Over the years, I have masked things that I feared being in trouble for out of fear of being judged for doing things that I knew were wrong. Sometimes we as autistic people know how bad things can be for us that we don’t want to experience the consequences or issues that we need to face out of fear of being judged.

I hid some of the biggest demons of my past in the last several years and to some point I had to learn that eventually keeping them to myself not only hurt myself but also several others in the process. Sometimes they were things that should have been brought to my attention sooner rather than later, but sometimes they were not my own fault and as such I did not want to experience the consequences that I would have to receive.

Thankfully, we are past some of those demons and as such I feel better that I am in a land of honesty. Some people choose words of the year, at first I didn’t want to do that, but eventually I set on the word honesty because I was willing to see that if I am honest things go well.

There is a quality in autistic people that we are straightforward and honest with things, but sometimes we hide things that we know that are going to be hard for us as autistic people to digest because it can be challenging for us to go through repairing the damage that we may have to repair, especially when it is challenging for our daily lives, uproots our routine and so many other factors.

But eventually as I do realize within time, things spiral to a point that they get too big to handle and we are pressured to tell someone and as hard as it can be to come clean about the things that are hurtful to us, it is often the best thing to do. What really matters is that we have a good support system in the process of what we as autistic individuals are going through because it is going to be challenging for us. We cannot see that at first because we often think that if we hide what we are doing we aren’t hurting anyone, but eventually it comes to hit reality, and we cannot tell what reality is and what is not.

Life does have its challenges, and it may not seem as life is always fair to us, but we have to be respectful and responsible to what we need to do even if it may not seem if it is what we want to do because in the end, it will hurt others and then it becomes too late for things to be repaired or fixed. Sometimes it is best to address things as they are. It can be hard. But one thing about autistic people is that we are strong when we need to be more than we allow ourselves to believe sometimes. If we use that power to the best of our abilities to advocate in the way that we need to be respectful when we have concerns or needs that need attending to, then things will get better in time, we just need to be patient and understanding in the processes that we have to go through, even though they may seem unfair, they are in the end the right thing to do.