Trying to make friends while being neurodivergent is honestly extremely hard. Especially while having anxiety, it’s a mix of things that causes the task of making friends difficult to carry out. But when you get past that stage of making friends, what happens after that? What am I supposed to do from here? How am I supposed to act? This is where masking (unfortunately) comes in, playing the main role, and makes this process of making and keeping friends much harder.
Masking, for neurodivergent people, is forcing onto yourself and/or learning “normal” behaviors in order to avoid societal pressures/mistreatment (and other things, such as making friends or wanting to fit in). Masking is different for everyone, but personally, it is very difficult for me to do. Even though I can, and will want to mask- it takes up a lot of my energy and leaves me terribly exhausted at the end of the day. When it comes to friendships, masking becomes even harder. Everything I mask in public now has to be masked x2 when I am with people and friends. I have to pretend to be okay with large crowds, pretend to be okay with loud sounds, fake certain emotions (and suppress real ones), and so much more. The only way to avoid this masking is to just stay home, but then it makes people feel as though I am avoiding them or not wanting to hang out.
Masking feels like the only way to fit in, even when I have neurodivergent friends. I feel so exhausted after every interaction, but if I don’t mask, I’m afraid that people will stop wanting to be friends with me, since I went into the friendship masking. Will they think I’m too different now, or that I’ve changed? But then, masking makes the friendship feel insincere. I feel too afraid to really be myself that some friends will never know what I am truly like. It feels like putting on a whole fake personality, being a whole different person just to fit in, but I can’t stop masking. I feel a disconnection with everyone I mask in front of. I can’t help but feel stuck in between. Do I mask, and make friendships that don’t feel genuine? Or do I act how I normally do, and have a much harder time making friends? Both sides feel like fighting a losing battle, making me frustrated with my neurodivergence, and generally discouraged and unwilling to make friends at all.
I honestly wish I didn’t have to or feel like I had to mask at all. I’m sure it is a difficult task for other neurodivergent people as well, and it feels like the final boss of emotional labor. I can’t help but feel that something is wrong with me, when all I want is to fit in, but I struggle to.
Unruly Bodies 
Hey! I feel like I struggle with the same like, concept of worrying that people will leave when you stop pretending. I think that’s the case with a majority of people (expressing yourself genuinely will scare them) but once you find people who are willing to stay with you when you let the mask down, it makes the struggle worth it. At least that’s the way I try to look at it.
I’ve never been particularly good at masking — I have always been wildly talkative, oblivious to certain social cues, and unable to keep myself from interrupting people. Growing up, many of my peers found me annoying and rude, and they made sure I knew it. It was awful for a long time, but then I noticed some people really didn’t mind the parts of me that wished I could hide. Some people loved that I could carry a conversation forever and ever — sometimes because they had trouble keeping conversations going by themselves, and sometimes because they could relate to me. Some people didn’t care if I was oblivious, because they would just tell me what I wasn’t picking up on. Eventually, I started to accumulate a small group of wonderful friends who loved me without the mask on, in large part because our relationships could be authentic. Since my mask was always off first, they felt comfortable taking theirs off, too. It’s scary to wear your vulnerabilities on your sleeve, but the relationships that come from that foundation of shared vulnerability can be incredibly rewarding.