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

by Naoki Higashida

It is an intellectual and emotional task of Herculean, Sisyphean and Titanic proportions, and if the autistic people who undertake it aren’t heroes, then I don’t know what heroism is, never mind that the heroes have no choice.

The three characters used for the word “autism” in Japanese signify “self,” “shut” and “illness.”

Our voices are like our breathing, I feel, just coming out of our mouths, unconsciously.

But there’s another reason for our repeated questioning: it lets us play with words. We aren’t good at conversation, and however hard we try, we’ll never speak as effortlessly as you do. The big exception, however, is words or phrases we’re very familiar with. Repeating these is great fun. It’s like a game of catch with a ball. Unlike the words we’re ordered to say, repeating questions we already know the answers to can be a pleasure—it’s playing with sound and rhythm.

Alex?

“How many times do I have to tell you?!” Us people with autism hear that all the time. Me, I’m always being told off for doing the same old things. It may look as if we’re being bad out of naughtiness, but honestly, we’re not. When we’re being told off, we feel terrible that yet again we’ve done what we’ve been told not to. But when the chance comes once more, we’ve pretty much forgotten about the last time and we just get carried away yet again. It’s as if something that isn’t us is urging us on.

being able to share what I think allows me to understand that I, too, exist in this world as a human being.

To me, making eye contact with someone I’m talking to feels a bit creepy, so I tend to avoid it.

What we’re actually looking at is the other person’s voice. Voices may not be visible things, but we’re trying to listen to the other person with all of our sense organs. When we’re fully focused on working out what the heck it is you’re saying, our sense of sight sort of zones out.

I can’t believe that anyone born as a human being really wants to be left all on their own, not really. No, for people with autism, what we’re anxious about is that we’re causing trouble for the rest of you, or even getting on your nerves. This is why it’s hard for us to stay around other people. This is why we often end up being left on our own. The truth is, we’d love to be with other people. But because things never, ever go right, we end up getting used to being alone, without even noticing this is happening.

A person who’s looking at a mountain far away doesn’t notice the prettiness of a dandelion in front of them. A person who’s looking at a dandelion in front of them doesn’t see the beauty of a mountain far away. To us, people’s voices are a bit like that. It’s very difficult for us to know someone’s there and that they’re talking to us, just by their voice.

just use our names first to get our attention, before you start talking to us.

when we don’t need to think about other people or anything else, that’s when we wear our natural expressions.

Here’s how I have to go about things: 1. I think about what I’m going to do. 2. I visualize how I’m going to do it. 3. I encourage myself to get going.

You can’t always tell just by looking at people with autism, but we never really feel that our bodies are our own. They’re always acting up and going outside our control. Stuck inside them, we’re struggling so hard to make them do what we tell them.

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.

it’s actually our emotions that trigger the abnormal reactions.

When you see an object, it seems that you see it as an entire thing first, and only afterward do its details follow on. But for people with autism, the details jump straight out at us first of all, and then only gradually, detail by detail, does the whole image sort of float up into focus.

We feel obliged to do everything we can to protect ourselves against uncertainty, and wearing comfy clothes we like is one way of doing this.

Hunter baseball cap

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.

My brain is always sending me off on little missions, whether or not I want to do them.

Kids with autism do what we’re not supposed to do again and again, however many times you’ve told us not to. We understand what you’re telling us okay, but somehow we just repeat the sequence. This happens to me, too, and I’ve thought about how the sequence gets imprinted. First I do some action or other that I’m not allowed to; then something else happens as a result; and then I get told off for it; and last, my impulse to re-create this sequence trumps the knowledge that I’ve been told not to do it, and I end up doing it again. The next thing I know, I feel a sort of electrical buzz in my brain, which is very pleasant—no other sensation is quite the same.

People with autism are sometimes unable to move on to their next action without a verbal prompt.

please don’t use visual things like pictures on our schedules, because then the activities on the schedules, and their times and timings, get imprinted too vividly onto our memories. And when that happens, we end up stressing ourselves over whether what we’re doing now is or isn’t matching up with what was on the schedule. In my case, I end up checking the time so often that I’m no longer able to enjoy what I’m doing.

autism isn’t a fixed point on a ruler from mild to severe, that autism’s multiplex nature pretty much dooms any attempts to quantify it from the outset.