My earliest memory is of feeling different. I’m gay, and grew up in the 1980s, in a tough, working-class town in the north of England at the height of the Aids crisis. My gayness was obvious in the way I walked and talked. I was bullied at school, called a “poof”, “pansy” and “fairy”; other children did impressions of me with their wrists limp. I experienced physical violence, too. I was shoved, kicked, my head was slammed against the wall. I was punched in the face more than once.
But it wasn’t just my sexuality that set me apart. I was “weird”. I had a rigid attachment to routine and was terribly shy, sometimes freezing in social situations. I needed to be on my own for long periods; not easy when you’re in a family of five and share a bedroom with your brother. I was obsessive, channelling this at first into the Star Wars films, then the Narnia novels and, as I got older, Madonna. Lots of kids have short-lived interests but mine were intense: I’d collect facts and statistics about Madonna, memorise the chart positions of her singles, then reel them off to anyone who would listen. If anyone criticised her, I took it as a personal attack and would be distraught.
I was easily upset in other ways. I was sensitive to touch and hated being cuddled, I burst into tears at the sound of fireworks. If I heard someone eating with their mouth open, I’d put my hands over my ears and run out of the room screaming. My anxiety was so acute, I’d bite my nails until my fingers bled.
I found a few activities soothing. I had a security blanket, which I’d twiddle between my fingers. And I found comfort in repeating words or phrases, over and over again. Sometimes, I’d musicalise snatches of dialogue and skip around the house, singing them.
On occasion, I’d lose control in the form of “meltdowns” – usually before school. I’d collapse on the floor, my body spasming with rage and tears, yanking off my glasses and throwing them across the room. When I was nine, I was sent away on a camp with the Cub Scouts. When I realised I had to share a tent with some of the boys who bullied me, I started being violently sick. I shivered and sweated so badly that my sleeping bag became soaking wet. The Scout leaders removed me from the tent and took me to sleep in their hut. When my parents came to collect me the next day, I felt a relief like I’d never felt before.
A lot of my “weird” behaviour did fit with what, in the 80s, was considered to be “gay”. Adults would comment that I was “dramatic”, “oversensitive” or “overemotional”. I worked hard at school and was neat and fastidious – all seen as effeminate traits – earning me the label “girly swot”. In the working-class north of the 80s, nobody discussed mental health, let alone neurodivergence. There was no way that, as well as being gay, I could entertain the thought that there might be something different about my brain.
So I tried to camouflage my weirdness. I copied other people’s behaviour and did everything I could to fit in.
In 1994, I got into Cambridge University. Here, it was OK to be studious and gay. But I was now different for another reason: as a working-class kid from a comprehensive school, I was in a minority. The other students, mostly from private schools, did impressions of my northern accent. Sometimes, it was affectionate but often it was cruel. One of my tutors used to make me read out my work and encouraged the other students to laugh at me. I trained myself to avoid saying dangerous words like “cook”, “baby”, “Coke”, or that all-time killer for anyone from Lancashire, “fair hair”. I was often blunt with people, which was put down to my being from the north. But I was also incredibly anxious. For one entire term at Cambridge – in my second year, when I was sharing a room – I woke up every morning and vomited into the sink.
In the late 90s, I started working in the media, an industry I knew would be welcoming to gay men. But work pressures seemed to have an impact on me more than others. When plans changed at the last minute, which happened often in TV, I wasn’t just stressed, it felt as if the world was ending. In the open-plan office I was surrounded by TVs and radios blasting and colleagues tapping and talking. The noise felt like an assault; but it only seemed to affect me.
I got a job as a correspondent on Channel 4 News and became the subject of vitriol. Twitter users commented I was “ridiculously camp” or “double gay, even … he kills my ears”. The late Sunday Times critic AA Gill compared me to another effeminate man, declaring I was “to arts reporting what Wayne Sleep was to darts”. Although everyone is affected by criticism, with me it caused a hollow ache that lasted for weeks. It hurt so much because I assumed the abuse was homophobic. It took me right back to the school playground.
Working on a separate TV documentary series, I was told it had to be re-edited to make me less camp. I objected but received an email response telling me to “MAN UP”. Of course, this could be upsetting to anyone. But I couldn’t control my fury. The bosses told me I was behaving “hysterically” – and I probably was. But I was also scared by how badly I’d lost control of my emotions.
As a teenager, I’d discovered that alcohol could not only calm my anxiety but also allowed me to be a different version of myself; one that wasn’t shy but funny and outrageous. On any night out, I’d be the one more drunk than anyone else, doing whatever it took to get a laugh, stripteasing or skinny-dipping, initiating games of spin the bottle. As I moved up the career ladder, the parties I went to became more extravagant: I went to events sponsored by record labels where I was picked up in limos and plied with champagne. I was often at celebrity parties. I got so drunk at one event that Tara Palmer-Tomkinson toldmethat I looked wasted.
I struggled to maintain romantic relationships, with boyfriends often rejecting me for being “full-on”, and fell into a cycle of casual sex. Growing up, the few gay men I’d seen portrayed in the media were hypersexual – so I just thought this was what we did. At the end of many a night out I’d stagger on to a sex club or sauna for anonymous, sometimes reckless sex. Twice, I was robbed by a man I’d taken home. By the time I hit 30 I’d never had a boyfriend. It also dawned on me that I’d never had sex sober. I became lonely – terribly, breathtakingly, soul-shatteringly lonely.
