For as long as I can remember, I have cycled between masking and burnout. With the best of intentions, allistics often reassure me that I come across fine – but that’s exactly the point for me. It’s not that I can’t communicate with them but that the level of performance and decision-making it requires is completely unsustainable. It would exhaust anyone to have to do it for long. I can keep up conventional social interaction for a time, and then I collapse. I’ve often wished to be locked up; not because I like being housebound but because I can’t do my life – all of it – anymore.