My analogy that I like to use for this is being able to fit in a box that society has produced for you. Most people can fit in the box and I spent years attempting to fit myself into it. I contorted myself into painful shapes in a desperate attempt to please the world and even when I thought I was doing it right, it was never enough. Properly acknowledging that I will never fit in that box was immensely liberating in the long run.

Sometimes I see people who can fit in the box, but not comfortably, and I experience a mix of pity, and relief. I reflect on how grim my life would've been if I had been successful in carving myself into a shape that would fit what had been demanded of me — just because someone can fit in doesn't mean that that's good for them. Certainly, it denies one the ability to grow if you've already had to cut off parts of yourself to be palatable to the world.

In this light, I feel an odd sense of privilege for having found myself in the people who can't blend in, despite trying. "Privilege" is definitely the wrong word for this, but I struggle to articulate it otherwise. I think mostly, I'm just glad to finally be free of wasting what little energy I have trying. Even if it changes little in how the world regards me, I'm just glad to no longer think of myself as a broken neurotypical. I don't know what it means to be a functioning neurodivergent person, but I'm sort of excited to be a part of building that, alongside people like you and many others on this thread and this site.

I completely agree with that perspective.

Personally I would add to this that for individuals who are unable to mask, and who's struggle to mask is so to speak, "visible" to others, while they are still subjected to all of the ableiem that comes with being neurodivergent, it's almost like their inability to mask becomes a punchline for neurotypicals. I think some NTs use the joke as a way of trying to relieve the pressure to mask thinking they're being accommodating, while still addressing the disabled elephant in the room. The end result is that the person's lack of masking capacity is mistakenly correlated to their entire set of abilities - people assume they're incapable of everything. It's pretty dehumanising and infantalizing, and puts so many limitations on the opportunities available for folk who can't mask.

And on the other side of that coin, people who have the ability to mask really well are expected to do it flawlessly 24/7, and failing to do so isn't a sign that having ADHD can be disabling, no, for people who can mask, not masking 24/7 is apparently a moral failing. Which is not the kind of social expectation you want on someone who's condition predisposes them to anxiety inducing perfectionism, and leads to this expectation also being internalised.

Which occurs for both types of people - internalising the expectations. if society treats you as useless, you start to feel useless, until you fall into a pit. if society expects you to always be performing at 110%, you begin to feel like a failure if you output anything less than 109% until you burn out and fall in the same pit.

(because I don't think neurotypical people realise that masking is operating at >100%, it's an additional request on our mind and body, it's an additional labour, it's not sustainable long term. There really is the misconception that we can choose to turn it on and off at no personal cost to us.)