Life as Mask, Mask as Life
By Nuala O'Connor
Listen to a reading of Life As Mask, Mask As Life by Nuala O’Connor:
I’ve never been for a mani-pedi-highlights-tan-dye-massage-wax-lash-thread-peel-sunbed-spa-steam. None of it. I’ve always plucked my own eyebrows and shaved my own legs and pits. I stopped going to the hairdresser post-pandemic in favour of cutting my own hair. All my life I have had to – over months – work up the courage to go to hair salons, my split ends getting splittier, my hair frizzier and poofier. The centre-of-attention-ness of it all is anathema to me, and just being in a hairdresser’s is a sensory nightmare: the scalding water and scalp-probing; the chit-chat and combing; the burny styling tools and layers of sweet-smelling product. Nowadays I just whip out my hair-scissors and trim my hair in the safety of my bedroom, my own private salon; I can happily do without the rest of it.
When in female company, I usually keep quiet about this lack of interest in hairstyling, beauty treatments, and pamper sessions, because I know other people love them, and that’s fine. But my silence is a form of masking, something I discovered when I was diagnosed as autistic at fifty-two years of age. So, I nod along when people discuss, say, balayage or microdermabrasion, and it is presumed that I too don’t mind being pummelled or prinked by a stranger when, in fact, it’s my idea of hell. If the company I’m in feels ‘safe’ to me, I might mention my aversion to treatments; one person may warmly agree, the rest will insist I must try a massage, or whatever, because I will ‘love it’. But, no, I absolutely won’t; I know myself, and I don’t like non-intimates touching me, and I abhor small talk.
Autistic women often mask well and are good at observing and attempting to fit into neurotypical norms. As a result of gender-pressures to be good, well-behaved etcetera, we learn social codes by watching, listening, and adopting what we observe. We figure out when our thoughts or tastes might be at variance with others’, so we don’t share them. We try to still our fidgety bodies and blurting tendencies. Autistic people rarely want to be the centre of attention; even the tiny spotlight of a tiny group – or a lone hairdresser – can feel like a threat, so staying quiet feels safest, often.
As part of masking, autistic women might copy the way people dress in order to blend in, and start to wear things that don’t feel fully ‘us.’ Conversely autistics may, from a young age, dress in whatever pleases us the most. For me, as a teenager in the eighties, that was an Annie Lennox-esque uniform of men’s jackets, ties, and big shirts. That or the Cure-head uniform of all black, with splashes of purple for variety.
During one of my autism assessment sessions, I mentioned a quirk of mine to the psychologist that had given me pause over the years. I told her that I have long had a propensity for dressing to suit different friend groups: I’m make-uppy with the more glam girls; I wear my hippy dresses with my veg-growing, home-schooler friends; I went from all black to jeans and ganseys with my college Gaeilgeoir friends, and so on.
‘Almost like putting on a costume,’ I said.
‘That’s masking,’ the psychologist replied.
‘I suppose it is,’ I said, absorbing another revelation in my journey to autism diagnosis.
As I said, my style before my twenties leaned towards androgyny, and that included short, spiky hair. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to the cross-dressing activities of the subject of my latest novel, eighteenth century pirate Anne Bonny. A witness at her trial said Anne and another woman pirate ‘wore men’s jackets and long trousers and handkerchiefs tied about their heads’, but the witness knew they were women ‘by the largeness of their breasts’. Anne wore men’s clothes for comfort and ease while sailing and perhaps, also, because she wanted to be a man, with a man’s freedoms. Maybe it was the same for me – I valued, and still like, comfort in clothing. And as a girl I was a confirmed tomboy – I dressed like a boy, the easier to do ‘boy’s’ things. Gender non-conformity is high among the neurodivergent population. For me, my girly side won out though, to this day, I mostly prefer trousers to skirts, and my public event ‘uniform’ consists of blazers and shirts, but I also occasionally love the glamour of make-up and a fancy dress.
Until my autism diagnosis, I lived my life acknowledging myself as a hypersensitive introvert, so I was used to using masks, and I knew I mostly covered up my true feelings or thoughts when I was with others. I had a distinct feeling of disconnection from most people I knew, but at least in my own home, and with extended family, I could be (mostly) myself. I didn’t understand, though, how much I masked and the damage I was doing to myself by concealing my true nature and letting on to be calm, serene, and at one with the group. By staying quiet, tamping my true self, I didn’t draw attention to myself, but inside I was cripplingly lonely and anxious, wary about when to speak or not, trapping my body into a stillness it wanted to shake off. All that suppression of self is unhealthy.
