Masked vs. Masking: The Difference Between Adapting and Performing

*As always, names are changed to protect people's privacy.

How are these two photos of me different? How are they alike?

In one, I'm on an airplane; in another, I'm in a restaurant. 

In both, I'm not masking.

Yes, you read that correctly: I'm not masking in either of these photos. Unless you're autistic or know someone who is, you're probably confused, since in the photo on the left I'm clearly wearing a mask. That picture was taken during the height of the COVID pandemic when we were expected to wear masks on airplanes to protect ourselves and others from infection. Like everyone else, I had to adjust significantly throughout 2020 and beyond. For a little over a year-- at least in the state of Massachusetts, where I live-- we were required to wear a mask when entering stores and other businesses. Remembering to grab my mask on the way out the door took some getting used to. Sometimes I forgot, not realizing it until I got to my destination, and I had to bite the bullet and walk back home (I don't have a car; you don't need one in Boston or the immediate suburbs). Inconvenient? A little. Annoying? You betcha. But I accepted it as a necessary precaution to reduce the risk of transmitting a potentially deadly virus while waiting for a vaccine to be developed: that is, I adapted. 

Then there's the kind of masking that has nothing to do with COVID or even adaptation: it has to do with suppressing one's natural inclinations in order to make others comfortable, frequently at the expense of their own. The phenomenon of masking is frequently discussed in autistic spaces, and is often adopted as the result of significant social trauma. In children, said trauma tends to manifest in bullying, exclusion, and ostracization. For many adults, it is largely due to getting fired from one job after another-- not due to poor performance, but because of their atypical social interactions which, while innocent in intent, are often misread as rude and defiant. They have been repeatedly punished by society and ultimately internalized the message that who they are is simply wrong and they must change everything about who they are to be accepted. 

Many autistic people-- particularly women-- have come forward in recent years to talk about how longterm masking has added to their trauma. Many report having developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to constant self-monitoring and the fear of social punishment.  

Right now I can hear people saying, "Well, like it or not, everyone has to adapt to different situations. You can't just go around doing whatever you want. Get over it." Yes, everyone does have to adapt. That's why you tell your child, "You can tell poop jokes with your cousins because that's something all of you laugh about together. But you shouldn't tell them to Grandma and Grandpa because that kind of humor grosses them out." Or you might advise a friend, "Don't talk about religion and politics at work, because that's the best way to create unnecessary conflict in the office." These are all minor adaptations in behavior that are context-dependent and respect others' boundaries. 

And they have nothing to do with masking. 

Masking involves significant, fine-tuned alterations to behavior, to the point where you have to be hypervigilant to maintain the façade. In my late twenties, before "masking" was even named, I wrote about this in a piece in which I recalled navigating social interactions during my middle school years. Borrowing slightly from the song "Every Breath You Take" by The Police, I wrote, "Every move I make, every action I take, and every word I say must be preceded by a meticulously calculated thought. Otherwise, I will mess up. I will make unforgivable social mistakes that I will never hear the end of. I must not slip, or I will be cast out by friends and punished by other students." 

Unfortunately-- or fortunately, depending on your point of view-- I was terrible at masking and, to be fair, I did not attempt it nearly as much as most autistic women report themselves doing. Still, I accepted without question that I would have to give my personality a major overhaul in order to be accepted, particularly in terms of my gallows sense of humor. It didn't help that my parents regularly told me things like, "You make a joke out of everything," "This constant joking needs to stop" and "Your jokes are bizarre and inappropriate!" A lot of my journal entries during that time period contained declarations of, "Everything about me is wrong, and I want to change it by [insert date here]." Such feelings, of course, were borne out by the loss of multiple friends during that time period. A couple years ago, when I told my parents about my self-deprecating journal entries, my mother said, "It breaks my heart to learn that you wrote those things." 

As I mentioned before, it is mostly women who have come forward about how chronic masking takes a toll on their mental health. Why more women than men?* Because it's been well documented that women mask more. For reasons that are not completely understood, autistic girls and women tend to be more aware that they are different and how they are perceived. Even if it turns out that there is a significant biological component for this increased self-awareness, it also doesn't help that eccentricities and idiosyncrasies are more accepted in boys and men. Boys are allowed to be loud in groups, to be class clowns, to have a twisted and morbid sense of humor, and to talk about their favorite topic ad nauseam. Girls are routinely called out and chastised for these things. 

Other ways that my parents unwittingly pressured me to mask were to implore me to stop dressing like a tomboy and present more feminine; to talk about what the other kids were interested in even if these things bored me (and meanwhile not expect them to talk with me about my own idiosyncratic interests); and to lie and say, "Nobody right now" instead of "I'm not interested in boys yet" when other girls would ask, "Who do you like?" To be clear, I am not gay, and my parents wouldn't have had a problem with it if I was. But in the '90s, being perceived as gay in middle school was a social death sentence. And back then, the possibility of being asexual or demisexual-- the latter of which I turned out to be-- wasn't even on the table. 

And yes, hiding your sexual orientation is a form of masking, one which I refused to do, even though "demisexual" was not yet in the lexicon. I feel for the closeted adolescent gay girl at a sleepover playing Truth or Dare who, when asked, "Who do you have a crush on?" answers with the name of a popular boy in her class so that she's not ostracized. I feel for the closeted gay boy in the locker room after high school gym class who won't look anywhere other than the floor while changing because he's scared to death the other boys might think that he's leering at them. 

