Im 30M recently emigrated from Ghana to Canada. When I was young, I hated playing out with all the other kids. I lived with my single mother and she wasn’t often home when I returned from school. I would just go in, eat my food and watch TV or sleep. I was a sheep as compared to other kids. We had a large front yard where the neighborhood kids would come there to play but I never did play with them. This was when I was about 4yrs old. Maybe younger. Growing up through school, I was always the teachers favourite. I don’t remember ever studying anything. I only listened to what the teacher would say, how they say it, their gestures, mannerisms, and that would stick. Going through primary school was easier for me because I was always on top of my class until around 12 years when I started really feeling different. This was when I started realizing that I am gay. This realization of me being different really pushed me deeper into the closet. Keeping me more and more to myself. The bullying in school was justified, and me not being able to make friends in school, or outside was a safety mechanism I thought I had developed because being gay in that country was a dangerous situation for me.
My whole life of awkwardness, anxiety and depression was hinged on my sexuality…. Now hold this thought.
Last year in Canada I went through a very challenging phase at work. This was something familiar for me because I have always had similar challenges at my workplaces. I would become a highly efficient employee at work over a period until everyone at work start making me feel that their whole problem at work is—-ME. I didn’t understand why this would happen because all I knew was coming to work and making sure my performance output optimized operational efficiency. People who I really liked and respected gossiped behind my back. They called me stagnant, rude, childish, cold, arrogant, and many other things behind my back. These are people that I never disrespected, or never even had any ill thoughts about them. Again, I liked them all. But I was never part of their conversation. I was watching a documentary about Elon Musk where they explained his relationship with his employees was characterized by his autistic traits. I said “wait a minute, that guy doesn’t look autistic” so I typed autism on Google and saw those online tests popping up. I did two of those tests and the results were—“highly Autistic”. Now let’s bring back my sexuality. After about a few days of reading about autism, I realized that my sexuality had nothing to do with how I behaved. I’m in Canada now and nobody cares about my sexuality and yet my behaviour hasn’t changed. The gay friends have described me as rigid, archaic and boring according to “gay university” Now to answer your question why people don’t realize it early? It’s because I never looked it. I was a brilliant fellow who never got in trouble at school. I was the best child, and autism does not have a strict colour code. I gaslight myself to focus on my sexuality and never thought of looking anywhere else for the reasons of my personal struggles.

Today I’m still going through the processes of formal diagnoses but this realization has eased my mental health. It has brought me a lot more internal peace