Pre-diagnosis, I mentioned my ever-present anxiety to a psychotherapist friend and she was doubtful.
‘You, anxious?’ she said. ‘Really?
‘Yup, I’m pretty much a morass of raw nerves all the time.’
‘You hide it well.’
I replied with a rueful, ‘I know.’
For so long, I had no idea how to help myself, or what would help me. As a life-long masker, I was slipping between personalities so much that the real me was a little unknowable, even to those closest to me. All the layering and concealment had made me blurry, even to myself. Who was I really? Was the gregarious, public, working me real? Or was the quiet, self-contained, solitary me the authentic one?
It’s a strange feeling to be very aware of a behaviour – masking – but unaware of the whys behind it, in my case, the neural impetus to mould myself to a situation in order to ‘pass’, to hide my true, autistic self. I knew I was dressing/speaking/staying silent to blend in, but I didn’t know why I was doing it so consistently. These efforts were, I see now, self-soothing – if I look and sound like I fit maybe, somehow, I will. I may have passed, but inside me – always – there was that maelstrom of unease, a definite feeling of unbelonging. That has not changed but at least, now, I understand that my brain controls those feelings and by fully accepting that autism does make me different, I can travel through life on my own terms. This insight makes me much more forgiving of my own awkwardness, though I am still – as always – a work in progress.
I often wonder how and why I ended up with so much shame about the collection of idiosyncrasies that make me me. I guess the accusations of ‘You’re so sensitive/emotional/quiet/blunt/weird/snobby/aloof’ had gotten to me. Ditto the comments about my weird outfits, as I threw off one look for another: androgyny for head-to-toe black; black for homemade jumpers and denim; alternating that with Indian dresses and love-beads.
I was shamed into concealment, too, by comments on my hair-twirling and/or sucking, my scalp-poking, body-twirling, and ever fidgety fingers that I now recognise as stimming behaviours. I would be ordered to stop doing what I was doing though it hurt me to stop, but then I would sit on my hands, and internalise yet another thing that made me weird.
It baffles me still that no counsellor, GP, or specialist I visited for help ever noticed that I had traits that hung together that clearly spelt A-U-T-I-S-T-I-C. One can only guess that many medical professionals know as little about how autism presents in girls and women as the rest of the population.
Having long felt fragmented, while others seem so very whole, I’ve tended to obsess about my larger-than-normal propensity for perplexing discomfort in most aspects of life, one of them being that I simply don’t seem to enjoy things others enjoy – beauty treatments, being one example. I craved revealing myself to an understanding someone but, mostly, I preferred silent collusion with the majority. The dichotomy was that I was envious of ‘normal’ people, while not wanting to be like them at all.
This still happens sometimes – I think how great it would be if I had the mental and physical energy for a nine to five job (financial security); if I loved rooms full of people and chit-chat (more friendships); if I didn’t prefer to spend all my time writing/reading/researching/collaging, therefore alone (less lonely); if I didn’t prefer old, crumbly houses to new ones (heat! lack of maintenance!); if I liked off-the-peg clothing instead of wanting unique items (ease of purchase; no weird smells/stains to eliminate); if I enjoyed regular pastimes like sport or watching Star Wars, instead of hunting down obscure books and charity shop rummaging (conversational ease); if I didn’t love collecting things like blue glass and old pottery (tidy, uncluttered rooms). Conversely, I love all these things about myself. I like my dusty collections, alone time, wonky house, and particular passions – they are all joy-bringers.
My work now is on acceptance, something I’ve always struggled with because I tend to have a rigid view of what is right or wrong, proper or skewy, and I don’t like changing the ways that things are. But this acceptance is about growth, while acknowledging my idiosyncrasies and struggles as inherent, and working with, instead of against, them. In short, accepting the truth of my autistic self, unmasking when it feels safe, and being as compassionate towards myself as I can be towards other people. It is an act of unlearning but one that, so far, has opened me up to fresh hope, and new happiness, and I’m more than grateful for that.
Nuala O’Connor lives in Galway, Ireland. Her sixth novel SEABORNE, about Irish-born pirate Anne Bonny, was published in April 2024 by New Island. Her novel NORA (New Island), about Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, was a Top 10 historical novel in the New York Times. She won Irish Short Story of the Year at the 2022 Irish Book Awards and is editor at flash e-journal Splonk. You can find out more about Nuala at www.nualaoconnor.com