Masking behaviors aren't adaptations. They're performances to prevent people's lives from being made a living hell. And people who mask are usually not happier-- they're miserable. They're not living; they're merely surviving. When I did occasionally attempt to mask, it felt inauthentic. I recall at the beginning of eighth grade, my mom advised me, "Don't talk about cartoons with your friends. Talk about your new teachers. Say something like, 'And what do you think of this teacher? Isn't he funny?'" At lunch I did just that. I said, "How about Mr. Henn? Isn't he funny? It was so funny when he said, 'You can chew gum in class, but don't crack it' and then he made this funny cracking noise." I remember very clearly feeling like I was reading off a script and performing, and I'm certain it came across that way. It felt unnatural and awkward, and I'd bet money that the other kids saw right through me. 

What really frustrates the hell out of me is the practically cliché idea that autistic people are defined as "rigid," all while many of them-- especially girls and women-- contort themselves into pretzels to become more palatable to neurotypical people. And yet, you rarely hear comments that neurotypical people are rigid when they don't try to understand their autistic peers, simply because they're the majority. If they're uncomfortable with something an autistic person says or does-- even when it's not harming anybody-- that alone is treated as proof that the autistic person was in the wrong. 

If there's any lingering doubt that neurotypical people can be every bit as rigid as autistic people are accused of being, let's return to the topic of COVID masking. After public mask mandates were implemented, a huge portion of the American population-- presumably mostly neurotypical people-- raised indignant hell about their liberties being violated. It didn't matter that the science indicated that masking reduced the risk of infection. Nor did it matter that hospitals were becoming overwhelmed with death and that countless bodies were being shipped out in refrigerated trucks. Even assurances that mask mandates were temporary until a vaccine could get the spread under control did not assure these people who were convinced they were being oppressed. The way they reacted, an outsider might have thought that governments were requiring people to get major surgery instead of covering their noses and mouths.

In fact, one time early in the pandemic, when I was getting a sandwich at Dunkin' Donuts, I noticed one guy's nose was hanging over his mask. Despite knowing I was stepping in a minefield, I told the man that he should cover his nose. I was very careful to keep my tone diplomatic, but it didn't matter. He started yelling and screaming at me, and he ended his tirade by telling me to go fuck myself. And, yes, I know I shouldn't have stooped to his level, but I responded in kind (hey, I spent the first half of my adult life in Brooklyn, so why not?). Imagine if autistic people reacted this way when being told to perform social masking.

As you might have surmised, even as an adult I don't mask. I still have a twisted sense of humor, and my parents have learned to live with it. And as you can see in the pictures that opened this post, I'm every bit as tomboyish as the teenager that I described. In both photos, I have short hair, don't wear makeup, and sport androgynous shirts. The photo on the right was taken when my parents were visiting for my birthday this past October. I'm not really smiling there-- I was a little annoyed that my mom insisted on taking a picture while I was trying to eat. And that's why I posted it.

It's a lot more authentic than a staged photo with a forced smile, isn't it? 

*I realize that this has a cis-normative bias and doesn't account for trans and nonbinary people. Trans and nonbinary people certainly have been pressured to mask, in the form of pretending to be a gender that feels wrong to them. It would probably be more accurate to say "cis boys and men and people perceived as cis boys and men" and "cis girls and women and people perceived as cis girls and women."

The Art of Finding a Therapist

As always, names are changed-- names for my good therapists, and mischievous nicknames for some pretty bad therapists.

"Oren would have some good advice for me on this," I often say to myself when I am having a difficult moment.

But then I remember that I am no longer working with Oren. 

An undisclosed medical condition forced Oren into sudden retirement in June, and after six years of working with him-- the longest I have worked with any therapist-- I found myself having to find someone else.

I have been to several therapists since age eleven, some of which were psychologists, and others who, like Oren, were licensed clinical social workers (LCSW). The past thirty years of on-and-off therapy have taught me some valuable lessons, not the least of which is that finding a good therapist is an art. In a sea of "just okay" and bad shrinks, I have had three terrific ones, including Oren. I started working with a psychologist named Dr. Peters in June, but I'm considering looking for someone else if something doesn't click in the next couple months. She is nice and open-minded enough, and in the beginning I was feeling optimistic about her. However, I have since begun to feel that things aren't clicking as well as I hoped they would. For one thing, I am not convinced that she is intimately familiar with the nuances of autism, particularly in terms of what it generally looks like in cis women*. For another, I find that she often misses my point. Plus, she will often ask me a question right after I say something that contains the answer that she is looking for. For example, I might tell her that I have known somebody for twenty years, and two seconds later she will ask, "How long have you known this person?" It makes me feel like that she isn't listening, or at least isn't completely processing what I tell her, let alone appreciate where I'm coming from.

What was great about Oren is that he knows what autism looks like, including in cis women*. Unlike an alarming number of the psychological community, he knows it is a varied, colorful, complex, and nuanced spectrum, well beyond the stereotype of train-spotting, hyperliteral, STEM-genius cis men. In fact, on the day that I first met him, he said that he knew after speaking to me for about a minute that I was neuroatypical-- he has that kind of radar for autism, picking up on more subtle, less stereotypical cases like mine. After talking to him for about ten minutes, he also commented, "What I am hearing is someone who has experienced a great deal of loss." These comments clearly reflected someone who is highly knowledgable about autism as well as someone who quickly picked up on a common denominator in the stories I related. 

Oren was also good at validating my feelings while trying to help me sort through them. Sometimes I would tell him a story about a memory from my teenage years in the 1990s that had come back to haunt me, and I would say, "I feel like even among the autism community I have stories about traumatic interactions that are really unusual." He would tell me, "Believe me, this isn't anything I haven't heard before from an autistic person" and he would elaborate. You name the esoteric experience, he's heard about it at least once and often has some great insight into it. Sometimes, he would also ask me very disarming questions that would make me rethink my perspectives on certain issues. After getting to know me, it was also easier for him to contextualize any new information I gave him.

