Yesterday I wrote that I always feel like I’m acting when I’m around other people and later on I realised that is not technically correct. I don’t ALWAYS feel like I’m acting, I only feel like I’m acting when I’m about to say something and I’m deciding what that should be. So I presume I could totally unmask but the price that I’d have to pay for it would be to keep quiet forever.
I also realised that there was this one person that I was almost always myself with, even when I was talking. That person was my late mum. That doesn’t mean that I felt fully accepted by her; no, I really wasn’t, on a lot of levels. She was a very loving person, but on her own terms. She also used to ask me over and over ‘but what is Asperger’s? I don’t understand’ and I’d just say ‘Asperger’s is what I have. You always wanted me to be different, so here you are, all those behaviours you don’t like are because I have Asperger’s’. Asperger’s seems to be the term that people still use in Poland so I kept it while speaking with mum.
So what I am trying to say here is that even though I was aware my mum wanted me to be different, it didn’t prevent me from being myself around her. I am unable to say what it was that allowed that, possibly the fact that we knew each other for a long time? Possibly because I knew how she could react? I am not sure really. Mum often was the recipient of me being a bit too blunt and she didn’t like it, but I’d be too tired to try to be nicer, even if I knew that I wouldn’t like if someone was as blunt with me.
So I don’t really know, it seems like being totally myself is technically possible for me, even in the presence of another person. But is that something that I should be aiming for is another thing altogether.
Autistic and me 
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