For a big chunk of my life, I was the guy you wanted at your party.
Stories ready. Jokes landing. Energy up. If a conversation was dying, I'd revive it. If someone was awkward, I'd rescue them. CEO of a web agency, later running a dive operation in Indonesia, always out front. People told me I was a natural.
Then I'd get home, close the door, and feel like I'd just taken off a costume that weighed forty pounds.
I was only diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at 50, at 50. Since then I've been going back through all those parties asking the same question. Was any of that me?
Here's where I've landed. Being the life of the party can be a form of masking. Not always. Some people are just like that, and love it, and go home buzzing. But for some of us, especially autistic people diagnosed late, the big social personality is a strategy. It keeps the conversation in our hands and the scary parts out of sight, and it costs a lot more than anyone sees.
What masking actually is
The National Autistic Society describes masking, also called camouflaging, as a strategy some autistic people use, consciously or unconsciously, to appear non-autistic. It's how you blend in and get accepted.
When people picture masking they often think of the quiet person forcing eye contact and copying small talk. That's part of it. But there's a louder version nobody talks about much. Being so social, so funny, so on, that nobody would ever think to look underneath.
That was mine. If I'm the one telling the story, I'm not the one being asked questions. If I'm making everyone laugh, nobody notices I don't know what to do with my hands. Humour as a steering wheel.
How to tell enjoyment from performance
I don't think it's either-or. I genuinely love making a room laugh. That part was real and still is. But some of what I did was performance, and these are the signs I've learned to spot in myself:
I'd prepared. Stories and lines ready before I walked in. Running little scripts in the car.
I was watching myself the whole time. Part of my brain was the audience, scoring how I was doing.
I felt like someone else afterward. Not just tired. Like I had to come back into my own body.
The recovery was out of proportion. A four-hour party, two days of not wanting to speak. (More on that in why a good night out wipes me out.)
Nobody in the room actually knew me. Big crowd, and my real people far away. That's its own post.
If you recognize three or four of those, it's worth wondering. Not panicking. Wondering.
What it cost
The NAS lists what masking can lead to, and reading it was uncomfortable. Mental and physical exhaustion, which can lead to autistic burnout. A loss of your sense of self, especially for people diagnosed later in life who aren't sure who's under the mask anymore. Feeling isolated and disconnected from people. They also link it to mental health difficulties, including higher suicidality. That's not a small thing, and I don't say it lightly with my history.
For me, the cost showed up in a few ways. I'd crash after big pushes. I'd lose track of what I actually liked versus what got a laugh. And when things got really bad with my mental health, people were surprised. "You? You're always so up." That surprise told me how well the mask worked, and how alone I'd been behind it.
The breakdown during the COVID years, the one that led to my diagnosis, came after decades of this. I don't think masking was the only cause. But I don't think it helped. I write about that in how masking broke me.
So should you stop being the funny one?
No. I'm not going to tell anyone to stop being funny. I'm not going to stop either.
What I'm trying is smaller than that. Noticing when I'm performing versus when I'm enjoying it. Letting a silence sit sometimes instead of rescuing it. Saying "I'm wiped" instead of turning it into a bit. Leaving earlier. Telling one or two people what's actually going on with me, so there's somebody who's seen behind the curtain.
And forgiving myself for the decades of doing it. The mask was how I got through. It made sense for a guy who didn't know why he felt different. I just don't need it everywhere anymore. There's more on that in taking off a 50-year mask.
If any of this sounds like you and you've never been assessed, it might be worth looking into. For me the diagnosis explained a lot of exhaustion I'd always blamed on myself.