And finally-- and this is not a trivial issue-- Oren laughed at my weird, gallows sense of humor. And that's important.

Aside from the importance of finding a therapist who understands your situation, it is important that this person is interested in little anecdotes about something fun you did over the weekend and appreciates your sense of humor. After all, if you're working with a therapist once a week, you are not going to have something "bad" to talk about every week-- sometimes not even for months at a time. Why should you? And being able to have everyday discussions with and laugh with your shrink is important. It helps them to see the whole person, and not just where things aren't working. Plus, it helps you feel more comfortable working with them. 

I have had only two therapists besides Oren who I really clicked with. The first one was Dr. Fried, a psychologist I saw during my senior year of high school. He was the second shrink I had been to, after my shrink that I saw in elementary school whom I have since dubbed Dr. Bonehead (more on him in a bit). After the first or second session together, he commented, "You're a very intense person." Just like Oren he spotted a common denominator right away. The other one, a LCSW named Molly, was someone I saw in my late twenties when living in New York City. Like Dr. Fried and Oren, she was able to appreciate where I was coming from and help me to understand my feelings. She helped me to come to terms with a painful personal loss of two friends who had recently ghosted me (this was in 2008, one of the worst years of my adult life).

Dr. Peters doesn't seem to be fitting all of these requirements. She enjoys listening to my anecdotes and laughs at my jokes but, as I've said, I'm not convinced she fully appreciates just what autism is and can be, and I feel her listening skills leave something to be desired. I don't think she's a "bad" therapist, but she might not be a good fit. I have had some "just okay" therapists as well as some awful ones, and I want to share a few stories to help my readers understand just how clueless and even inappropriate (nothing sexual in my case; don't worry) they can be, and that there's nothing wrong with looking for someone else if the shrink you're seeing doesn't seem to be helping. To make things easier to follow (and more amusing), I have given each of these therapists a mischievous nickname:

Dr. Bonehead: My first therapist, whom I saw between 1992-1995, ages 11-14. Nobody knew what autism was in the '90s beyond the Rainman stereotype, so I wasn't diagnosed. Dr. Bonehead meant well, but he didn't understand me at all. He told me I overreacted to the chronic bullying I experienced, he analyzed things that had no deep meaning, and he often expressed shock at my gallows sense of humor. And he seemed to think a good "cure" for my social deficits was to sit two feet away from me on the couch instead of sitting on the other side of the room. Hey, "normal" people would feel a little uncomfortable, but since I wasn't "normal," I guess he thought the answer was to throw me in the proverbial deep end and hope I'd swim. Oh, and he once told me my hair was sexy. While I don't think he "meant" anything by it (he had three years in which he could have touched me, and he never did-- not even a harmless pat on the shoulder), it was still inappropriate and, sadly, reflective of the culture back then when it was considered okay for thirty-something-year-old men to "compliment" adolescent girls like that. Again, I don't think he was trying to do something inappropriate; I think he was just clueless-- in many ways.

Dr. Uh-Huh: I saw this guy in my late twenties, in Brooklyn, for a few months before I started seeing Dr. G. I would tell him stories and he would just go, "Uh huh. Uh huh." I would ask him for some insight, and he would just shrug. Brilliant guy.

The Drama Queen: I saw her in Boston for a few months in 2014. She was inordinately convinced that I was harboring a repressed memory, which is just absurd because my episodic memory is better than most people's (Oren said he has only worked with one other person in 45 years with a memory like mine). I have no trouble remembering traumatic experiences either, so I don't know where she was getting this. She also insisted that certain things in my life-- such as some drama in my extended family, which only came up because she actually had me make her a detailed family tree for some reason-- had a significant effect on me when I knew damn well it didn't. The family drama involved relatives I barely knew, and while I felt bad for my parents, who were at the receiving end of it, it had very little to do with me. These kinds of assertions felt like gaslighting. Additionally, The Drama Queen was Jewish, and she started asking personal questions to ascertain if I was "really" Jewish (that is, was my mother "born" Jewish? Nope, she converted-- I could see the wheels turning in her head when I revealed that). This is not just inappropriate, but irrelevant. Oh, and when I told her I was going to see cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker at an event to promote his new book, she said, "Maybe we can go together." Uhhh, that's a hard "no." Psychologists aren't supposed to interact with their patients outside of a professional setting. 

The bottom line is that finding a good therapist is an art. It takes time, and sometimes you need to try several before you find one that clicks. There is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes they aren't a good fit, and sometimes they are just bad. And if you, like me, are a woman on the autism spectrum-- which sadly isn't very well-understood in much of the psychological community-- it can be like finding a needle in a haystack. My father said it best-- finding a good doctor of any kind, but particularly a therapist, is like trying to find a good mechanic. You can take your car to several mechanics who say, "I don't know what to tell you." And then one day you take it to someone else who takes one look and says, "Oh, I know what's going on."

Sometimes, you just need to keep looking when your therapist isn't working out. And there's nothing wrong with that.

*This is a very in-depth topic, and well beyond the scope of this blog post. But let's just say that even a lot of the psychological community remains ignorant of the different presentations of autism.

Is It Ableism? Part 4: Internalized Ableism

Thanks for coming! I'm gradually moving my blog to Substack! You can check out this post here!

