I Stopped Trying to Look “Normal”, and now, It’s Easy to be Here

I Stopped Trying to Look “Normal”

At some point, I realised that looking okay and actually being okay are two very different things. For years, I thought success meant hiding the messy parts. If I could attend class, go for events, smile in photos, post on social media, carry responsibilities, reply people, show up at temple, contribute to projects, and still look “fine”, then maybe that meant I was fine.

But life was not always clean and aesthetic. Some seasons were confusing. Some were lonely. Some were just me trying to survive the day without explaining myself to everyone. Some seasons looked productive from the outside, but internally, I was trying to understand things that many people seemed to process automatically: class expectations, social cues, facial expressions, tone, body language, group dynamics, institutional systems, family expectations, and even the correct timing to speak or not speak.

Looking back, I was not lazy. I was not stubborn. I was not unwilling to do better. I was overloaded.

Understanding Autism, ADHD, and Masking

As an autistic person with ADHD, one thing I have had to learn is that my brain does not process everything in the same way as everyone else. This does not mean I am incapable. It does not mean I lack intelligence, values, insight, or awareness. It simply means that many things which appear automatic to others may require conscious processing for me.

Sometimes the brain is not refusing life. Sometimes it is carrying too many tabs, too many expectations, and too many invisible settings. For me, that was Autism and ADHD. They are neurodevelopmental conditions, meaning they started developing before I was born. They are not a trend, not a personality phase, not a moral failure, and not something that suddenly appeared because of social media. What changed was not who I was. What changed was the framework used to understand me.

Before having the correct framework, I often tried to function by masking and mirroring. I copied how others behaved. I rehearsed conversations. I tried to suppress sensory discomfort. I tried to make my expressions, tone, replies, and reactions match what I thought was expected in that environment. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it did not.

Sometimes masking made me seem more “normal” from the outside. Other times, it made me seem distant, emotionless, confusing, inconsistent, too intense, too quiet, too direct, or too difficult to understand. That is one of the strange things about masking. It may help a person survive socially, but it can also make the person less visible as themselves.

When People Only See the Surface

When people only see the surface, they may assume the surface is the whole story. This is how misunderstanding happens. A person can look calm and still be exhausted. A person can smile and still be confused. A person can perform well and still be struggling. A person can speak well and still have difficulty communicating. A person can be educated and still need support. A person can be socially active and still find socialisation cognitively tiring.

For a long time, I also thought being “normal” meant being able to do everything without needing explanation or adjustment. But what is normal? In Malaysia especially, many of us grow up with a very social idea of normal. You are expected to know how to talk to relatives, how to behave at gatherings, how to answer elders properly, how to fit into school, college, university, work, religious spaces, family functions, group chats, and public life.

There are many unwritten rules. Some are cultural. Some are generational. Some are religious. Some are simply “this is how people do things here.” For some people, those rules are absorbed naturally. For me, many of them had to be studied.

This is why I often needed logic. I needed to understand how systems worked, how people thought, what things meant, what the actual expectation was, and what was simply assumed but never said aloud. If someone looked at their watch, I might not automatically know whether they were bored, checking notifications, rushing somewhere, or simply checking the time. If someone replied with a short message, I might need context before understanding whether they were angry, busy, tired, neutral, or just texting like that.

It was not always anxiety. A lot of the time, it was processing. That distinction matters. Anxiety says, “Something bad may happen.” Autistic processing often says, “What exactly is happening?” ADHD may then add, “Also, there are twenty other things happening in the background and I forgot where I placed the original thought.” This is not a clinical explanation of everyone’s experience. It is simply how I understand part of my own life now.

Context Matters

Once I began to understand myself through the lens of AuDHD, many things started making sense. Not as an excuse, but as context. Context matters. In psychology, context matters. In communication, context matters. In Buddhism, conditions matter.

