A Mask They Put On: Guilty as Charged
Four of five in a series for the undiagnosed neurodivergent child who survived
You’ve just discovered you’re autistic—or finally received a diagnosis after years of wondering. Maybe ADHD is part of your story too. And now you’re looking back on your life with fresh eyes, asking: What happened to me? What could have been different if someone had known?
This five-part series, A Mask They Put On, explores the lived experience of growing up with generational trauma as an undiagnosed autistic child with ADHD. It’s a story of survival, of misinterpretation, and of reclaiming self-understanding and compassion.
I’m a late-diagnosed autistic adult myself. I write this series for people like me, newly diagnosed autistic adults, who are piecing together a lifetime of being “othered,” masked, and misunderstood.
Over five posts, I’ll tell stories of my childhood—not as pathologies, but as evidence of the brilliance, resilience, and sensitivity that went unseen. I’ll view my younger selves not as broken or problematic, but as heroes who adapted in a world that didn’t make space for us.
To read the first post in this series, click the button below.
[A Mask They Put On: Guilty as Charged]
To say that my childhood binge eating disorder and the concurrent formation of the Politburo resulted in traumatic outcomes would be an understatement. Committee members shared notes regarding the consequences of my disordered eating. They branded me the “bad kid”—the one who lied, stole, had no self-control, and couldn’t be trusted. At ten years old, I had eight adults who highlighted my negative behavior, criticized me for it, and neglected to find the actual cause.
My behavior drew the committee’s full attention less than twelve months later. A series of events, each related to disordered eating and neurodiversity, led to a removal from my home and a placement with my uncle/science teacher and his family. I was “charged” with federal mail tampering and attempted arson, “requiring” an intervention by the town’s Police Chief. The sentence was exile and public community service. I had to tell my teachers why my living situation changed.
Once a week, I went to the Police Chief’s office after school, and the Police Chief handed me a large, black trash bag. I performed “community service” by walking around the village, collecting street trash until the bag was full. Autumn brought the realization that I could achieve this task more efficiently by walking around the old cemetery for an hour. I “reached” my goal by stuffing the bag with leaves and finding enough trash to cover the top. I spent that hour in the late afternoon, autumn sunshine, smelling the musty air, reading/re-reading tombstones, and imagining what each person’s life was like in the village during their time. If that wasn’t entertaining, I found a spot in the back of the cemetery and daydreamed about whatever creative project was taking space in my brain. When I dropped off the bag, the Chief didn’t check. He didn’t care. His participation in the community “tough love” campaign had limits that were already reached.
To check out a list of my series with descriptions and links, click below.
My exile lasted a few weeks, ending after a surprise kitchen-table intervention. One Sunday after Mass (my uncle/teacher’s family is Catholic), we turned into the driveway of my house instead of driving out of town to their house. The sight of my aunts’ and uncles’ cars in the driveway tipped me off to something unusual. They led me to the kitchen table, where I faced all eight members of the Politburo. They demanded that I take responsibility for my behavior and stop pissing everyone off. My father was ailing, stress was high, and I was exacerbating the situation. I had to agree to behave. The responsibility fell to me.
I moved back home after that. My situation’s details, known throughout the house, including to daycare children and families, humbled me. It took a few days to regain a sense of comfort. The shame of the situation, combined with the increasing needs of my father and my grandmother’s medical care, forced me to “behave” as much as possible. My grandmother lived in an apartment next door and would soon move in with us. I developed valuable skills related to their care that kept me busy and worked to improve my reputation.
I still found opportunities to binge eat in hiding when I could. I had to be more discreet than I had been before my exile. To be safe, I realized I needed to modify my behavior. Through pattern recognition, I developed a conscious understanding of what behaviors had safe/positive outcomes and those that had unsafe/negative outcomes. I had work to do.
My first task was to be humble and earn respect and acceptance. I revealed my past wrongdoings often and presented myself as a reformed delinquent. Next, I focused on responsibility. I, alone, was responsible for evading poor outcomes and accepted blame if something went wrong. Finally, I internalized what many adults were telling me, that everyone has a hard life and mine was no exception. I shut parts of myself down and developed parts of myself that I needed to survive. I began masking.