A Visit from the Monster

I've been having a case of The Monster all week. Just to remind you, The Monster is when I find myself in a horrible state of mind because of something I've done wrong. Actually, it's often more as a result of people's reactions to what I've done wrong. Even if the reaction is something as benign as, "You have to make sure you don't say things like that", it can trigger a cascade of intense, overwhelming emotions. I feel such horrible mental pain to the point that it's practically physical. I find myself angry at myself and hating myself. In fact, at work (it's a low-paying temp job) this week I had to go into the bathroom to cry. I was hyperventilating and I had to stop myself from howling from the agony I was feeling. I went back to my desk, still in tears, and a couple people asked me what was wrong. I told them that I was just going through a rough time, that it was "personal issues, you know?".

The slightest trigger can bring back a bunch of old memories, many of which I'd put to rest up until two years ago. What happened two years ago, you ask? Let me start by saying that two years ago I was in a better mindset that an I'd been in, well, ever. I'd lost 40 pounds, I was getting into excellent physical shape and developing athlete's heart, and my self-esteem was through the roof. I recall one day specifically when I had just left the Dodge YMCA in Brooklyn, reeling from endorphins from my latest killer workout. I walked toward the subway, plugged into my iPod and listening to a song that had a message of hope. It perfectly complemented the wonderful changes I was making to my body and my brain. At that moment I felt like someone could come up to me with an AK-47, shoot me, and the bullets would bounce right off.

That was early 2013. Then I made the biggest mistake of my life: I left New York City and took a job at a library in Maine. Yes, in my infinite wisdom, when I went back to school for library science, I thought it would be fun to concentrate in children's librarianship. I thought it would be fun to do activities with kids and that I'd just have fun with them. I mean, it was fun doing just that when volunteering at a New York library for seventeen months. But what I didn't count on were the parents, which were pretty absent in the library in New York that I volunteered at. The short version is that the parents in Maine constantly complained about me, saying that I was mean to their kids. I was finally fired after only four months when parents told the library director that their kids were afraid of me. I was 5'2" and weighed 122 pounds. I don't know what the parents thought I could possibly do to their kids, but truth be told, this wasn't the first time I've heard that people have said that they are afraid of me.

The Monster was awakened.

I bounced back and took a job in a library in Massachusetts. Once again, I was fired after four months. To my knowledge, only two parents complained about me. But the library director took those complaints very seriously. When parents complained about the other librarian, these complaints were just laughed off. Why? My shrink says she thinks that the director saw right away that there was something off about me and was thus more sensitive to my infractions. In fact, this phenomenon of not being able to get away with little things when neurotypicals get away with outrageous things is a very common Asperger's experience. Needless to say, I want nothing to do with working at libraries anymore.

The Monster was awakened again, and I haven't been able to put him to sleep. At most, he lies dormant, waiting for the next thing in my life to go wrong and to come back. When he does, he constantly whispers in my ear that I bring my problems on myself; that I cause people distress and misery; that I'm creepy, defective, and narcissistic; and that I deserve bad things to happen to me, both physical and emotional. He tells me that he hopes that somebody beats the shit out of me so that I get just punishment for all the problems I cause and my refusal to learn from my mistakes.

Just to clarify, this is not a literal voice-in-my-head. But it is very powerful. I have tried all week since the Monster's initial visit on Monday to neutralize him. I've gone running (even though I shouldn't because I still haven't recovered from an injury to me knees from last year) and I've gone swimming. It provides temporary relief, and I feel a little better since Monday, but it's not enough. I'm still reeling from some anger. I don't even know who or what I'm angry at anymore, but I just wish the Monster would die. The best I can do now is just wait until he lies dormant again.

Don't get me wrong, even when I was doing well emotionally the Monster would still come sometimes. But at the most he would stay for a couple hours and then I would be fine again. Now he comes for days at a time, and in this most recent instance, it's been closing in on a week.

I am just so sick of a lot of things.

