I don’t know how to be myself

High-masking autism in women

Do you like this version of me I perfectly curated to fit your version of who you want me to be?

I’ve always been obsessed with human psychology. Why people are the way they are. Why they do certain things without even thinking. Why they expect you to just know how to be.

I spent most of my childhood studying people without even realizing it. Like some part of me figured out early that fitting in wasn’t going to come naturally.

In my head, it was like an equation. If you say this and act that way, then people will like you. If you laugh at the right moments, they’ll want you around. If you stay quiet when you’re supposed to, they’ll think you’re easy to be with. And for a while, I guess it worked. I learned how to build a version of myself that people found easy to understand. Easy to like.

But sometimes it feels like I built something that isn't really me.

Sometimes I’ll catch myself saying something and wonder if that’s actually what I think or if it’s just something I learned people wanted to hear.

I get tired of it.

I don’t know if I really know how to just be myself anymore.

It’s easier to be the version people expect than to risk being too much, too confusing. 

I know how to be that version of me.

The version of me people want me to be. 

Soft-spoken, a little ironic in the right ways. The kind of girl people like to meet.

I’ve spent a long time learning how to be adored in small, careful pieces.

I don't even resent it, not really. I made her. I spent years refining her.

And when people love her, I get it. She’s easy to love.

She says the right things. She moves the right way. She makes people feel safe just by being there.

She knows how to seem open without ever being messy.

I think I leave people with a version of me they can carry. Something light enough, polished enough.

Never something that might weigh too much.

And maybe that is why it feels so hard sometimes.

Because when you grow up like this, learning how to fit, how to be small enough, smooth enough, soft enough, you start to believe that who you are underneath must be wrong somehow.

You stop thinking of it as survival and start thinking of it as who you really are.

And then when you try to stop performing, when you try to just be, it feels like you are breaking something important.

When you're neurodivergent, it is not just that you are different.

It is that you spend your whole life adapting to a world that was never made for you and never wanted to make space for you.

You learn early that you are not just quiet, you are too quiet.

You are not just honest, you are too blunt. You are not just excited, you are too much.

Too intense, too weird, too sensitive, too obsessive.

You start to carry it inside you before you even know the weight you are holding.

You start believing that your real self is something inconvenient. Something that needs to be managed, corrected, hidden away.

So you learn how to smile at the right times.

You learn how to ask polite questions.

You let people touch you even when every nerve in your body begs you not to.

You sit through small talk even when it makes you feel like you are shrinking.

You tell yourself this is what normal people do.

You tell yourself this is what being good looks like.

You shave off pieces of yourself just to fit into the shape they made for you.

And somewhere along the way you start to believe that the parts you tucked away were not just unwanted.

They were unlovable.

I don't know how to stop pretending.

I've been doing it for so long that it feels like breathing.

Like blinking.

Like instinct.

I don't know where the pretending ends and where I begin.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s even a real version of me under it all, or if the mask became the face somewhere along the way.

I’ve spent so long adjusting my tone, my posture, my words, my laugh, my breathing, twisting myself into something easier to digest, easier to love, easier to keep.

And it worked.

People liked her.

People loved her.

But I'm the one who’s left exhausted, burning out at both ends, crumbling in the places no one bothers to look.

It's not just tiredness.

It's a tiredness that feels like grief.

Like I've been grieving myself for years without knowing it.

Because you can't keep pretending without losing pieces.

Tiny pieces, chipped away day after day, until you wake up and realize you don’t even recognize the shape you’ve carved yourself into.

And the worst part is, pretending is safe.

Pretending protected me.

Pretending made sure I wasn't "too much" or "too cold" or "too weird" or "too intense."

Pretending kept me from being abandoned.

Pretending taught me how to survive.

And now it's killing me.

Because there’s this small, desperate part of me that just wants to exist without having to perform.

That wants to sit in silence without scrambling to fill it.

That wants to breathe without adjusting my breaths to match the rhythm of the room.

But if I take the mask off, what if there’s nothing there? What if the real me is just a hollow space, shaped by other people’s needs? What if being myself just means disappointing everyone who loved the version of me I curated for them? What if being myself means being alone?

Sometimes I think, maybe the only thing more terrifying than being misunderstood is being seen. Maybe it's easier to be loved for the mask than to be rejected for the truth. And it's not fair.

It’s not fair that I learned survival by abandoning myself.It’s not fair that self-erasure became second nature.It’s not fair that authenticity feels dangerous while pretending feels like safety.

Because people say they love me, but they don't even know me.

How can they love what they’ve never even touched?

How can I feel held when nobody is actually holding me?

I crave the kind of connection that doesn’t make me feel like I have to earn my right to exist. I crave the kind of love that can sit with my silence without making it about them. I crave the kind of life where I don’t have to be "on" all the time. Where I can be messy and loud or blank and frozen and still be enough.

But I don't know how to get there.

I don't know how to start peeling back the layers without falling apart.

I don’t know how to unlearn all the ways I taught myself to be likeable.

And the most brutal part of all is that 

Sometimes I wonder if there’s anything real left to go back to.