cycles
a creative nonfiction piece on neurodivergent masks & mental health support
i sit in yet another waiting room, silently waiting to see yet another doctor. i’m only here now because now is the only time i could actually hold this bundle of masks roughly together in some sort of shape that might approximate ‘normal’. a picasso abstraction of mental health facades. i walk into the room, sit down, wait for the politely disinterested, “so, how can i help you?” that i have come to expect from ‘professionals’, and wonder which masks will stay attached, which will fall, which of the myriad of realities will be seen, heard, communicated, in this moment. every time it ends the same way, in one of two ways: i will hold them all together too well, well enough that i will not be believed by this stranger. or i will lose my grip and all the masks will fall to the ground, shattering into a zillion pieces of jigsaw that i shall be forced to sort through and re-form before my next ‘outing’.
it’s the loss of identity. the permanent kind. i’ve mimicked my whole life — to avoid the bullies, to hide my social awkwardness in groups, to look like i really was the right person for the job, to appear worthy of being in this relationship. all masks, designed not to con, designed to protect the rawness behind them. they’re good masks, carefully crafted with love and attention to detail, even if i do say so myself. yet the better they are the more they result in people expecting you to be something you never really were. not on the inside. there comes a point where there have been so many of them you lose your own ability to tell what’s mask and what was, once, the real you. that’s when you’re truly fucked.
it’s amusing (i think, on the days where dark humour holds court) that society demands so much perfection from us that when we’ve learned its game too well we are denied the right to be anything else. people, some people, the few people close enough to have seen the cracks, tell me that it’s ok to be broken, to open up, to let go. that is until they see what emerges, when the shattered shards shower like shrapnel. then they shy away. and who would blame them? sometimes you want to believe them, though; there’s a kind of twisted pleasure in the release, a freedom in the momentary self-ceasefire, letting it out, letting it go, sending the missiles anywhere but deeper inside. but it’s not a pleasureable pleasure, not the kind you ever want to reveal to another, least of all someone undeserving of its anguish. someone you love, someone you know loves you, somehow.
‘it’s ok to be a mess with me, let it out’, those people say. they mean it too, they really do. but they don’t see their eyes when your hidden real is made visible to them, your internal punctures appearing on their flesh. you know instinctively that to release your own pain — a pain that’s been bubbling away in a 45year pressure cooker — in front of another can only result in causing those others pain. even if all they feel is a ripple of the shockwave of your internal storm. so you hold it inside knowing the more you hold it, the stronger it gets, the more damage it wreaks on your scarred internal organs. yet still, you retarget your weapons inwards, reapply the mask they found more comfortable, apologise with words that can never heal the wounds you caused, and retreat. each retreat is another proof that letting your guard down must never, ever happen again. each retreat takes you further away from the war ever ending. if there’s one certainty in this maelstrom, it’s that if there is to be friendly fire: it must only ever take place on the inside. so you suck it all back down, lock it all away, apply stronger masks for when you next allow yourself, the maskself, out. mostly you simply reconfirm that ‘out’ isn’t where you belong. it’s just too risky.
you know, rationally, that this militarised compression of self back into its pandora’s box won’t help, them or you. there’s nowhere else to go when you’ve gone as far down as this. it’s not an ocean of unfathomable depths and delights you can dip in and out of like a dolphin. it’s a volcano of spewing lava you spend every joule of energy trying to contain. so you isolate yourself to a safe distance, again, use every crappy ‘coping mechanism’ you’ve ever known, again, and hope that you can ride out this wave quietly on your own, again, without anyone ever knowing, again. no, it’s not a ride. rides stop. rides bring joy as well as that funny tummy lurch. rides can be fun as well as scary; this is just scary. no one needs to know how scary, that’ll just make the mask harder to hold up in front of them the next time you cross paths.
so you hold yourself together-enough for this wave of lava to subside-enough back down into its magma chamber. and you set your sights, again, on finding the help you need from the people who’s job it is to help people like you, again. and you find yourself sitting in yet another waiting room, silently waiting to see yet another doctor. only there now only because now is the only time you can actually hold this bundle of masks roughly together in some sort of shape that approximates ‘normal’. a picasso abstraction of mental health facades. you walk into the room, sit down, wait for the politely disinterested, “so, how can i help you?” that you have come to expect from ‘professionals’, and wonder which of your patchwork of cracked masks will stay attached, which will fall, which of the myriad of realities will be seen, heard, communicated, in this moment. and it ends the same way, in one of two ways: you will hold them all together too well, well enough that you will not be believed by this stranger. or you will lose your grip and all the masks will fall to the ground, shattering into a zillion pieces of jigsaw that you shall be forced to sort through and re-form before your next ‘outing’.
[originally published under a pseudonym in june 2018, whilst navigating a breakdown and taking my first steps toward seeking therapy and neurodivergent diagnosis. my bio there was “emerging writer. re-emerging human.”]