I am sick of…

1. ...Knowing that if I get into a conflict with somebody, even if they're at fault, I inevitably have played a role in the incident.
2. ...People telling me "It's your overall personality; I can't even explain it", expecting me to just smile like this while they say it, something no neurotypical would ever be expected to do. In fact, BOTH LIBRARY DIRECTORS said this to me. 
3. ...That a lot of people in my life-- my brother, cousin (and yes, I'm close with both), and some of my friends who've known me longer-- feel entitled to wag their finger at me and lecture me like I'm a child.
4. ...My dad framing my life as a case of maturity. Even when he thinks he's complimenting me in that regard, it's a backhand compliment. He says, "You've matured a hell of a lot over the years." But he says it in a voice that sounds like, "God, you were so awful back then." To raise your consciousness, think about how it sounds telling someone with Down Syndrome who's improved in math, "You're a hell of a lot smarter than you used to be." It sounds like, "God, you were so stupid back then." 
5. ...Being expected to understand how everyone feels but then being told I shouldn't be expected for people to understand me. I'm supposed to shrug and go, "Okay, no problem" and, again, smile like this. Recently, my brother said of this, something like, "Yes, it's unfair, but you know why that is." 
6. ...Being expected to repress every little thing that comes naturally to me, whether it's my choice of discussion topic, my opinions, my sense of humor, or anything else. Sometimes I do this and then everything goes well, but it's exhausting. The dam breaks eventually, the holes in my mask form, and then I get lectured on how I need to learn to do A, B, and C, and not to do X, Y, and Z.
7. …Hearing sentences that start with, "You need to learn…" or "You need to work on"...
8. …Knowing that the stories I've related on most, if not all, of my blog posts are told from the point of view of an unreliable narrator and that I am missing one crucial element. My brother and one of my older friends have both told me that when I tell a story they know that if they ask somebody else, they'll have a story that's diametrically opposed to mine. My brother also recently said that I frequently have a very skewed version of situations, often with catastrophic results. 
9. …Of people asking me what I do for a living when I'm constantly in between blue-collar jobs, despite having a Master's Degree.
10. …Of the fact that most people have one or two skeletons in their closet when I have a whole fucking graveyard.
11. …Of being observed. I've been observed one way or another since I was a little kid, and by the time I was eleven I was pretty aware of it. It still goes on today. I'm sick of being observed, evaluated, gossiped about, told on, etc. I'm also sick of people like my brother telling me that nobody owes me answers when I ask exactly what happened that got people upset enough to tell on me, or what they said about me. It's easy to say that nobody owes you answers when this sort of thing rarely happens to you.
12. …Of people like my brother telling me that part of being adult is learning to repress my emotions. The problem is when I do that it only delays the inevitable outburst, which only makes things worse. My brother doesn't see whatever outbursts I have as an end result of repressing and repressing and repressing. He sees it as me giving into some emotional whim. Dad has the same opinion. Part of the problem is that, as I've said before, leaving a situation to cool down and prevent such things is seen as immaturity. 
13. …Of my pain being dismissed. If the Monster starts fucking my brain and I feel overwhelming emotions which I express, Dad tells me things like that I'm just trying to get attention and that I need to grow up. The irony? For years Dad understood me a lot better than Mom. And actually, there are still aspects of me that he understands better than Mom. But the deep psychological turmoil? Mom seems to understand it better (although this is a fairly recent development), perhaps because she has students who write in their journals about cutting themselves or being suicidal (no, I've never done/been either). I think only in the past few years have students come out about this sort of thing to teachers. They probably cut as much then as they do now but were shit-scared to talk about it, even in journals.
14. …Of having to think before I open my mouth or send an email or ask somebody something.
15. …Of having to expect that something will go horribly wrong, even if the situation I'm in seems wonderful at first.
16. …Of being told I'm not trying and that I need to try harder.
17. ...Of when something does go wrong, getting an entire fucking list of things that I did wrong, some of those things which still don't even seem wrong. When most people are told they've done something wrong, it's one thing, not a whole fucking list.
18. …Of never being allowed to be 100% right. Ever. 
19. …Of being told that I'm aggressive, too intense, and that I make people uncomfortable. Sometimes people don't even have a tangible explanation for these things when I ask for ones.
20. …Of feeling like I'm in a SIMS game. For those of you who don't know the SIMS, it's a simulation game where you take people, put them in houses, and let them develop relationships, get jobs, etc. A popular thing to do-- which my friends and I did in college-- is to "fuck with" the characters. We would build them a pool, let them jump in, and take the ladder away so they can't get out. Or we'd put them in a room with no door. Sometimes I feel like I am a character in that game and some higher being is fucking with me, watching me stumble through life.

In fact, I sometimes feel like the Universe is trying to put me in my place.

Owning Your Emotions

I briefly alluded to "owning" one's emotions in my last blog post, and now I am going to expand further on that idea. By "owning" one's emotions, I mean acknowledging that they exist, not trying to repress them, and even being able to embrace them. For many years I felt like I was not allowed to own my emotions, that I had to justify to myself any odd thought or feeling that I had or else it meant there was something wrong with me. Even though I am an adult and my parents and others are meeting me with much more understanding than they did when I was growing up, or even when I was in my twenties, I find myself reflexively going through justifications in my mind that I shouldn't have to go through. In a recent post, "Thoughtcrime", I talked about having reflexively justified to myself why I had tears in my eyes when I learned that Dr. Jack Kevorkian died. I ultimately decided that if anybody told me there was something wrong with that then they could jump in the lake. I had tears in my eyes because I was sad and disappointed about the loss of someone whom I'd never even met. Yes, and? So what? That's how I reacted. Accept it. I thought to myself, If there's something wrong with me, then there's something wrong with me. I am 30 years old and I am entitled to feel however I feel. If it means that the world thinks I'm fucked up, then fuck the world. But the fact that I reflexively went through that ritual at all just shows how much I have been conditioned over the years, mostly (but not completely) by my parents.

The scenarios in which I felt the most like I was not allowed to own my emotions were those involving the intense crushes I developed on a few guys over the years. I can trace this issue back to the summer of 1997 when I was on my group trip to Israel with Camp Negev (not its real name) and its sister camps across North America. I had developed a huge crush on one of the counselors, Chuck (not his real name). At the time, he was only the second guy I had ever had a crush on. The first was a counselor named Jonas (also a pseudonym) from my summer camp. I was incredibly lucky that he had not only been accepting and understanding of this but also became my close friend and mentor and remained so for several years. When I met Chuck, I assumed that if I spent enough time with him the same thing would happen. So I followed him everywhere, even walking the perimeter of wherever we were staying in hopes that I would "accidentally/on purpose" run into him. Chuck tried to be nice to me-- and he was nice except for the occasional frustrated snap, after which he usually apologized-- but we sure as hell didn't become friends. The fact that I had spent so much time focusing on him instead of meeting other kids and enjoying learning about Israel eventually became a source of embarrassment to me. After I had time to reflect on that summer, I thought to myself, "Okay, obviously I don't know how to handle these types of situations. The next time I see that I am developing a crush on somebody, I will talk myself out of it."

