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

by Naoki Higashida

But once you know the other person’s inner self, both of you can be that much closer.

I do understand things, but my way of remembering them works differently from everyone else’s.

In “set-pattern” conversations, we manage much better; although, of course, when it comes to talking about your feelings, these patterns are no use at all.

True compassion is about not bruising the other person’s self-respect.

When there’s a gap between what I’m thinking and what I’m saying, it’s because the words coming out of my mouth are the only ones I can access at that time.

Just because some of us can make sounds or utter words, it doesn’t follow automatically that what we’ve said is really what we wanted to say.

Our feelings are the same as everyone else’s, but we can’t find a way to express them.

it’s not that we won’t talk—it’s that we can’t talk and we’re suffering because of 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.

It’s this impulse kids with autism have to dart off to anything that looks remotely interesting: this is what we have to tackle.

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.

even when someone’s right here in front of me, I still don’t notice when they’re talking to me.

if we’re surprised, or feel tense, or embarrassed, we just freeze up and become unable to show any emotion whatsoever.

What makes us smile from the inside is seeing something beautiful, or a memory that makes us laugh. This generally happens when there’s nobody watching us. And at night, on our own, we might burst out laughing underneath the duvet, or roar with laughter in an empty room…when we don’t need to think about other people or anything else, that’s when we wear our natural expressions.

But so long as we can learn to love ourselves, I’m not sure how much it matters whether we’re normal or autistic.

If a person without autism is going through a hard time, he or she can talk it over with someone, or make a ruckus about it. But in our case, that’s not an option—we can never make ourselves understood.

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.