Q35 Why are your sleep patterns all messed up?
Quite a few people with autism find it hard to fall asleep at night. When I was little there were times when I couldn’t fall asleep either, even when it got really late. This seems strange, because we human beings aren’t nocturnal animals, right? But now I rarely have this problem. The cure might simply be time. People who can’t sleep may appear to be okay on the outside, while inside they’re exhausted.
I don’t really know what causes sleeping disorders, so all I want to ask you to do here is, if your autistic child isn’t going to sleep at a decent hour, please don’t tell them off—even if it goes on night after night after night.
Never-ending Summer
People with autism can be restless and fidgety all the time, almost to the point of it looking comical. It’s as if it’s summer for us the whole year round. Most people look pretty relaxed when they’re not doing anything in particular, but we’re always zooming off madly like a kid who’s late for school. We’re like cicadas who’ll miss the summer unless we hurry, hurry, hurry. Bzzzzzz, bzzzzzz, crick-crick, crick-crick, chirrrrrr … We cry our hearts out, shout our heads off, and never rest in our battle against time.
As autumn comes around the year’s corner, the cicadas’ lives come to an end. Human beings still have plenty of time in store, but we who have autism, who are semidetached from the flow of time, we are always uneasy from sunrise to sunset. Just like the cicadas, we cry out, we call out.
Q36 Why do you like spinning?
Us people with autism often enjoy spinning ourselves around and around. We like spinning whatever object comes to hand, for that matter. Can you understand what’s so much fun about spinning?
Everyday scenery doesn’t rotate, so things that do spin simply fascinate us. Just watching spinning things fills us with a sort of everlasting bliss—for the time we sit watching them, they rotate with perfect regularity. Whatever object we spin, this is always true. Unchanging things are comforting, and there’s something beautiful about that.
Q37 Why do you flap your fingers and hands in front of your face?
Flapping our fingers and hands in front of our faces allows the light to enter our eyes in a pleasant, filtered fashion. Light that reaches us like this feels soft and gentle, like moonlight. But “unfiltered” direct light sort of “needles” its way into the eyeballs of people with autism in sharp straight lines, so we see too many points of light. This actually makes our eyes hurt.
This said, we couldn’t get by without light. Light wipes away our tears, and when we’re bathed in light, we’re happy. Perhaps we just love how its particles pour down on us. Light particles somehow console us. I admit this is something I can’t quite explain using logic.
Q38 Why do you line up your toy cars and blocks?
Lining things up is the best fun. Watching running water is great fun, too. Other kids seem to enjoy games about pretending and make-believe, but as a person with autism I never really see the point of them.
What I care about—in fact I’m pretty obsessive about this—is the order things come in, and different ways of lining them up. It’s actually the lines and the surfaces of things like jigsaw puzzles that we love, and things like that. When we’re playing in this way, our brains feel refreshed and clear.
Q39 Why do you like being in the water?
We just want to go back. To the distant, distant past. To a primeval era, in fact, before human beings even existed. All people with autism feel the same about this one, I reckon. Aquatic life-forms came into being and evolved, but why did they then have to emerge onto dry land, and turn into human beings who chose to lead lives ruled by time? These are real mysteries to me.
In the water it’s so quiet and I’m so free and happy there. Nobody hassles us in the water, and it’s as if we’ve got all the time in the world. Whether we stay in one place or whether we’re swimming about, when we’re in the water we can really be at one with the pulse of time. Outside of the water there’s always too much stimulation for our eyes and our ears, and it’s impossible for us to guess how long one second is or how long an hour takes.
People with autism have no freedom. The reason is that we are a different kind of human, born with primeval senses. We are outside the normal flow of time, we can’t express ourselves, and our bodies are hurtling us through life. If only we could go back to that distant, distant, watery past—then we’d all be able to live as contentedly and as freely as you lot!
Q40 Do you like commercials on TV?
This is a difficult one. I’m not quite sure what the answer is. If you figured that we must like TV commercials just because the slogans and catchphrases roll off our tongues so easily, that wouldn’t be the full story. We remember them as well as we do because they’re on so often, and sure, we dash to the TV when a familiar commercial comes on. We enjoy watching the ones we know well. How come you people without autism aren’t that keen on TV commercials? They’re on again and again and again, after all—so isn’t seeing them a bit like being visited by old and dear friends?
I’m not a big fan of TV commercials in and of themselves, but when a familiar ad comes on, I get quite excited about it. This is because when a familiar one comes on I already know what it’s talking about, and I feel sort of soothed knowing that they never last for long. The reason why we look happy to your eyes while we’re watching TV ads must be that at all other times we’re less stable and calm, and our faces are blanker. Perhaps what you’re getting when you look at us watching commercials on the TV is a brief glimpse of the Real Us.
Q41 What kind of TV programs do you enjoy?
Even at my age, I still enjoy this TV program for kindergarten kids, Watching with Mother. Reading that, you must be thinking, “Ah, this guy’s just a big kid, after all!” But that’s not the case, in my humble opinion. Sure, we may appear to resemble small children—our fondness for gentle, kind, beautiful things—but we tend to prefer simpler, more straightforward stories, not because of childishness, but because we can more easily guess what’s going to happen next. This allows us to stay more relaxed and more engaged. Plus the simpler stories tend to repeat themselves a lot, so when we get to a familiar scene we can get all excited and make a happy fuss.
People with autism get quite a kick out of repetition. If I was asked how come, my reply would be this: “When you’re in a strange new place, aren’t yourelieved too if you run into a friendly, familiar face?”
What we just don’t do are disputes, bargaining or criticizing others. We’re totally helpless in these scenarios.