That next time came the following summer, 1998, when I returned to Camp Negev for the C. I. T. program. As luck would have it, my crush was, once again, on yet another counselor, an Israeli named Omri (again, a fake name). We were somewhat buddy-buddy in the beginning. It began when the camp wouldn't let me work with kids because they were afraid that I might hurt them, physically and emotionally. The fact that anybody thought I was capable of doing something like that was shocking. I was hurt and had nobody to talk to. In a move that would make today's youth leaders and psychologists cringe, the executive staff essentially told me, "You made your bed. Now sleep in it." Not in those words, of course, but I wasn't given any kind of emotional support. People told me that it was my problem, one that I had brought upon myself, and that I had to solve it myself. At least, until Omri reached out to me.

My relationship with Omri began as my talking about the mistakes I had made in conducting myself in the past and knowing that I would have to grow up a bit in order to work with kids. But after a week or so we just talked about regular stuff. We laughed together and offered one another advice. Yes, I gave him advice about a couple things. It seemed like we were becoming friends. I asked him if he would eat with my family on Visitors' Day. He said, "Well, if one of my kids asks me they need to come first, but if not, I would be happy to." We had several interesting discussions in the first couple weeks, all of which ended with a big bear hug "goodnight". Omri impressed me as an intelligent, thoughtful, interesting guy-- all common denominators in my crushes, which never developed from an initial physical lust as with most people (it's called "demisexuality"-- Google it). Because I knew that this crush was inappropriate due to the age difference (I was 17 and he was 23), I realized that I had to rein myself in, just as I had promised. I set very strict boundaries for myself. I was not allowed to go out of my way to sit with Omri at meals. I was not to approach him to hang out until at night after his kids were put to bed. I was to accept that his obligation was, first and foremost, to his campers. I was proud of myself for having set these limits, and I was sure everything was going to be okay and that I could handle this situation and that Omri and I could be friends.

But it was not enough. After a couple weeks, Omri figured out that I had feelings for him and avoided me. On Visitors' Day, he had to eat with his kids and I accepted that. But in the evenings when I would come to him and ask, "Are we hanging out tonight?" he would often say he was "tired" or "busy". I promised myself that if he said those things that I would just turn around and leave, as was the mature thing to do. So that's just what I did. The mistake I made was looking back as I headed away and seeing him warmly embracing some campers and other counselors. Very few people appreciate the sheer willpower it took for me to just leave. Many have been perplexed as to why I couldn't just "let it go" or "accept it" or "give up". Do I really have to qualify that with an answer?

I will say this: even though I followed the strict rules I had set for myself, I realized that they did not work in keeping my emotions in check. I am embarrassed to admit that in the last week or so of camp I resorted to pulling the same stupid stunts I had on my Israel trip: taking late-night walks to "accidentally/on purpose" run into him-- sometimes as late as 2:30 AM-- just so I could see him and, if nothing else, claim one of his bear hugs. And in retrospect I'm sure both he and Chuck knew that I hadn't "accidentally" run into them. I couldn't help but feel great sorrow that my late night conversations with Omri that I had enjoyed during the first couple weeks were over. My racing heart and accompanying adrenaline rushes told me that I was not feeling okay about this, that this was a big deal to me. But I knew I couldn't blow up about it. I couldn't cry about it. I had to find other ways to tame my hijacked mind, especially if I wanted to work with kids second session. One night I sat alone in an office until I calmed down. Another time I took out my diary and wrote about how frustrated I was about how things were going. But my feelings still came and there was nothing I could do about them. They were there, whether or not I wanted them to be.

In the end, Omri wanted nothing to do with me. Back then I had not known about Asperger's Syndrome and just months earlier had misdiagnosed myself with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I recall on the last night of camp crying to one of my friends and saying, "Everybody else is allowed to have feelings for someone, but not me. Why? Because I am obsessive-compulsive. I have to calculate everything I do." While everyone else who liked hanging out with Omri could take it for granted that they had the right to hang out for him, for me it was a privilege that had been revoked. I was not allowed to be his friend. I did not have his permission.

After I went home the next day I drove around with Dad and told him everything. I made him promise not to tell Mom. Why? Because I knew that she would tell me that if only I were more feminine in dress and behavior I wouldn't have scared Omri off. And that is ultimately the sort of thing that did happen when I finally came out to her about having crushes-- more on that later.

In 1999 I worked at a crappy summer camp and met someone who finally reciprocated my feelings. It was with him that I got my first kiss (and a little bit more). He was from Germany, however, so our semi-relationship didn't last (we still are in touch on Facebook, however). Then in the summers of 2000 and 2001 I also had crushes on people at a different camp, this time in Michigan, that I worked at. Both of them ended negatively. Long story short, Joe (fake name), an English guy two years younger than me, was not only friendly with me in the beginning but actually my friend. Then when he figured out I had a crush on him, he canceled his plans to go to Chicago with me at the end of the summer, AFTER I had bought the Amtrak tickets (I was lucky I was able to get a refund)! Instead, he went with someone else-- to GARY INDIANA. He told me I was "fucked up" and told other people I was stalking him. As in the situation with Omri, I found myself hurting and nothing I could say or do would stop the pain.

During my years in art school, I had a crush on Doug (yes, a pseudonym), one of my teachers. I am now embarrassed about this because, as discussed in the linked blog post, he was caught in an underage sex sting on the Internet. In any case, the story is familiar. We began on friendly terms and I eventually developed a crush on him. Just like Joe, Doug eventually said nasty things to me, but much worse. He said that I would never amount to anything. He also lied to keep me out of one of his classes. He told me the class was full, but I knew better. Once again, when I tried to repress my feelings-- telling myself that I was imagining things, or that he must have had a good reason, or that it's none of my business-- my pounding heart told me that the pain would not go away.

