A mask of innocence, humour and kindness to drown out how incineratingly, furiously angry and venomous I am.

The STEM mask. I look like your typical STEM-brained antisocial shitlib, and I have to hide my actual views on things to be able to even get my foot in the door doing honest tech work.

In reality, I'm an anarchist communist, a musician with a passion for death metal, and I'm tired of being reasonable with people who want to kill us. I'm bad at socializing, not antisocial.

But ironically I'm actually a lot more "math nerd" than I even let on because it turns out that engineers don't know how math works and that makes them scared, so I have to keep all my serious math stuff to myself.

Edit: I'm also a lot more fragile, emotional, and fearful than I let on. I look (and act, and am) a lot like a "man's man", and I'm 100% comfortable with my cishet identity, but I do find it obnoxious to explain to people that I'm still human and feel feelings.

naive, fragile, simple and childlike.

really, I'm opinionated, I'm vulgar (seriously, people apologize to me for swearing in my presence,) I have heavy thoughts, I'm highly critical of myself, I've struggled with depression most of my life. I'm just an adult. also I'm queer. I hide these things because I don't want to be a downer. And I feel compelled to fit into other people's image of me. I can't bring up drinking or sex to anyone in my real life because I think I am, to them, equivalent to a child.

I don't know who I am anymore and I think I just hit rock bottom of this years-long burnout that has crept into my awareness and left me desolate. Had a horrific meltdown a couple days ago where I just broke into a bunch of ragged pieces and started screaming and crying, completely overwhelmed and unable to articulate anything but the agony tearing at my insides. Accidentally pulled out some hair. It was terrifying and raw. I just wanted everything to stop.

I'm trying to find somewhere to get tested for autism but there's so few places around here for adults, and everything I've found seems expensive and time consuming. I am not able to function and it scares me. I'm so tired. I wish I could support myself without the torture of being forced into a self-replicating toxic work environment.

But, I managed to eat today, and even went for a quick walk. I love making things, and I somehow built a mini mimic box from scratch that I finished painting... all while my schoolwork sits half finished and looming. Small things I guess. I'm just trying to take one step at a time. Hugs to everyone struggling, and thank you all for being such a supportive community. Sorry for the rambling sadness.

and if you don't know who you are under your mask, we will support and encourage your discovery process, should you choose to undertake it ❤️

honestly I'm still very much in the process of taking it off. First thing that happened was that I turned into a girl so I'm still figuring that out before trying anything else

But he's a fairly rough around the edges, quiet, straight laced sort of professional not afraid to get his hands dirty or working hard to get the job done. Mostly plays by the book, not super talkative, except to himself. Poor customer service skills for a service job. Hopefully I can bury that persona for good one of these days

My friends think I'm a depressed autistic singlet. Presumably that's correct.

innocent, im not, but im occassionally sex repulsed and also like, have trauma around being sworn at, so i usually pretend to not get sex things and hate swearing so people don't bring it up around me. you can really shut down dirty jokes by being like "what's that? :3" if people really believe that you genuinely don't know and don't want to ruin your innocence. but like, im polyam and into bdsm, lmao.

really outgoing and pushy. it's tiring for me. but people will never initiate conversations to maintain friendships, so if i want to do that i have to. it's kinda annoying and makes me feel not appreciated but i know they just don't want to be awkward.

and uh not plural, i hate explaining what DID is to people and i hate having to deal with their preconceptions about it. whenever i wanna talk about my alters i pretend they're OCs for dnd or something so i don't have to explain all that baggage with it.

My mask is nearly devoid of emotion, except a little cynicism and sarcasm, and cis-passing.

Underneath that is a loving, sincere, kind auDHD enby that also suffers from depression, anxiety, PTSD, and more "fun" things thanks to how painful existence can be. Only very close friends and lovers have seen beneath the mask because caring about things is "gay" (read: bad) and I don't want to be harassed by everyone at work. The awful shit happening all the time is very overwhelming and I get really emotional about it but I've been trying to disappear my whole life so I'm really good at pushing everything down until I can be alone with my feelings. I've never had a secure romantic attachment with anyone, though I did have a very long term toxic relationship that I stayed in because I was afraid of being alone. I just got rejected by someone who started flirting with me two minutes after we first met and after we hung out a few times they said they weren't interested in being more than friends

I don't blame them because I was a nervous wreck every time we hung out and couldn't really relax and be myself. I think I need to wait until I'm already unmasked around someone before trying for a relationship because otherwise they're not seeing the real me. If that fails I don't know what the fuck to do. I just wanna cuddle for god's sake

A damaged, depressed, and unstable piece of shit who makes self-deprecating and suicidal jokes to cope with the reality of existence that are also cries for help because I'm lonely and miserable and hate that I was ever conceived.

Pretty much the same except I actually don't have it in me to follow through with suicide even though I've been extremely close. I really just want close friends I can depend on, for life to get better, and be able to take care of the ones who've taken care of me and stuck around. I'm so tired of being and feeling lonely and unloved. It hurts so god damned much.