I decided to pursue my childhood dream and started writing fiction. But my first novel, the loosely autobiographical The Madonna of Bolton, was rejected by agents and publishers for 10 years. Much of the rejection was homophobic: one editor called my manuscript “too explicit for comfort”; another said that having a gay character was too “niche”. I thought the cutting despair I felt was gay shame, that after a childhood of absorbing the message that my sexuality was wrong, this was still what I believed deep down. Perhaps it was also why my drinking had become so self-destructive and I was punishing myself by engaging in dangerous sex. I started seeing a therapist, and quit drinking.
I crowdfunded that first book, and it was followed by more successful novels with a traditional publisher. My childhood dream had come true – but I couldn’t enjoy it. I still experienced homophobia, with one publisher commenting that she didn’t want me to be “so explicit on the wider LGTB [sic] issues”.
And I struggled to deal with the publishing industry’s treatment of working-class authors, especially when contracts took 10 months to process or royalty payments were late by up to 18 months. While some authors can be diplomatic in these situations, I was told by my agent that I was rude and lacked tact. I’d become fixated on the injustice, a storm raging in my head for weeks.
Afew years ago a younger family member began to be investigated for autism. So I started researching it beyond the stereotypes. I learned that autism can express itself differently from person to person. While some people are hypersensitive to sounds and touch, others can be hyposensitive – the opposite. The same is true of emotions. I learned that the autistic spectrum isn’t a straight line going from less autistic to more autistic; some people liken it to a pie chart, with different sized slices representing different traits and abilities.
I wondered whether autism could explain some of my behaviour. But as far as I knew, autistic people were also supposed to be devoid of empathy, whereas I struggled to control mine: I got so wound up watchingMr Bates vs the Post Officethat I couldn’t sleep for weeks. Autistic people were supposed to struggle with relationships. But I’d had several close friendships for decades and by this time I’d fallen in love and got married. Then a member of my husband’s family was diagnosed with autism, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether our relationship worked because he was used to people whose brains were wired differently.
In June 2024, I spoke to my GP. I was referred to a team of clinical psychologists specialising in late-in-life diagnosis. It’s difficult to untangle behaviour that’s symptomatic of neurodivergence from a personality that has been formed over decades of life experience; in my case, hyper-sensitivity and anger as a result of sustained homophobia and class snobbery.
There was a waiting list of several months, pages of forms to fill in, and interviews with figures from my childhood that culminated in a five-hour assessment.
You are autistic, they said. When I heard the words, my heart was hammering, my breath short and fast. But mainly what I felt was relief. After years of being misunderstood – of misunderstanding myself – I finally had the right framework to build up a better picture of who I truly am.
A lot of my behaviour started to make sense: twiddling my security blanket was what I now recognise as “stimming” or self-stimulatory behaviour. As was my repetition of certain words and phrases, a habit known as “echolalia”. Then I learned that rejection sensitive dysphoria and emotional dysregulation are common among autistic people. As is anxiety, although autism in itself doesn’t produce anxiety, rather it seems to be caused by the challenges of living as a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world.
I was also diagnosed with ADHD, so needed to get my head around a second condition too. I discovered that some characteristics of autism and ADHD work against each other: autism needs routine and my ADHD needed spontaneity. But other characteristics overlap to create a heightened experience:I used alcohol to calm the anxiety produced by living with autism and, as ADHD causes lower levels of dopamine in the brain, I was driven to activities that boosted it – binge-drinking, risky sex. Understanding this released me from years of self-blame and guilt.
In time, I’ve come to see that my neurodivergence has advantages. I feel emotions intensely but this also includes positive emotions such as happiness and joy. My capacity for emotion and empathy has been a great help in writing character-based fiction. My obsessive nature and need to spend long periods on my own mean I’m suited to immersing myself in the fictional worlds I create. And, while my ADHD helps ignite the initial sparks of creativity, my autism kicks in to make sure I knuckle down and bring these ideas to fruition.
But I have also felt profound grief. This is primarily for the past, for all the missed opportunities, all the things I lost or had taken away from me. All the times I was criticised for behaviours that I didn’t realise were symptomatic of my autism.
I also wonder what my life would have looked like if I had been diagnosed earlier: would I have applied for Cambridge or the job at Channel 4 News? Would I have persisted in writing fiction if I’d known that the rejection would cause me so much hurt? Of course, I should have been able to do these things with accommodations made for my neurodivergence, but the reality is that these allowances didn’t exist 30 – or even 10 – years ago.
I’m beginning to make adjustments to my life, securing the accommodations I need. I’ve invested in noise-reducing earplugs, a weighted blanket that regulates my nervous system, and no longer stop myself singing randomly musicalised phrases. I only commit to social occasions I know make me feel good about myself. Likewise, I avoid sensory environments I know will make me uncomfortable and recover from sensory overwhelm by going for long walks in nature. Professionally, I ask for clear, unambiguous communication and I’ve also switched literary agents; my new representative handles the business side of my career to avoid any conflict.
Recently, there have been claims that autism is being “over-diagnosed”. Given that it took me until the age of 50 to receive a diagnosis, I’d challenge this. I’d also like to challenge some of the stereotypes that prevail – not to mention the prejudice.
Now I’ve written this article, I accept that I’ll always be seen as autistic. Some people might use this against me; if I have any disagreements, my point of view could be dismissed as an expression of my autism.
But I also know that, at 50, there’s probably less time ahead of me than there is behind. And with that knowledge, I embark on a new journey, to finally start living as myself, to embrace my neurodivergence and create a life that works best for me.
I’m ready.
Matt Cain’s latest novel One Love is published by Headline (£9.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy atguardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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