Doug was the last crush I had had for a long time. Then, in October 2007, I reunited on Facebook with Sergio (yes, fake name), a Mexican counselor eight years older than me who had been at Camp Negev in 1995. At camp, we had been buddies. When we reunited online, we hit it off immediately. We emailed each other several times a week. We once talked on Skype for two hours. He suggested that we make a film together. We talked about meeting the next time he came to New York City, where I was then living. Once he even emailed me at work to ask if I could talk on Skype (obviously I couldn't). As time passed, I began to feel warmly towards him. I couldn't tell you exactly when it turned into a crush. I can't quantify it, so please don't ask me to do so. But I decided to send him a package for Chanukah. It was a gesture of friendship, nothing more. He told me that he looked forward to receiving it. Sergio left for a vacation in Spain, and when he came back I asked him if he'd gotten the package. He said he hadn't.

Our frequent emails suddenly stopped dead. This was before Facebook added a chat function, so I couldn't IM him and ask what was going on. However, I knew when Sergio was online because Facebook used to have a page that would show you who was online. He was constantly commenting on people's posts but he wasn't answering my emails. I kept emailing him over the course of January, 2008, to ask him if he'd received my package. No answer. None. Zero. I was angry and hurt. And no amount of talking myself down could convince me that everything was okay, not when my heart was racing like I was running a marathon. I couldn't repress this emotion at all. I couldn't deny the pain that I was in. I even asked one of my cousins, "Why does this bother me?" He said, "Because you worked hard to do something for another person and he doesn't seem to care." Well, yeah, no shit. And I realized that this was a valid emotion that I should be able to own. But for years I'd made excuses for other people, told myself I was overreacting, and told myself that I had overstepped my bounds (ie, it's MY fault).

Both of  my parents (but my mother in particular) conditioned me that way. At first glance it appears that I told myself, without any prodding, to squash my feelings of hurt in terms of Omri, Joe, Doug, and the others. But I also learned this elsewhere. Whenever friends at school shunned me, Mom would blame the fallout on me and also tell me, "Relationships change." If I was upset because Jonas wouldn't write back when I sent him an email when I needed to talk (always about something I wasn't comfortable telling my parents), Mom told me that I needed to understand that he was in college and that he had a girlfriend and... take your pick. Any excuse. I shouldn't be upset about these things. Ever. Oh, and because Jonas lived hundreds of miles away, I shouldn't be focusing on him. At all. I would think that all of these things would be completely irrelevant to whether or not somebody should want to talk to you. So in the case of Omri, I took that advice when I walked away and sat in the camp office and squished my feelings. Same when Joe suddenly decided to go to boring Gary, Indiana instead of to Chicago with me. I said to myself, "Well, I guess he has his reasons and I have to respect that." And actually, when Mom found out about Joe a year later, that's exactly what she said, that I should have respected his decision.

As for Doug, Mom told me that I was misinterpreting constructive criticism as nasty comments. When I knew he had lied to keep me out of the class, Mom told me that I was imagining things. When it was clear that Doug had been lying, Mom told me that I had obviously pushed him to the edge and instead of telling me point blank he didn't want me in the class he lied because he didn't want to hurt my feelings. No. I'm not stupid. He didn't give a damn about hurting my feelings. He lied to avoid the inevitable confrontation (and he did eventually let me in the class, after I called his bullshit and essentially twisted his arm). Mom also told me that I should have respected his decision to keep me out of the class. But sorry, when somebody is paying $30,000 a year to go to college, you do not lock them out of a class just because you don't like them. You bite the bullet and deal with it like an adult.

And in terms of Sergio? When weeks passed without a response about the package despite clear activity on Facebook-- and despite three weeks of gently prodding Sergio for an answer to what was a simple yes-or-no question-- I stepped out of work one day and called Dad in hysterical tears. I told him that I had a crush on Sergio and that I was embarrassed about it. Dad told me that I had nothing to be embarrassed about, that Sergio was probably just busy and that he would get back to me, that he probably just hadn't gotten the package yet. I confessed to Dad that I had done something stupid: The night before, I had reached my limit. I had felt like Sergio was fucking with me. I had sent Sergio a barrage of emails in the period of about an hour demanding why he wouldn't respond, why he was ignoring me. Then I sent him a video message via Facebook asking the same thing, and in that video I broke down crying. I then unfriended him, saying things like, "I can take a hint. You don't want to talk to me. I guess I fucked up again. The mature thing to do is unfriend you." When I woke up the next day, thinking to myself, "What the hell did I do?" I apologized and tried to refriend him. But it was too late. He ultimately blocked me and we haven't spoken since.

When I couldn't hold it in anymore and I told my mother a few days later about what had happened, she started screaming at me that I had smothered Sergio, that I couldn't differentiate between a casual acquaintance and a friend (months later I showed a therapist the emails from Sergio. She assured me that it was very clear that he had been my friend). She told me that my sending him the package was overfamiliar and inappropriate... oh wait, I should tell you what was in it. You'll never believe the stuff I sent him: A clay dog that I had made, a drawing, a DVD of camp videos, and... gasp... a T-shirt. Yes, a T-shirt. I really sent him a T-shirt. No, really, I did. And you know what it said? It said, "Brooklyn 718." No, really, it said that. I swear.

Yes, both of my parents and others told me that sending a damned T-shirt was too personal. You'd think that I had sent Sergio a jock strap by the way they reacted. Mom told me that I should have just thought, "Well, I guess it made him uncomfortable when he didn't acknowledge the package." So in other words, I guess I should have said, "Oh, fiddlesticks. I guess I fucked up. Next time I'll walk on even more eggshells and make sure I don't fuck up."