I lost two long time friends in the past week (one amicably, one blocked me because I'm too depressing for them presumably. I didn't know they bailed until I split with the first friend). I moved to a new area where I only know my roommate, and I don't leave the house except for work and to walk my roommate's dogs.

The big mask is pretending to be a boy. No one in real life has gotten to meet who I really am. They all think I'm a happy, normal boy who's just struggling to figure out a job.

I am actually an autistic girl. One who's struggling and stuck.

Specifically about autism though, no one knows. I have tried to tell two people (a friend and my therapist). They both dismissed me. My parents dismissed it as a child. I wear the mask of being neurotypical very well. It hurts, trying to not stim, trying to fit in, trying to not info dump my interests. I have tried very hard to fit in my whole life, and as far as I can tell it has worked. I have successfully hidden myself away, in hopes people would like me. And they do. Or at least what they know of me. I hope as I reveal my true self people still like me. It's very lonely in here.

I've honestly masked so much I kind of forgot who I really am. When I'm alone, this does give me a lot of stress "do I actually like XYZ or do I just tell myself that I do?", it even effects my QoL because I want to 'go back' to college and try to escape the reserve army of labor, but I have no idea what I want to do and I cannot trust myself to stick to something because I fear I'll just get bored of it, or make the wrong decision and porky no longer sees it as an in-demand skill and boom. Back to square one. I wish I could give a better answer because now I'm not even sure what I am, generally what I want to do most days is quite literally absolutely nothing.

However, the closest answer I could give is....I hate to admit it....is a channer, and mostly done out of self-defense. Starting around middle school, my school district loved advertising the fact that autistic kids were autistic and went overboard, and I ended up getting a one-on-one aide despite not needing one, and I did end up working my ass off to show the school I didn't need one, but the damage was done. People saw me as the "autistic kid", and essentially treated me like the village idiot. I started adopting 4chan mannerisms because 4chan is stereotyped to be full of autistic people, but were somehow admired (Yes, this was also before I became radicalized). Eventually this also turned me into a cynic that I have not fully recovered from because I assume everyone is exactly just like people on 4chan, especially /pol/ are deep down. However, I am recovering from this and becoming more of a "normie" and unironically enjoying things 4chan told me I'm not allowed to like because it's 'soy', 'reddit', or 'cringe'.

My mask is: quiet, lazy, and smart, with a cutting wit if somebody starts something. I come off like I don't care about things, but my environment is generally chuddy so I don't share my deepest concerns with people who would not adequately address them. The mask is made of the jokes I tell about things so I'm okay with the possibility of loss. I come off as perceptive and discerning, but that's only because I play diplomat and work off the assumption that someone may be lying. I speak cautiously and deliberately with the people present in mind.

The real me is caring to a fault where I perceive the pain of others and just wish they would understand they're good enough and that they don't need to impress me or anybody else. I don't care, but in the sense that I accept what people tell me and try to accommodate however I can. I'm painfully trusting and if somebody asked me for a favor I'd usually do it without being manipulated or lied to. I'll also tell the truth about anything you want to know, assuming you actually want to know, but it hurts people sometimes to hear it.

There is still a lot I don't know about myself, but I'm getting better at separating myself from my pain and the defenses I've put up to avoid more pain.

I don't really wear a mask, but I also avoid people, so perhaps that's its own mask. People just see me as an eccentric quiet person. Most of the negative attributes that is associated with eccentric quiet person (standoffish, arrogant, haughty, cold) is offset by the fact that I'm extremely clumsy in real life. It's hard to view someone as cold and arrogant if they also drop shit on the floor all the time or fail to open a can of peanut butter lol. I think it really helps that out of all my past and current insecurities, being a clumsy oaf isn't one of them and it's something that I'm confident (and borderline proud of???). Yeah, I sometimes trip while walking on an entirely flat surface. What of it?

I got quite lucky with my current team where I think they're all about as neuro divergent as me. We act like goofballs all day in person where I go blah blah blah blah all day and prance around the room.

Before my mask was generally perceived as either shy and quiet (I'm not) or some weird demonic evil creep who looks angry all the time (i wasn't my face just looks like that). The latter one hurt me a lot which further enforced keeping that mask on because showing who i really was most people just deemed as weird and obnoxious. I'm actually convinced neurotypical people genuinely desire to see me unhappy for some reason. My own mum told me she thought i was going to grow up to be a serial killer and likened me to the character Kevin in "lets talk about kevin" (i cry when i accidentally step on a bug).

But generally i opted to just be quiet and not say or do anything because I'm terrible at lying or acting.

I am terrible at responding to social cues and making casual, personal conversation, but I'm a good entertainer. Not just making jokes, but delivering them well and with confidence. I can turn a room of people into an audience. So I make a lot of quips during casual conversation.

The more comfortable I get with people, the quieter and less emotive I get. I put less energy into playing over my social deficiencies.

But I don't think one is my "true self" and the other isn't. The entertainer is not a persona I play, it's me making use of the things I'm good at, it's my sense of humor, it's based on my observations and experiences. Just because it requires effort, that doesn't mean it's not who I am.