and so it goes

I may not be normal in the sense of having a neurotypical brain but I am able ( on good days ) to cover my-self with a seemingly functioning "I personality". It took me years to come up with first the idea and then this patchwork of a person, an excellent actor who has to take over whenever socially adaquate behaviour becomes necessary which is as soon as I have to deal with or be around other people, so most of the time. It would appear that getting the autism diagnosis has made it a lot harder because I often feel that I am being forced to act because it is what society wants to see and not how I want to be.And I am also more aware of my deficits but I don´t get more help with it because I cover it so well most of the time that people do not believe that I do have these problems. If on my gravestone it read "Here lies someone no one truly knew" or even "...no one truly wanted to know" it would be sad but the truth. On the other hand, I really want to belong in this world, I want to fit in, always have done. It was my motivation and it still is. It got me where I am today. It hurts me that people do not see my achievements and do not realise what I have to to in order to accomplish what comes naturally to them. They have no idea how hard it is to get through the day. They would not understand how much it takes to walk amongst them, to talk to them and to be around them. It is the awareness of others, the confrontation with other people that causes me to become aware of self and if I do not regulate this, it will become self confrontation which I am not able to sustain. That´s when the phoenix turns into ashes. Autism...autos...self....does not mean I want to be with myself. To the contrary there is nothing worse for me than becoming aware of self. This is where my problems begin. This is where autism begins. Unfortunately self-wawareness ismostly caused by other-awareness. Professor Tony Attwood once said that there is a very simple yet effective way which on top of that doesn´t cost anything that can cure autism within minutes: let the autistic person go to their room and shut the door from the outside. Alone in the room, he or she isn´t autistic anymore. Very true but not what I want. Thanks for reading.