So I was brought up Catholic, and everything that I was taught when I was growing up was that homosexuality was wrong, in every sense of the word. When I was very young I’d say… Because I always knew I was gay from about 10 or 11, although I didn’t really know, I knew I was different, but I didn’t know how to phrase it, if you know what I mean, and then, this is going to sound really strange, but there was a big, famous star at the time, popstar, that I really liked, and it was Madonna basically, and she made, she kind of came along and sent the message that it’s okay to be gay, it’s okay to be who you are.

So when I was growing up, I had the Catholic religion tell me everything I was doing about my life was wrong, and my family, because my family was a sort of family where they don’t talk, they keep things very bottled up, so even if my parents had have thought I was gay or anybody else in the family thought I was gay, they would never have said it. So they would never have said to me “are you okay, do you feel okay?” It just wasn’t talked about. So that made me feel even more isolated, and I thought everything that I was doing was wrong, I thought everything I was doing was a sin, and that really affected me I think mentally for… Well, it still is affecting me mentally, you know? I kind of felt like I was always doing things in secret, like my thoughts, everything that I thought, I thought that nobody can find out that I’m feeling this way, nobody can know what I am. And years later I find out that they all knew but nobody ever said anything, you know? So it wasn’t nice for, you know, a teenager to feel so isolated and feel like everybody was against him, you know?

And I didn’t have any support networks at all. I mean I was quite lucky when I hit 17, because my uncle married… Well, he got a girlfriend who was from London, and she was a Jewish girl, and she came back to [country], and it was like “there’s somebody different in the family finally”, you know? And she and I clicked really quick, and after about a year, she sat me down one day and she just said, “I know what’s going on with you and I want you to know that it’s going to be okay, and I’m going to help” and blah, blah, blah. So that was a real, real massive help for me. And they helped me to get to London, they helped me to get myself sorted over there, and just to feel comfortable with my sexuality and say that nothing’s wrong, you know, that I’m normal. Because I always thought that I wasn’t normal, I always thought that I was weird and at school I was bullied, and in a way that kind of made me stronger because I always think I never denied to myself what I was, I always knew in my own head what I was and I was always going to fight for that, you know? Whether it did make me lonely, or whether it did make me have not many friends, I was always going to fight for what I believed was right and I did.

And in some ways I think that’s paid me really good dividends in life, but then in other ways, especially as I’ve got older, I’m kind of in the mindset of “well if you don’t agree with me then I’m not going to bother being your friend anymore” do you know what I mean? So I don’t know whether that’s a good or a bad thing. I mean I think it’s a good thing, it was definitely good when I was younger because it kept me sane, but as I’ve got older I probably could do with breaking down the barriers a little bit more, and that’s something that I work on in my therapy sessions and stuff like that as well.

No, no because it was, I think the loneliness it just consumed me. It had taken over, it had taken over and but I can and I can see it was so many different factors combined into one which then did build up the loneliness because you’re, you’re in a world which is completely alien. You’re trying to run a household. You’re trying to just do things normal. I guess watching television was, was it really and films because there’s no, the thing is when you’re in this life, nobody understands it, nobody at all. It wasn’t until I probably joined a support group, probably years later where the battles that I had to cope with were, were normal because other people had, had been through it and I just thought, ‘Well, I belong here.’

When you’re going though depression is and you’re, horrible thing about depression is loneliness really, feeling as if you’re by yourself. I think that’s the worst, that’s basically that’s the worst thing about depression, nobody knows what I’m going through. Knowing that somebody understands what you’re going through. Knowing that you’re not unusual and you’re not a freak and there’s nothing wrong with you, so to speak, speaking to somebody else about it to realise that actually they’re going through the same thing, then the loneliness isn’t as bad because you’re with somebody. There’s a…

I: Do you find that?

There’s a brilliant, there’s a brilliant story about a soldier suffering from PT, PTSD and he was in this hole crying out for help and a minister walked passed and he says he’ll pray for him and somebody else walked past and said they’ll do this for him, everybody else walked passed and they said they’d do something, get some help but he’s still in his hole and then another person came along and jumped into hole with him and said, “What are you doing here?” and he turns on, “I can get you out, I’ve been here.” XXX I didn’t realise.

I: Sorry I didn’t understand the end.

R: Someone jumped in the hole with him, said, “I can help you out because I’ve been there.” Rather than everybody else saying, “I’m going to help you,” you know, and that’s, you know, is yeah, God…

I: it’s a very beautiful story.

Yeah, I’ve obviously heard it a few times. It’s a soldier thing, yeah.

I think, being autistic I feel lonely quite a lot of the time so I think it’s always there. I think it’s never not a part of who I am. So I think it’s, it’s because it’s very hard to relate to other people, unless they’re autistic themselves, so I think that’s where the loneliness sort of comes from.

I really enjoy social media and seeing there’s other autistic people which is just like amazing because [um] it just makes me feel like I’m not alone, you know.

I: Could you tell me a little bit about that community, I’m very interested in hearing about [um] how this community on social media has evolved and, you know, how it really helps you?

Yeah it’s just you go on there and you just realise there’s so many different kinds of people and, you know, we’re just like neurotypical people we’ve all got different personalities but I think they understand your struggles more than neurotypical people like my mum just did with me, you wouldn’t be able to, you know, sorry I’m trying to like put it in…

I: Don’t worry at all you’re doing very well.

They’re just more understanding, you know, there’s like we do lots of things that might be misunderstood [um] and you don’t get that feeling with other autistic people because they, they just almost know they’re kind of filling in the gaps and you don’t have to keep explaining yourself. Like, you know, it’s totally fine to just get angry or be really direct because we are really direct and a lot of the time people assume that we’re being rude and it’s not at all it’s just the way that it comes across, you know.

I sometimes wish there were like support groups where you could just like sit in a circle with other autistic people and just meet them every week and it’s just set and you can just rely on, you know, somebody being there I think that would help like with the loneliness or you know, if there was like a phone line or something you could phone, like, I don’t know.