Musings: On (Un)masking

I just had an epiphany in the shower, so I had to come write it down before I can sleep (so I don't forget it), even though it's 1:00 am and I have to get up in 5 hours.  Hopefully this will be somewhat coherent, but if not, that's why!

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this in here before, but I'm recently self-diagnosed autistic.  I was having a conversation with a friend earlier tonight about high school, and masking (if you don't know what autistic masking is, look it up!) in high school.  I mentioned that I was very heavily masked throughout high school, and that thought continued into this:

I started really masking in middle school.  Nobody "got" me, so I stopped trying to explain myself, and just started hiding all the parts of myself that people didn't understand.  But what I just realized is that a lot of people mask to fit in.  I didn't mask to fit in.  I masked to not stand out.  I essentially made myself invisible, and I did it REALLY well.  I spent all of high school, and a lot of my life since then, being intentionally invisible.  But now, as I'm starting to try to unmask, I'm noticing that it kind of backfired, because I am really triggered by being - you guessed it - invisible.  When my kids ignore me when I talk to them (I mean full on ignore me, like don't respond, or look at me, or acknowledge in any way that I'm speaking to them), I immediately react with anger.  There's no buildup, I just explode right away.  For the longest time, I've thought I was a bad parent for not being able to control my reaction enough to at least say it nicely first.  Now I understand - it's TRIGGERING me.  I spent so long trying to be invisible.  Now all I want is to be seen, and accepted, and loved for ME, for who I really am (whoever that is).  But I don't know how to do that, or even to convince my brain (which I've trained so well to mask for invisibility) that I am worthy of that, or that anyone even would, or COULD react to me in that way.

I've been really struggling this weekend with my brain spending every moment that I'm not actively engaged in conversation with someone trying to bully me into believing that everyone secretly hates me, and rehashing everything I've said or done that might be perceived in a negative way over and over and over again.  I'm pretty sure this is all related.  My brain has been SO thoroughly trained to make me invisible that when I do anything that would counteract that, anything that would lead to me being seen, noticed, PERCEIVED...it rebels against it.  It's trying to protect me the only way I've taught it how.  And while that served its purpose in middle school, and high school, and at various points along the way since, it's the opposite of helpful in this unmasking journey.  

I really believe that this might be the biggest hurdle I face in unmasking, and I feel like I'm constantly taking two steps forward and three steps back with it.  I don't see it resolving anytime soon (my brain is SO stubborn), and I'm not sure how to retrain my brain when this is so deeply entrenched.  But I do feel like realizing and understanding this is a breakthrough of sorts.  It's the first step to changing it.  So I'll keep trying, and maybe one day, my brain will allow me to drop the invisibility cloak for good and be seen, accepted, and loved.  Maybe.  In the meantime, the struggle continues.  Unmasking is hard.