Content note: This piece touches on my experience of late autism diagnosis, executive dysfunction, and mental health struggles, including masking, burnout, and internalised shame. Just a heads-up before you dive in.
I am trying to be humourous, self-deprecating and fully aware of my privilege, but also honest about the difficult bits.
On Paper, I’m Fine
On paper, I’m thriving. The kind of thriving that would make LinkedIn weep with pride. Good job? Check. Good salary? Check. Can afford a cleaner, laundry service, and probably a small private militia if I wanted one? Check. Use any of them? Absolutely not. Because that would require initiative, and at this stage in my life, putting socks in a laundry bag feels like climbing Everest in Crocs. And I hate Crocs.
I’ve got just about enough money to outsource my problems, but not enough executive function to click “book now.” I can barely let a cleaner in because a) I don’t want to scare them, and b) I’m not emotionally prepared to explain why there are three mugs in my bed and a pizza box in the shower. Or why I am in pajama bottoms beneath a smart top.
My house is a mess and so am I. A living exhibition of “late-stage capitalism meets untreated neurodivergence.” Every day I slap on my work-face, open my laptop, and enter the Teams Matrix where I am a Functional Adult™. Then I log off, and the performance ends, backstage is just me, the clutter, and the existential dread on repeat.
That gap, between how I seem and how I actually live, isn’t just big. It’s a chasm. And I’ve lived most of my life here
The Mask
I was always an outsider.
Then I industrialised it. In high school, I shaved my head, wore combat boots in summer, and decided “social exile but make it fashion” was my personality. At least that way I could control the rejection schedule.
At work, I’ve simply refined the strategy: Professional, competent, and colder than a Puffin’s feet. Not because I want to be, but because it’s the only setting that doesn’t cause the tumbleweed to roll through after another badly judged social nicety.
I’ve been told, “No one really likes you, but everyone respects you.” It was meant as a compliment. I think.
There are entire categories of human interaction my brain just skids off. Interpersonal nuance, emotional charades, social 4D Tetris; I can play the part if I concentrate, but don’t ask me to explain it. I’m fluent in logic, not emotion. I feel, of course I do. Sometimes so much it leaks out sideways as anxiety or crying over a YouTube video of a kitten. But explaining what I’m feeling? That’s like trying to describe Electronic Dance Music using IKEA instructions. Without the allen key.
If I hear “thank you for your candour” one more time when I wasn’t being candid, I will roll my eyes so hard they won’t make it back.
And yet I’m hypersensitive to atmosphere shifts. I can’t always name the mood, but I can feel it in the walls. That’s what growing up in an emotionally unpredictable home teaches you: How to detect emotional landmines a literal nanosecond after you stepped on one. I still carry that radar with me. It makes me flinch. And panic.
And then there is the ‘All or Nothing’ lifestyle. There’s no middle setting. Either I cook like I’m auditioning for a Michelin star, or I eat cereal out of the box (if I remembered to buy it). This is how I ended up ordering four chopping boards (it was a set, I have some dignity), because I couldn’t face washing the two I already had.
Executive dysfunction, but make it Amazon Prime.
The Diagnosis (Lightbulb)
I went to therapy for what I thought was “just” burnout. Five questions in, the therapist paused and said, “You might want to do this test.” It was the RAADS-R autism screener1.
I aced it. Like, valedictorian of the spectrum. Then they handed me… absolutely nothing. No guidance. No welcome pack. Not even a sticker album. Turns out autism is a specialist subject.
So I read. A lot. And every page felt like someone had been secretly documenting my life. I’m not lazy or broken. I’m autistic.
For a moment, it felt like liberation. A 360 in perspective. Then came the second wave: grief and anger.
Could it have been noticed when I was a frightened child, desperately trying to decode social norms like they were written in cuneiform? Possibly. But instead, I got a subscription to Internal Shame Weekly (to sit on my coffee table alongside my ‘Pylon of the Month’ Special Interest subscription). And an unpaid lifetime internship in Becoming Palatable to People Who Will Still Not Like You.
All of that said, despite the grief, the masking, the burnout, I’m proud to be autistic. It’s not just something I accept. I embrace it. I love how my brain works. I love the strange leaps of logic, the pattern-finding, the laser focus, the oddball beauty of it all. I don’t always understand the world, and it definitely doesn’t understand me, but I wouldn’t trade my mind for anything. Not even one that could make me do my laundry on time.
Privilege and Survival
I travel a lot. It’s one of the few ways I escape myself. I work during the day, then explore in the evenings and weekends, camera in hand. The camera helps. Looking through a viewfinder makes the world softer, more cohesive, less aggressive. It filters the overwhelm. The chaos becomes focus.
