Odd Days

It’s turning into an oddly emotional day for me. Odd because I don’t usually feel this emotional, odd for the emotions being felt. I started crying as I fell asleep last night. This is odd because I rarely cry.

I don’t cry properly. Other people seem to have sadness crash through them like a storm, with wracking sobs that shatter the air in syncopated rhythms. For me, the sadness wells up suddenly and overflows like too much water poured into a glass, and it spills out under my eyelids. But outwardly, it’s barely broadcast, short my red eyes and tears on my cheeks. Maybe it’s a sign of what a tight grip the mask has on me, that I don’t release my body to allow it to cry.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to unmask, and the proposition is terrifying. Masked Peter may burn out, but he’s a known entity. Masked Peter is competent, gets things done. Masked Peter is quiet, and unlikely to offend anyone. Masked Peter is camouflage, keeping Unmasked Peter, real Peter, hidden and safe.

There were reasons why Unmasked Peter, real Peter, hid in the first place. One of the stories my mother loves to tell about my childhood is the one about “Other Peter.” I would get in trouble for something as a small child, and I would protest that it wasn’t me, it was “Other Peter.” Ha ha, wasn’t my son funny and clever?

I wonder now if I was trying to tell her something. That Peter, the one that did that thing that made you mad; I sent that Peter away. This Peter is really sorry that he made you mad, and will make sure that it doesn’t happen again, because that’s how you prove you’re sorry. This Peter doesn’t like Other Peter, either. Other Peter is constantly getting in trouble, and making Mom mad.

Except this Peter is just a mask. This Peter is really Other Peter pretending to be the Peter that he’s supposed to be, the Peter that doesn’t get in trouble, the Peter that doesn’t make people mad. It works, but it’s hard work. It takes a long time to build a good, functional mask. When you’re a kid, the mask isn’t that good, and it falls off a lot. You only pull it out in emergencies. It’s not needed a lot when you’re a kid. Kids are, and should be, allowed to be kids.

But adults are expected to be adults, and you find you need the mask more often. And each time it falls off, you fix it, make it better. Eventually, it becomes more and more functional. And when wearing the mask, you become more and more functional. Your shitty life gets better. Thank the mask.

I really didn’t get my mask to stay on very well until my thirties, and didn’t have it become really functional until my forties. With Masked Peter running the show, I was able to work through the depressions that had crippled me in the past so that I could pretend that I wasn’t really depressed. Masked Peter got me to get a degree, get a house, have a kid, have another kid, get an amazing job. Masked Peter got me to where I am today, sitting at my table on a Sunday morning, looking out the window at the bird feeders hanging from the apple tree, glancing over at the sleeping cat on the couch in a warm, pleasant, clean house while my wife and children are off playing in a park and as I take a sip of what has been too many cups of coffee, I thank Masked Peter for what he has given me.

But while Masked Peter held my body still so that my wife wouldn’t know that I was crying next to her, real Peter was crying, because he needs to come out, and he’s scared. I’ve written previously about starting out the year strong and then crashing. I’ve mostly recovered, and am feeling better, but I’m taking it day by day. You’re never out of the woods when you live in a forest. I have good days, and I have bad days, and then I have days like today, odd days where I can’t tell if it’s good or bad. It’s neither. It’s just odd.

Masked Peter has done an admirable job, keeping the trains running, but real Peter has been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting. The mask fell off in January because we overreached. Not that we can’t do all those things that we started doing, we can, we totally can, but we need to be smart about how we get there. We have to stop relying on the mask. We have to start being ourself.

And so real Peter was crying last night, and then again this morning, because he knows Masked Peter was created for a reason. People didn’t like real Peter; they liked Masked Peter better than “Other Peter.” To real Peter, all of the happiness in his life, all of the good and positive things and people in his life, and real Peter will be the first to tell you, life’s pretty good right now, especially now that we’re finally through the long dark of February; to real Peter, all of that stems from Masked Peter. Real Peter is afraid of coming out and ruining it, of losing all this. Real Peter is afraid of being himself, because Masked Peter doesn’t like real Peter. Real Peter messes things up, makes people upset, is an ass. Things are better when real Peter is made to be “other Peter,” and just isn’t around.

The core of depression is self-hatred. If I want to be happy, really happy; if I want to feel whole; if I want to avoid or at least minimize autistic burnout, then I need be real Peter. The idea is terrifying, because so much is at stake, on either side of the equation. And real Peter doesn’t have a great track record of doing these things well. But I have to try and be myself, recognizing the mask for what it is: a simple crutch; a walking stick. A tool.

I read things written by other autistics where they describe dropping their mask voluntarily, and I’m like, how? How do you do that? My mask only drops on accident, followed by me frantically trying to fix it back into place before anyone notices. How do you just drop the mask and be yourself?

Just by thinking about it, though, it’s happening. The tears welling up, unbidden and uncontrollable, is the ice thawing, the mask dropping. It’s terrifying, but it needs to happen. I spent the last ten years perfecting this mask. Now I need to take it apart, and teach real Peter to use its functional aspects as tools. It’s Masked Peter’s turn to become “other Peter” for a while.