Mom also played the "relationships change" card (Relationships change in three months? Really?). In a pathetic attempt to tell me a "good lie", Mom even said that maybe Sergio cared about me so much that he was also trying to protect me from getting emotionally hurt in the long run by backing out when he did. I guess Mom forgot that this very transparent lie wouldn't work on a 27-year-old. That bad "good lie" (which perhaps she was telling herself as well as me) reminds me of this scene from a Simpsons episode:

Lisa: So there I am, being nice to Alex, and she takes all of my friends and ditches me!

Marge: I'm sure they didn't ditch you, honey. Maybe they went off to plan a surprise party for you.

That scene resonates with me in so many ways. I can't begin to tell you how many times Mom has said things remarkably similar to that.

My dad and my brother even commented on my weight (I was overweight at the time) and my tomboyish appearance, saying that Sergio wouldn't have reacted as he did had I looked-- and acted-- more feminine. My brother especially thought my appearance might have been what drove away Sergio. Never mind that he wasn't seeing how I looked each day in real time, just a few photos.

One woman played the Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus card, saying that I have to accept that men need more time to process things. Oh yeah, doesn't matter how the woman is feeling. She has to just suck it up and wait for the man to be ready to talk. It's always about women being nurturers and men just doing what they do. To this day I hate that book almost entirely because of that conversation. Another case where I couldn't just own my feelings. Everybody and their grandmother was coming up with some simplistic, stupid answer that I was just supposed to say, "Oh, okay" to.

The expression I kept hearing from everyone around me was, "Let it go." Let it go? Funny, when I was a kid and I would be perplexed about why girls would go ballistic if their crush didn't like them back, Mom would say, "Well you have to understand that this is a special feeling." But of course when I get the arrow in the butt it means I'm crazy and I just have to "let it go." Oh, hey, after all, I'm just obsessive, right? And obsessive feelings aren't real, are they?

One night the song "I am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel played relentlessly in my head. The lyrics took on an entirely new meaning for me. I ended up going to therapy, and it took me 1 1/2 years to get over Sergio.  The first shrink I went to was ridiculous. I told him about how Sergio and I had talked about meeting in New York the next time he came and that I had looked forward to riding the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island with him-- we both love roller coasters. And what did he say? He said, "Don't you have other friends you can do that with?"

There was a time when I would have tried to make myself look on the bright side, that yes I do have friends who would ride the Cyclone with me. In fact, one night in 1998 when Omri and I didn't get to hang out, I thought to myself, "Well I had a really interesting discussion tonight with this other person. That's positive." But I look back and see that then I was repressing my feelings. And when my shrink asked me if I had other friends I could ride roller coasters with, I told him exactly what I thought: "I want to ride the roller coaster with Sergio." I was finally owning my feelings. I wanted to ride the goddamned Cyclone with Sergio, and I wasn't going to pretend I felt differently. Needless to say, I found a new shrink.

One thing that Mom said when this nonsense with Sergio happened was, "Why do you always fall for guys who are out of your reach?" My answer is this: It's an unfortunate coincidence (except for the one guy who I was briefly in a semi-relationship with), but she seemed to think I was doing it on purpose. She even asked me if I had ever had a crush on my best friend, Eric (not his real name). I supposed she was desperate that I have feelings for someone who lived nearby. No, I don't have a crush on Eric. I never have. It would be like having a crush on a first-degree relative. And jeez, I would think that Mom (and anybody else) would know that you can't control who you fall for.

Sergio eventually unblocked me and accepted my subsequent friend request. But he still didn't answer my emails. And when summer came and he posted a profile picture of himself standing on the train platform of what was clearly Newark Airport Station on New Jersey Transit, I was crushed. He had come to New York and hadn't bothered to contact me. I was supposed to squish those feelings. And a few months later Sergio unfriended me again. When I tried to refriend him, he blocked me again. Mercifully, I haven't had any crushes in seven years, since Sergio.

Was I stupid in terms of the way I panicked and sent Sergio the barrage of emails and that video in which I broke down crying? Yes. But he also drove me to it.  And what also drove me to it was the years of accumulated bad experiences in which I couldn't own my emotions, in which every thought I had had to be repressed to keep not just me sane, but also my parents. But it didn't keep me sane. It only delayed the inevitable. I cried a lot growing up and both of my parents often chalked up my frustrated tears to overreacting and immaturity. But the repression didn't work and it sure as hell didn't make me sane. My racing heart kept telling me what I knew logically, that something was wrong and that I was hurting. Sometimes we have to cry, and sometimes we have to cry hysterically. Sometimes we have to scream and shout explitives. Sometimes we have to punch a pillow or break an expensive vase. We have to own our feelings, even if other people don't understand them. And as for the rest of you, you have to let us own these feelings. You have to accept that we have them even if they make you uncomfortable. Even if you don't know what to say, don't just tell the person to let it go. Or, if you think they should let it go, give them advice as to how instead of hoping the three magic words will make a difference.

And for crying out loud, what is so difficult about saying the following?: "You know what, I confess that I don't understand how this is making you feel, but I imagine it must be frustrating and painful." That helps a lot more than you would think.

Finally, I want to end this post with a metaphor. As I mentioned earlier, people held me to different standards in terms of how they felt I should handle crushes. The metaphor is this: Sometimes people get very hungry, and there is a giant bacon cheeseburger nearby. Most people take it for granted that they can eat the bacon cheeseburger, or at least get a whiff of it. As for me? I was expected to be on a perpetual religious fast.