My name is Dr Ezra Lockhart, and in 2023, at 43 years old, I was diagnosed with autism. This diagnosis did not constitute a fundamental transformation; rather, it provided the clarity I had long sought, rendering my life’s complexities more comprehensible. For years, I had pondered the recurrent discrepancies between my expectations and reality – why I often arrived at seemingly errant conclusions, why social interactions felt calibrated in an unfamiliar code. Upon receiving the diagnosis, the most persistent thought I had was: Why had I not recognised this in myself?

In my professional life, I worked closely with individuals on the autism spectrum, examining and diagnosing their behaviours and offering interventions. I prided myself on the depth of my understanding, the perceived empathy that allowed me to see and interpret their struggles through intellect and affect. Yet, I never once entertained the possibility that I might share these very characteristics. I rationalised my peculiarities as traits of an exceedingly observant, highly empathetic individual. I presumed my acute understanding of others was the product of intellectual affinity, not a reflection of shared neurological wiring.

The experience of watching Ezra, the 2024 film about a father navigating his autistic son’s life, catalysed a profound introspection. Ezra, much like myself, engages with the world intensely, literally and in a structured way. His discomfort in navigating environments that do not adhere to explicit rules echoed my own lifelong experience. But the true revelation came not in the identification with the character of Ezra, but rather in the realisation that the patterns of dissonance I had long dismissed as anomalies in my own behaviour had, in fact, been part of a greater neurodivergent experience that I had failed to recognise in myself.

The film’s depiction of Max, the father struggling to comprehend his son’s neurodivergence, mirrored my own unacknowledged challenging self-identity. I had spent years diagnosing others, guiding them through frameworks of behaviour and cognition, without ever considering that my own experiences – social missteps, the peculiar alignment of my thoughts, the disconnection from the normative expectations of interaction – were similarly diagnostic. Max’s journey, initially marked by an impulse to normalise Ezra, mirrored my own ongoing attempts to adjust myself to a world that seemed perpetually out of sync with my internal compass.

My success in life had never been diminished by my differences, but rather by the ongoing isolation of feeling misunderstood. I had spent years wondering why I could not connect with others the way I wanted to, never fully grasping that the issue was not me failing to adapt, but rather the world failing to understand my way of being. My diagnosis is not a judgement of inadequacy but an affirmation of the loneliness I had long experienced. My life has not been defined by deficiency, but by the quiet and enduring challenge of seeking connection in a world that did not understand my differences.