But now, even if somebody developed a medicine to cure autism, I might well choose to stay as I am. Why have I come around to thinking this way?
To give the short version, I’ve learned that every human being, with or without disabilities, needs to strive to do their best, and by striving for happiness you will arrive at happiness. For us, you see, having autism is normal—so we can’t know for sure what your “normal” is even like. But so long as we can learn to love ourselves, I’m not sure how much it matters whether we’re normal or autistic.
Earthling and Autisman
I was traveling with my family to Hokkaido by airplane. It was the first time I’d flown for many years, and I was surprised to find that the sensation of gravity pulling at my body was really pleasant. I hadn’t noticed this the time I’d flown before, because I was still a little kid back then. Anyway, I made up this very short story …
Once upon a time on a small, green, quiet planet.
Autisman :So—welcome to my home world.
Earthling :Don’t you feel weighed down? It feels as if I’ve got weights strapped to my arms and legs.
Autisman :Ah, but on your planet, Ialways feel as if I’m swimming around in space, weightlessly.
Earthling :Okay. Now I understand you. I really understand.
If only there was a planet somewhere with a gravitational pull perfect for people with autism, then we’d be able to move around freely.
Q25 What’s the reason you jump?
What do you think I’m feeling when I’m jumping up and down clapping my hands? I bet you think I’m not really feeling anything much beyond the manic glee all over my face.
But when I’m jumping, it’s as if my feelings are going upward to the sky. Really, my urge to be swallowed up by the sky is enough to make my heart quiver. When I’m jumping, I can feel my body parts really well, too—my bounding legs and my clapping hands—and that makes me feel so, so good.
So that’s one reason why I jump, and recently I’ve noticed another reason. People with autism react physically to feelings of happiness and sadness. So when something happens that affects me emotionally, my body seizes up as if struck by lightning.
“Seizing up” doesn’t mean that my muscles literally get stiff and immobile—rather, it means that I’m not free to move the way I want. So by jumping up and down, it’s as if I’m shaking loose the ropes that are tying up my body. When I jump, I feel lighter, and I think the reason my body is drawn skyward is that the motion makes me want to change into a bird and fly off to some faraway place.
But constrained both by ourselves and by the people around us, all we can do is tweet-tweet, flap our wings and hop around in a cage. Ah, if only I could just flap my wings and soar away, into the big blue yonder, over the hills and far away!
Q26 Why do you write letters in the air?
People with autism often write letters in the air. Are you trying to tell us something?or Are you thinking about something?you must be wondering, I guess. In my case, I’m writing to confirm what I want to remember. As I write, I’m recalling what I’ve seen—not as scenes, but as letters, signs and symbols. Letters, symbols and signs are my closest allies because they never change. They just stay as they are, fixed in my memory. And whenever we’re lonely or happy, in the same way that you might half hum a song to yourself, we summon up our letters. When I’m writing them out, I can forget everything else. I’m not alone when I’m with letters. Letters and symbols are much easier for us to grasp than spoken words, and we can be with them whenever we want.
Q27 Why do people with autism often cup their ears? Is it when there’s a lot of noise?
There are certain noises you don’t notice but that really get to us. The problem here is that you don’t understand how these noises affect us. It’s not quite that the noises grate on our nerves. It’s more to do with a fear that if we keep listening, we’ll lose all sense of where we are. At times like these, it feels as if the ground is shaking and the landscape around us starts coming to get us, and it’s absolutely terrifying. So cupping our ears is a measure we take to protect ourselves and get back our grip on where we are.
The noises that get to people with autism vary from person to person. I don’t know how we’d cope if we couldn’t cup our ears. Me too, I cup my ears sometimes, though I’ve gradually gotten used to the noises by pressing my hands over my ears less and less heavily. Some people can overcome the problem by slowly becoming accustomed to the noises, I guess. What matters most is that we learn to feel safe and secure even when the noises strike us.
Q28 Why do you move your arms and legs about in that awkward way?
In my gym class, the teacher tells me to do things like “Stretch your arms!” and “Bend at the knees!” But I don’t always know what my arms and legs are up to, not exactly. For me, I have no clear sensation of where my arms and legs are attached, or how to make them do what I’m telling them to do. It’s as if my limbs are a mermaid’s rubbery tail.
I think the reason why some kids with autism try to get hold of an object by “borrowing” someone else’s hand is that they can’t tell how far they need to extend their own arms to reach the object. They’re not too sure how to actually grab the object either, because we have problems perceiving and gauging distances. By constant practice, however, we should be able to overcome this difficulty.
That said, I still can’t even tell when I’ve stepped on someone’s foot or jostled someone out of my way. So something connected with my sense of touch might be miswired too.
Q29 Why do you do things the rest of us don’t? Do your senses work differently in some way?
“Why won’t you wear shoes?” “Why will you only wear half-length sleeves?” “Why do you always shave off or pluck out your body hair? Doesn’t it hurt?” Every time us people with autism do something that other people wouldn’t, it must make you wonder why. Do people with autism possess different senses? Or do these actions just give us some sort of kick?
To my mind, both answers are barking up the wrong tree. The reason could be that we’ve gotten into such a state that if we don’tdo these actions, we’ll go to pieces completely. If you talk about someone’s “senses working differently,” it means that the person’s nervous system is somehow malfunctioning. But I believe that in our case, there’s nothing wrong with us at a nerve level. Instead, it’s actually our emotions that trigger the abnormal reactions. It’s only natural for anyone stuck in a bad place to try to get out of it, and it’s my own despair that causes me to misread the messages my senses are sending me. If all of my attention gets focused on one area of my body, it’s as if all of my body’s energy is concentrated there too, which is when my senses all report that something in that area is going badly wrong.