Autism, Perfectionism, and My Totally Flawless Strategy for Hiding

Being autistic and a perfectionist is basically like living life on “hard mode” while pretending you’re breezing through the tutorial.

My thought process has always been something like this: If I make zero mistakes, never miss a deadline, and work so hard that my eyeballs threaten to unionize, then maybe—just maybe—nobody will notice how weird I am. It’s a genius camouflage plan. Like a chameleon, but instead of changing colours, I’m just silently sweating and triple-checking my emails for typos.

Case in point: I once went two years without taking a single sick day. Two years! Was I healthy? Absolutely not. I was dragging myself into work with the resilience of a malfunctioning Roomba—bumping into walls, low battery, covered in metaphorical dust—but hey, at least I showed up! Because in my head, showing up meant I was likeable. Reliable. Worth keeping around. Never mind that my body was quietly filing HR complaints against me.

Perfectionism, for me, is less about wanting gold stars and more about staying invisible. If I’m flawless, then I don’t draw attention. Nobody asks me uncomfortable questions I can’t answer. Nobody notices the things that make me different. Perfection is my invisibility cloak. 

The irony? I conform way more than I’d prefer. People-pleasing becomes this pre-emptive strike against rejection. My brain is like, If they knew the real you, they’d back away slowly while making an excuse about needing to water their ficus. So instead, I hand them an immaculate spreadsheet and hope they don’t notice that I’ve been rehearsing how to say “good morning” for the past five minutes.

Of course, perfectionism is exhausting. Spoiler alert: I am weird, and hiding it is like trying to keep a beach ball underwater—it keeps popping back up in the form of awkward jokes, unusual hobbies, and my alarming enthusiasm for properly labeled storage containers.

But here’s the twist I’m slowly learning: the people worth having around aren’t judging me for being “different".  And, honestly, being weird is way less tiring than being perfect.