When things are ok, I think about checking in here. I’m still not sure what purpose this space serves, but I’ve been pondering that for a while. I’ve had a presence on the Web for about as long as it has been around, but mostly because it was a cool thing to do, a fun toy to play with. You can tell from my sporadic posting and lack of focus that I’m just not quite comfortable here yet, twenty-five or so years on.
My blog started out as an echo, a record of cool websites I’d found, a web log, but even Jorn Barger called me out on not sharing my opinion on the links. The idea of a public journal terrified me, which makes sense now looking at myself back then as a heavily masked undiagnosed Autistic. My identity was that of a writer, and so I tried hard to write things, but it all felt very forced and unnatural, to me at least.
I wrote my way into the mask, and then I wrote daily to maintain it. I’d tell myself the story of my life so that I would believe in it, because by believing in it, I could make it come true. It was all the mask, however. That was all that I was making come true.
Since I’ve unmasked (knock on wood) I’ve been wary of writing. I still write all the time, thousands of words a day. My typewriter is always in my pocket, always at my fingertips. But I’m wary of my voice, and whether or not I’m speaking the truth. I have become an unreliable narrator to myself.
Someone posted on a forum focused on late-diagnosed Autism about how there weren’t any follow up posts. All the posts were about people dealing with their struggles, either leading up to the diagnosis, or the reconciliation and unmasking process afterwards. There were no “It gets better” posts, and so OP was asking, does it?
It does, came a reply. Most of us figured things out and moved on. There’s no reason to post on a forum where people are looking for help when you’re not looking for help. But, they said, it does get better.
It does get better. It may get weird. It might get sad. It will definitely ebb and flow. You will feel up, and you will feel down. You will feel, that’s for sure.
This wasn’t really where I thought this would head when I started, but I’m not sure I had a destination in mind. I felt a need to reach out here. Let the record show that I’m alright, that things are ok. Things get better.