This is the fourteenth and final post in my autism awareness month series. This series almost didn't happen. I shared a comic strip on April 2nd because it was autism awareness day. A colleague asked a question, I answered, and somehow that turned into thirteen posts. That's fitting, actually. The whole premise of the series is that you can't know what you don't know, and the series itself is proof of it. I didn't plan to spend a month writing about autism. I didn't know there was this much to say, or that this many people were waiting to hear it. What you've been reading across these posts is what's called masking. Every post described a different aspect of it: the information-gathering that runs constantly, the sensory system that doesn't filter, the tasks that won't start without a valid reason, the submission reflex that isn't there, the friendships that fade without a maintenance impulse. None of it is a character flaw.…