Yes, this is only possible because of privilege. I can afford three pairs of noise-cancelling headphones (one for backup, one for emergencies, and one because I forgot where the first two are). I take taxis instead of public transport. I bring my moka pot and favourite mug because the wrong mug can derail an entire morning, and bad coffee is a red line. I’ve bought crockery and cutlery abroad because the Airbnb forks were emotionally bereft, and the bowls the wrong shape. I stand by this.
A suitcase of clean clothes, a tidy apartment, my familiar work setup, it takes me away from the shame and clutter of home.
So when people say “You don’t seem autistic,” what they mean is: “You’re just well-resourced.” I’ve built a life padded with buffers. That doesn’t mean the fall isn’t happening. It just means I bounce a little.
The Viewfinder
Photography is one of the few ways I can truly connect with the world, through a buffer.
Behind the lens, I can experience beauty, vast landscapes, subtle textures, the slant of light at dusk, without flinching. In those moments, sometimes I feel such overwhelming joy, such connection, it hurts. The camera helps me see it without falling apart.
And when the world does hurt—visually, sonically, socially, the camera becomes a filter. A survival tool. I find one small detail, anchor to it, photograph it. It’s not a fix, but it’s a foothold.
But I don’t take good photographs when I’m overloaded. In cities, where the noise and motion overwhelm my thoughts, the camera becomes a weight. My photos look like confusion.
A case in point. Beautiful part of Singapore, really unique shop houses and temples. Overload. Bad photographs.
Humorous Aside: Things I Own that I probably Shouldn’t
- Three uncharged electric toothbrushes. The bathroom socket is broken. The next nearest one is ten metres away. Ten.
- A library of self-help books. How to make friends, How to master small talk, How to get up at 5AM and change your life. All read at 4AM while eating toast over the (full) sink. My Kindle is where good intentions and self-esteem go to die.
- Towels and sheets with textures I can’t stand. Bought online because shops are an assault. Not returned because, energy.
- Eight identical mugs. All dirty. All waiting to be washed.
- Five sets of drinking glasses. I have two lips.
- Duplicate outfits bought because the laundry wasn’t done and self-help said “treat yourself.”
- Unopened planners. Several. Each one a hopeful reboot that crashed in less than a week.
- Lifetime subscriptions to productivity apps I forgot existed. Occasionally they email me things like “This is what you wrote in January 2020…”
- Three pairs of the same shoes. Because when you find one non-torture pair, you buy them like a doomsday prepper.
- A frankly troubling number of cosmetics that smell weird and make me look like a stranger.
These aren’t retail therapy. They’re coping strategies. Little promises to myself: maybe this will help. Most of them didn’t. A few did. But at least now, with a diagnosis, I can laugh about it. Or cry. Or buy another chopping board. Or four.
Why I’m Writing This Now
I was diagnosed in March. It’s now July. I’ve been telling myself I have no right to speak. I’m professionally competent. Employed. I can afford nice headphones. I don’t look like I’m struggling.
But I am. Just behind a very convincing screen.
So maybe someone else is sitting in a chair at 3AM, surrounded by laundry and silence (or worse: not silence, just that voice). Maybe they need to hear: It’s not laziness. It’s not a moral failure. It’s not a character flaw.
And maybe everyone else is also faking it. Just slightly better resourced. So please, be kind to yourself.
There Is No Neat Ending
I’m not alright.
The diagnosis felt like a life raft. And for a moment, it was. It helped ease the shame. It let me stop hating myself quite so much for being unable to function like “other people.”
But it didn’t rescue me.
I’m still drowning, just more precisely. Like someone gave me the name of the ocean, but I’m still face-down in the surf. With sand where it shouldn’t be.
The self-loathing is quieter now. But what’s replaced it is confusion. I don’t know who I am under the mask. I don’t know what I’m capable of. I don’t know how much of my life has been choice, and how much has been survival mode.
I have no map. Just the awareness that I’ve spent years becoming someone who could pass for “normal,” and now I don’t know how to unbecome that person. Or if I even can. Or should.
So what happens next?
I don’t know.
There’s no miracle routine. No inspirational manifesto. No “five easy ways to do your f**king laundry before you run out of underwear again.”
Just this:
I’m still here.
I’m trying.
I’m sharing.
And maybe that’s a step toward something real.
Note 1: Embrace Autism is a great resource for tests and information. The tests can give reasonably reflective results if you do them alone, but it does help to do them with someone (usually a professional), that understands what the test is getting at.
Contact me: If something here has resonated and you’d like to share your thoughts or your experience. Or if you just want to know you are not alone. Any reason or no reason. It’s all good.