they call us “high functioning”, but the cost is astronomical. I realise that now.

I think it’s where the idea of the “savant” comes from as well. As our NT peers develop the executive functioning that we never do, our differences increasingly paint a target on our backs.

And so we try to fina an acceptable way to escape. If adults were going to help us, we wouldn’t have had to start masking in the first place and one of the first lessons many of us learn is that indeed, the adults in our life are just as dangerous as our former friends.

But they mostly approve of book learning. And it gives us a way to keep ourselves apart.

And it hits our novelty and interest triggers.

And thus the path we are on reinforces itself. We spend the following decades using all of our intellectual and emotional capacity to bolster this survival mechanism and turn to things like alcohol or worse to manage the stress.

And then finally, some of us eventually find help. It took five decades in my case. I was exhausted.

To see me now, many would think me “regressing”.

I’m not. I’m just starting to live my truth. I deserve that. I need to rest. I’ve more than earned it.