A hundred moments in autism - Terrence Oblong gets mistaken for the Messiah

In my first week at university I am standing in a bar at a student night when two young men I’ve never met before walk up to me, prostrate themselves at my feet and start adoring me as “the Messiah”.

This is how I met mad Chris and mad John from the Magic Roundabout Appreciation Society, and the girl they were with, Karen. Mad Chris and Mad John were at the same halls of residence as me and had been in the same social situations as me over the first three days of term (a trip to the local pub, a coach trip to the nearby mumbles, etc) and were jealous and amazed at how popular I was with the other students.

Weird, you might think. I am, definitively, a shy, awkward autist, not renowned for making friends easily, let alone being so good at it, and suddenly I was so popular I was mistaken for the messiah. But let me explain.

After a lifetime as an undiagnosed autistic, I had grown up thinking that I was weird, finding it difficult to be popular and make friends. I lived in a small town and everybody knew me, there was no opportunity for me to reinvent myself. Having gained a place at university I made careful preparation to make a good first impression. Over the pre-university summer I read a number of self-help psychology books, learning about the importance of making eye contact, making small talk etc. Without knowing it, I was giving myself a master class in masking.

And it worked. In my first few days at my halls of residence I worked hard to make eye contact, smile in the right places, say the right things. I was full on. I made notes of people’s names and key facts I’d learnt about them, which I memorised for future conversational use. I made friends with the American students down the passage from me, and started running with them every day after class (this required no faking, I love running). I made more friends down the pub that first night. I was a focused, full-on, friend-maker. An autist with a project.

 So much so, that Mad Chris and Mad John were envious at my popularity.  Everyone likes this bloke, they said the themselves, he must be the messiah.  And so I became friends with Mad Chris and Mad John.  As for Karen, she became the first Mrs Oblong. It’s quite handy in romantic terms if a woman’s first sight of you is their friends worshipping you as the Messiah. It took a few years for me to blow that introduction.

So, you might ask, if this high level of masking made me so popular, why did I stop?

Because masking is exhausting and dispiriting.

 It would be like an actor assuming the persona of their character for the whole of the rest of their life. I know that some obsessive actors might adapt that character for six months while they are filming a movie, but six months is no time at all. That’s barely half a year.

Autistic burnout is not like simply being tired at the end of a long day. As an autist called Bascom explains in a recent book on autism “you are literally unable to move because you have spent your entire energy reserves trying to interact with people all day”.

After my first two weeks at university I had established a firm group of close friends.  Friends who seemed to like me even without my masking. Friends I would (in many cases) be close to even to this day (including the current Mrs Oblong). My work was done, I no longer needed to pretend. I could be myself again.

I allowed the mask to slip.