The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

by Naoki Higashida

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 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.

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.

For people with autism, living itself is a battle.

Yep!

One of the biggest misunderstandings you have about us is your belief that our feelings aren’t as subtle and complex as yours. Because how we behave can appear so childish in your eyes, you tend to assume that we’re childish on the inside, too. But of course, we experience the same emotions that you do.

What am I going to be, if my autism can never be cured? When I was little, this question was always a big, big worry. I used to be afraid that as long as I had autism, I’d never be able to live properly as a human being. There were so many things I couldn’t do like other people, and having to apologize day in, day out totally drained me of hope.

However hard an autistic life is, however sad it can be, so long as there’s hope we can stick at it.