Back to the dynamic in the fall of my first year of high school. My father had been dead for several months, and I was an orphan with seven adults in charge of my care. I was struggling and being disruptive at school. To address this, I carried a card where my teachers rated and commented on my daily behavior and handed it to my guidance counselor for a weekly review. My guidance counselor filed the cards in my records, whatever that meant.
November and December brought the first holidays in my new family dynamic. Luckily, my father planned for this. We spent sporadic holidays with my aunt and her family as my father’s illness progressed in order to transition easier. I spent Thanksgiving and Christmas in Rochester, taking the bus back and forth. We went to the movies on Christmas Eve. That was something fun and new. I was back home a couple days later. New Years Eve was never memorable in my house. We typically attempted to stay up late enough to see the ball drop on TV and ate snacks. No other traditions existed for me to expect or miss.
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The 1990s were imminent. I felt the passage of time more attentively during that holiday season than I had before. Nancy got a call in late December from a woman in town who had a New Year’s job offer for me. She wanted to go out with her husband and needed someone to stay with her dying mother. I don’t know if her first, second, or even third option fell through, but somehow, she targeted me as the person for the job. Maybe the competencies I developed as a hospice-support kid were more widely shared than I realized. Nancy, always virtue-signaling about earning money, noted I had nothing better to do and needed spending money. She was right on both counts. With reluctance, I accepted the gig. I didn’t realize the mistake I made until later.
I remember walking to the woman’s house to elder-sit her mother on New Year’s Eve. A dry cold gripped every surface, blanketed in fresh snow. The snow squealed when you stepped on it. I remember looking at the clock tower of the Methodist Church in the center of the village as I crossed Main Street. Once the big hand passed twelve, it will be a new decade. Everything would be the same, but also different. Passing time was taking up a lot of my headspace.
Her house was halfway down First Street on the way to the school campus. I walked past her house twice every school day. She ran a business out of part of her home, selling artificial/dried flowers and other gift items. The route into the sales floor—through the back, up a trinket-strewn staircase, and into the kitchen—cast doubt on its legitimacy. It didn’t help that her display style involved products strewn over her kitchen table, dining table, bed, and just about every other flat surface. Her house looked like a Hobby Lobby exploded. The Police Chief lived just a couple doors down from her. If it was a clandestine shop, he was in on it. My father occasionally stopped there on his way home from work to buy my mother a gift. He was one of her regular customers, which is how she knew me.
I arrived, got my instructions, and was directed to sit on the sofa in the living room, closed off from her showrooms with double pocket doors, to watch TV. We passed through the retail areas of her home to get there. As she led the way, I kept my gaze on her eyes and hands. I did not want to look like I was examining her inventory. My goal was to adhere to her instructions. I watched TV, aware that candy was amongst the products on the other side of the doors behind me. All afternoon and evening before my shift, I reminded myself of the importance of self-control. I was a bad kid in recovery.
I performed well for a short while until I had to use the bathroom. On my way back to the sofa, I found myself drawn to the retail section of the home. My eyes locked onto the candy, and almost instantly, I started calculating how many pieces I could take without being obvious. I thought I was being careful when I took my first piece, attempting to conceal that I was ever there. After the first selection, I couldn’t stop. Before you know it, I checked her entire inventory and sampled every food item she had. Guilt and shame followed, as it always did. I hid the wrappers in my coat pockets, took my payment when they returned, and walked home. I passed the clock tower and noted that the new decade had begun. Things were the same and different.
My disordered eating spiraled into the new year, reaching unprecedented levels. Despite weight gain and a growing number of bright pink stretch marks on my skin, nothing deterred me— my appetite was unsatiated. I was in a crisis. Overuse and anxiety wrecked my stomach. I developed abdominal discomfort. By then, I had years of experience with head and body pain. It was normal. As Bessel van der Kolk’s book says, “The Body Keeps the Score.” My reaction was to keep the abdominal pain to myself and hope it disappeared on its own.
School and home life remained difficult. I experimented with different personas to minimize disruption in various situations, to no avail. Feedback was telling me that I was failing to achieve the desired outcomes as quickly as required. On top of it all, I was still in a hard state of transition. The holidays were a reminder of that. I kept trying to make it all make sense. What came next wasn’t clarity—it was something far more unexpected.
If you were an undiagnosed neurodivergent kid, did you have to hide something about yourself from others? What happened when you weren’t successful? Have things changed now that you’re an adult?
To read the final post in the series, click the button below.