hello. i am autistic and i have a lot of trouble asking for help and wanted to ask you guys how do you do it and how do you feel while doing it. i still have some internalized ableism, though, and asking for help when i need something makes me feel vulnerable and fragile and i don't want people to see me that way, specially people i don't truly know but, most the time, i have meltdowns and anxiety attacks while at college and, very recently, at work, which means that, most of the time, i am with people i don't know. so it would help me a lot if someone could give me advice or tips or things i could do to have a better environment. how can i say it, how can i improve it quietly. my work and college know that i am austistic, but i am not really sure what i have the right to ask for. more breaks? alone time? i would be very thankful for any kind of help. thank you.

being eighteen years old and autistic is hard. i was diagnosed at seventeen. it has been a few months, but barely. i still mask most of the time. on social media, i show the pictures of me that everyone wants to see, but i keep the pictures of my real self safe and sound, away from their eyes. it's easy to pretend to be someone else online, but today. oh. today i met this apparently cool guy through an app. he goes to the same college as me. he saw my pictures, my good pictures, my pretend pictures and i felt like i was lying. i thought: he would never think that, during my first week in college, i was crying in front a professor, not being able to breath or to stop my hands from shaking. he would never think that that girl on the picture had to take exams in a empty room because the noise was to loud the it made her whole body tremble. that she cries on the bus when another human body touches her, the she wears a lanyard with a card and her mother's number annotated on the back just in case she has a meltdown in public and isn't able to speak. that she, at times, could be unable to speak. and so on. and so on. and so on. i think she might be someone. someone real, even. but i am somebody else. i am a liar. i am ashamed of myself. so much. i want to be like them. i know it's not fair. it's not. but i am still learning. and it's so goddamn hard because, most of the time, i think people would not like to meet who i am. i always feel like it would be too much to deal with. and i think i am right.