Science teaches us a simple concept: every reaction must have an action, energy source force to occur. The Buddha taught that things arise due to causes and conditions. They do not arise randomly, independently, or purely because someone is “good” or “bad”. In the same way, behaviour has conditions. Distress has conditions. Functioning has conditions. Misunderstanding has conditions. When the conditions are misunderstood, the conclusion can also be wrong.

For years, I tried to make myself understandable through performance. I thought if I could look okay, people might believe I was okay. If I could keep going, maybe that meant I was strong enough. If I could smile, post, study, serve, create, and carry responsibilities, maybe the messy parts would not matter. But eventually, I realised that looking okay is not the same as being okay. And being okay does not mean being flawless.

Healing Did Not Look Like a Movie Scene

Healing did not look like a movie scene. It did not suddenly turn me into a perfectly calm, perfectly organised, perfectly socially fluent person. It did not remove every autistic trait or ADHD difficulty. It did not make me neurotypical. Healing looked much more ordinary.

It looked like understanding why I react the way I do. It looked like rebuilding routines. It looked like choosing better people. It looked like becoming less reactive. It looked like resting when I needed rest. It looked like learning how to communicate more clearly. It looked like no longer forcing myself to perform “I’m fine” all the time.

It also looked like knowing that some days are still chaotic, but at least now the chaos has better management. Sometimes growth is not a glow-up. Sometimes growth is becoming less dramatic about small things. Sometimes growth is being able to pause before reacting. Sometimes growth is realising that you do not need to explain yourself to every person who has already decided not to understand you. Sometimes growth is accepting that your life does not need to look normal to be meaningful.

Seeing Things As They Are

This is also where Dhamma becomes practical for me. Buddhism, at least as I understand and practise it, is not about pretending to be peaceful all the time. It is not about suppressing personality, emotion, identity, or reality. It is not about becoming a blank wall with incense. It is about seeing things more clearly.

There is the concept of Yathā-bhūta seeing things as they are. For me, seeing things as they are means acknowledging that I am autistic and have ADHD. It means acknowledging that I have strengths and limitations. It means acknowledging that my life has not followed a clean, linear, conventional path. It means acknowledging that there were times I was misunderstood, and there were also times I misunderstood others.

Seeing things as they are also means acknowledging causes and conditions without turning them into permanent identity prisons. It means not turning “normal” into a religion. Normal is subjective anyway. What is normal in one family may not be normal in another. What is normal in one culture may not be normal in another. What is normal in one school, temple, workplace, friend group, or generation may not be normal elsewhere.

Maybe the goal was never to become normal. Maybe the goal was to become someone I can live with peacefully. Someone clearer. Someone kinder. Someone more functional. Someone more honest. Someone who still makes mistakes, but reflects. Someone who still has chaos, but no longer needs chaos to define everything.

Becoming Someone I Can Live With Peacefully

I can look back at old photos and not only see pain, confusion, or embarrassment, but also continuity. The younger me in those photos was trying. The university me was trying. The masked me was trying. The overloaded me was trying. The current me is still trying too, but with a better framework.

Not every comeback looks loud. Some comebacks look like finally understanding yourself. Some comebacks look like rebuilding slowly. Some comebacks look like choosing peace over performance. Some comebacks look like no longer needing to convince everyone that you are okay, because you are finally learning what okay actually means for you.

If you are in a strange season too, you may not be behind. You may just be becoming more honest. And maybe that is already a form of coming home.

In many ways, this reflection also connects to my song It’s Easy to Be Here. The title itself carries a kind of quiet acceptance. After years of trying to decode life, perform normalcy, explain myself, survive misunderstanding, and rebuild from different seasons, maybe ease does not always mean life becomes simple. Maybe it means I no longer have to fight my own existence every day. Maybe it means being present without needing to prove that I deserve to be here. To me, that is part of the same journey: not becoming “normal”, but learning that it can finally feel easier to be here as myself.

Written by Rain Lee Lin Jun

9th June 2026