Halloween used to be my favourite ‘holiday’. I understood it to be secular, so everyone could participate. A day where you could act silly, be weird, do unexpected and sometimes surprising things and it was all ‘ok’. Allowed. Accepted. Expected even. What a relief that was!

It was a relief, because on a day where so many people would be putting on a mask, I was taking mine off. I’m autistic, but for most of my life I “masked”, hiding myself behind socially acceptable appearances and behaviours, and it takes tremendous energy and effort to pull that off in a world unaccustomed to allowing neurodiverse people to be themselves.

Halloween now unsettles me. As I become more empowered to accept my differences as just that, differences, and not deficiencies or a disease, I get sad when I think that I only had one day a year where I could be tolerated being myself.

Over a decade ago I read a piece on how Halloween is an ‘inversion ritual’ allowing a sort of ‘social-pressure release valve’. To quote:

“During rituals of inversion, people can violate otherwise solid social codes. Less powerful people can break the rules, reverse the order of expected actions, flaunt otherwise unacceptable ways of dress or behavior or reverse the usual roles of parent-child, boss-worker, male-female.”

This had helped me think about why Halloween was such a strong day for me and gave me new insight. But to think that violating social codes is such an offense. To think that my behaviour, if I was myself in public, is acknowledged to be unacceptable no longer sits well with me.

I took a seminar this past summer where the message was stressed that everybody has the “right to be who they are, wherever they are” and I like that message. I repeated that message to myself a couple of weeks ago when I “stimmed” in public for the first time since I was a child.

In a crowded, noisy, bright, unaccommodating government office waiting to renew my identification documents, I had brought a novel along with me to distract myself. That novel happened to be “A Kind of Spark” by Elle McNicoll, a novel targeted to “middle schoolers” (so an unusual read being a middle ager myself) written by an actually autistic author featuring strong autistic characters making an appeal to be accepted in their small Scottish town, and as they say: “representation matters”. Having tears well up in my eyes from feeling the representation in the story, I put the book away. I couldn’t be seen to cry in public. I couldn’t be me when surrounded by others… but… but… I then took off my ‘mask’. I had gained the confidence to flap a little, and rock a little, and just allow my body to do what it needed to do (I did hold back from moaning to be honest) in order to reduce the stress I was experiencing from being in that harsh, unusual, space. Was I thinking about what others might think of me? Of course! That had been my default thinking for decades. In that moment I felt enabled enough to put those worries aside, and allow myself to be who I am, where I was, and not prioritize the comfort of everyone around me over my own comfort. I had to trust that either they’d ignore me, I wouldn’t be too obvious to raise alarm, or most hard for me to fathom: that they would accept me for me and allow me to be.

You’ll find plenty of posts online about how you can make Halloween a more accepting space for autistic children, how to help with their sensory processing issues etc on this non routine day, but I’ll posit that what we can all use on this day of inversion is instead more tolerance and acceptance every day of the year, so we don’t feel like we have to wear a mask, making ourselves perpetually uncomfortable, just so the neurotypical dominant culture doesn’t get “spooked” when we reveal ourselves to be in your midst year round.

If this sharing helps you, and you aren’t sure how to help yourself, I recommend you track down a neurodiversity affirming therapist to help you continue on your journey of self acceptance.

Happy Halloween.