I guess you’re right, I just never gave the song much thought. It’s just that it kinda felt like some happy song and I never paid attention to what it was saying, then I looked them up one day, out of curiosity, and I guess it juat felt unexpected to me, and that’s why it felt weird. Thinking about what you said makes me want to give the song another listen with an open mind, I guess.

I think it’s fairly common to not always pay close attention to the lyrics. Most of the time, you hear a song on the radio, and you can’t always make out what it’s saying, but you’re still able to enjoy the music and the singing melody. Until you pay more attention or you seek out the lyrics, then you’re often surprised about what it’s saying, cause the lyrics weren’t the point when you used to listen to the song. It doesn’t mean that it’s world-changing or anything, but it just takes you by surprise.

Semi-Charmed Life, by Third Eye Blind. Basically, it’s a song about doing meth… Spent almost twenty years just singing the chorus with absolutely no idea what the rest of the lyrics were. Now, it kinda feels weird, ngl.

For me, Vyvanse changed my life. Self-discipline, too, although it’s still often a struggle, to be honest.

I have my own opinion on masking. I don’t feel like I hide my true self and I feel the term ‘masking’ isn’t always the right one, although it might depend on the individual and the situation. The way I see it, it’s all a question of communication, or language; we have our own concept of social communication, one that is not always the same as most people. It gets hard to understand those different than us and also difficult for them to understand us. We can’t expect everyone to understand us, and most people don’t, or won’t. So we change the way we communicate, use another form of language. It’s not always easy and we might sometimes miss the mark, but we are autistic, after all. We can’t understand what we aren’t all the time, it’s just normal. With most people I know, we often find some kind of unspoken middle ground, so to speak, communication-wise. They know me and I know them, we kinda found ways to make it easier for us to understand each other. YMMV, it’s not the same for everyone and I know that; some of us find it harder still to understand non-autistic people and communicate with them, and have a hard time being understood by them. Some of us feel the need to hide and ‘fake’ our way through many social situations. In the end, it’s all about how comfortable we are with acting natural. For me, I find it simpler to adapt the way I communicate than expecting people to understand me. There’s more of ‘them’ than there are of us, in the end we have much more opportunities to study their ‘language’ and adapt to it, than the opposite. To me, it’s the same as traveling to another country without speaking the local language. You can get by, if you’re lucky, but it will be much harder than if you learn the language. There are some words that will give you a harder time, and you’ll fall back to your native tongue, but they can’t blame you for making an effort.

Again, YMMV, as everyone has different experiences; it’s just the way I see things.