A lifetime of racism, decades inside the mental health system and a late autism diagnosis forced me to confront a difficult reality: the hardest part of survival is convincing people that your struggle is real.

Imagine being told you haven’t experienced racism like you don’t pass the colour grade

Not quietly implied, or debated academically, but said directly to your face. This, despite carrying trauma that began in childhood, rooted in racial hatred that shaped how you saw yourself long before you had the language to explain it. Trauma that did not disappear with age or soften with time.

Yet people still feel comfortable dismissing it.

“You don’t even look that Black.”

“Racism doesn’t go on anymore.”

As if the shade of your skin determines the validity of what you experienced. As if racism operates on a colour chart.

Later in life, after more than two decades inside the mental health system trying to explain a mind that never seemed to operate the way the world expected, another truth emerged. I was autistic.

And suddenly the same pattern repeated.

“You don’t look autistic.”

“Why do you think you’re autistic?”

So I find myself living between two realities that society struggles to understand.

Not Black enough for the racism I experienced.

Not autistic enough for the neurotype I live with.

Both experiences questioned, and both realities minimised. Yet both have shaped every single day of my life.

As a child, I hated the colour of my skin. I scratched my face out of photographs during overwhelming emotional states I did not understand. I hid those moments from my parents – not because I thought it would hurt them, but because I knew the behaviour itself was wrong.

My thinking is extremely literal.

My parents had paid for those photographs. They were important. You are not meant to damage them. To my mind, that made scratching them one of the worst things I could do. The distress was compounded by knowing the behaviour itself was wrong, while the emotional overload driving it was uncontrollable.

How many undiagnosed autistic children have experienced something similar – overwhelming emotional states with nowhere to go?

Those overwhelming states did not stop in childhood.

I have struggled with suicidal thoughts for as long as I can remember – not something that appeared in adulthood or was triggered by a single event, but a question that has lived quietly in my mind since childhood: Why am I living just to suffer? In my late twenties, that pain turned to action (once again), and I nearly ended my life. I spent seven hours in surgery and five days in the hospital. Yet even after surviving something so severe, so close to death, I was never offered trauma therapy. The system stabilised my physical body, but the psychological wounds remained untouched.

Throughout my life, meltdowns lasting for hours have pushed me to breaking point, where the mind spirals beyond control and survival itself feels impossible. Those were the moments where overdoses happened. These were not calculated decisions or attention seeking – this is the reality of a meltdown. These are moments I have had to hide, which is just another branch of my masking. 

How many undiagnosed autistic people have reached those same breaking points without anyone recognising what was actually happening? How many people have we lost to this? 

Research now makes clear that autistic people face a severe mental health crisis. A UK study led by Dr Sarah Cassidy found that autistic adults without intellectual disabilities are around nine times more likely to experience suicidal thoughts than the general population. Other studies suggest that up to two-thirds of autistic adults report having seriously considered suicide. Research examining suicide deaths in England has also identified autistic traits in around ten percent of people who died by suicide, significantly higher than expected in the wider population.

This is not a marginal issue. It is a crisis hiding in plain sight.

When race enters the picture, understanding becomes even more limited. Research in the UK has repeatedly highlighted how little data exists on autistic people from Black and minority ethnic communities. Their experiences remain under-represented in research and poorly understood within clinical systems. Studies analysing school data in England have shown that autism prevalence is actually higher among Black pupils, yet disparities in diagnosis and support persist due to systemic barriers and inequalities.

Autistic people of colour are present in the data, but the systems designed to recognise them often fail to understand them.

During my own diagnostic process, a specialist observed that I mask in a way more commonly seen in autistic women. Women are historically underdiagnosed because they learn to mask their differences – studying behaviour, copying social patterns and performing normality so effectively that their difficulties remain hidden.

If autistic women are already under-recognised because of masking, where does that leave autistic men of colour who mask in the same way?

The truth is we barely appear in the research at all.

I am six foot three. My physical presence alone shapes how people perceive me before I have even spoken. Height, frame and presence influence how behaviour is interpreted. Add to that decades of learning how to articulate myself clearly and mask confusion behind composure, and people begin questioning my integrity.

How can someone who speaks clearly struggle? How can someone who appears confident be autistic? How can someone who presents strongly be telling the truth about suffering?

The question I want to ask back is simple.

If I mask so well and appear confident, why would I choose to talk about struggling?

What benefit does that bring?

Speaking openly about trauma, suicide attempts and systemic failures does not elevate a person socially. If anything, it does the opposite.

Survival required masking. Not part of survival – all of it.

I learned strength by modelling it. The figures I masked were hip hop artists – individuals society often labelled as negative stereotypes. What I saw in them was strength, presence and defiance. I wanted to be strong. Without those models of strength, I do not believe I would be here today.

But masking at that level comes with consequences.

The longer strength is performed externally, the heavier the internal pressure becomes. The periods where masking is possible become shorter. The exhaustion becomes deeper. Over time, the psychological strain accumulates and eventually begins to affect the body as well. My own physical health, including severe blood pressure issues, now reflects that strain.

Society frequently tells men they need to open up about their mental health, but I have been doing that for years, so that raises another question.

Is opening up only welcomed if the story fits a narrative people feel comfortable with?

When someone speaks about racism, autism, trauma, suicide attempts and systemic failures all at once, the response often becomes disbelief or silence – and that silence compounds the isolation.

I do not occasionally find myself back in the same place – this is the repeated pattern.

The same misunderstandings. The same dismissals. The same explanations ignored.

“I forgot.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“I didn’t realise.”

Each time it reinforces the feeling of not being understood, not being believed and not being heard.

Despite everything, I have dedicated my life to creating change through my art and advocacy. Not because it is easy, but because it gives meaning to the struggle that has followed me all my life – and it’s the right thing to do!

Because people like me exist everywhere; Walking through society. Communicating. Masking. Struggling in plain sight.

And the truth is simple.

If someone spends years explaining their pain and society continues to question it, dismiss it or ignore it, the responsibility no longer sits with the person speaking – It sits with the people who refuse to listen.