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

by Naoki Higashida

the most unendurable aspect of autism is the knowledge that he makes other people stressed out and depressed?

The conclusion is that both emotional poverty and an aversion to company are not symptoms of autism but consequences of autism, its harsh lockdown on self-expression and society’s near-pristine ignorance about what’s happening inside autistic heads.

I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself, and start thinking how much tougher life was for my son, and what I could do to make it less tough.

My memory, however, is more like a pool of dots. I’m always “picking up” these dots—by asking my questions—so I can arrive back at the memory that the dots represent.

Firing the question back is a way of sifting through our memories to pick up clues about what the questioner is asking. We understand the question okay, but we can’t answer it until we fish out the right “memory picture” in our heads.

we are forever being treated like babies. I guess this is because we seem to act younger than our true age, but whenever anyone treats me as if I’m still a toddler, it really hacks me off.

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.

This is because we can’t read the story and imagine the story at the same time. Just the act of reading costs us a lot of effort—sorting out the words and somehow voicing them is already

The reason we need so much time isn’t necessarily because we haven’t understood, but because by the time it’s our turn to speak, the reply we wanted to make has often upped and vanished from our heads.

Isn’t there a belief out there that if a person is using verbal language, it follows that the person is saying what they want to say? It’s thanks to this belief that those of us with autism get even more locked up inside ourselves.

don’t assume that every single word we say is what we intended.

And basically, my feelings are pretty much the same as yours.

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

Both staying still and moving when we’re told to are tricky—it’s as if we’re remote-controlling a faulty robot.

Can you imagine how your life would be if you couldn’t talk?

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. If you can’t make out what you’re seeing, it’s the same as not seeing anything at all.

this idea people have that so long as we’re keeping eye contact while they’re talking to us, that alone means we’re taking in every word. Ha! If only that was all it took, my disability would have been cured a long, long time ago…

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.

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.

So it would help us a great deal if you could just use our names first to get our attention, before you start talking to us.

For a person with autism, the idea of what’s fun or funny doesn’t match yours, I guess.

More generally, for a person with autism, being touched by someone else means that the toucher is exercising control over the person’s body, which not even its owner can control properly. It’s as if we lose who we are. Think about it—that’s terrifying!

try to see these “highs” as a stronger version of those times when you remember something funny and can’t help but chuckle about it.

When I see I’ve made a mistake, my mind shuts down. I cry, I scream, I make a huge fuss, and I just can’t think straight about anything anymore. However tiny the mistake, for me it’s a massive deal, as if Heaven and Earth have been turned upside down.

I get swallowed up in the moment, and can’t tell the right response from the wrong response. All I know is that I have to get out of the situation as soon as I can, so I don’t drown. To get away, I’ll do anything. Crying, screaming and throwing things, hitting out even…

we never really feel that our bodies are our own. They’re always acting up and going outside our control. Stuck

Whenever we’ve done something wrong, we get told off or laughed at, without even being able to apologize, and we end up hating ourselves and despairing about our own lives, again and again and again. It’s impossible not to wonder why we were born into this world as human beings at all.

The hardest ordeal for us is the idea that we are causing grief for other people. We can put up with our own hardships okay, but the thought that our lives are the source of other people’s unhappiness, that’s plain unbearable.

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

when I’m jumping, it’s as if my feelings are going upward to the sky.

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.

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.

Letters and symbols are much easier for us to grasp than spoken words, and we can be with them whenever we want.

But couldn’t you also say that they just need more time than the average person to come to appreciate unknown types of food?

Exactly what the next moment has in store for us never stops being a big, big worry.

Unchanging things are comforting, and there’s something beautiful about that.

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.

“When you’re in a strange new place, aren’t you relieved too if you run into a friendly, familiar face?”

Numbers are fixed, unchanging things. The number 1, for example, is only ever, ever the number 1. That simplicity, that clearness, it’s so comforting to us.

Invisible things like human relationships and ambiguous expressions, however, these are difficult for us people with autism to get our heads around.

Always lurking at the back of my mind is an anxiety about whether or not I’m perceiving things in the same way that people without autism do.

To be able to study like other people, we need more time and different strategies and approaches. And those people who help us study, they actually need more patience than we do. They need to understand our eagerness to learn, even though from the outside we may not appear to be keen students.

another reason I don’t do well in races is that I don’t really get any pleasure out of beating other people.

“All human beings have their hardships to bear, so never swerve away from the path you’re on.”

When we are stopped from doing what we want, we may well make a terrible song and dance about it, but in time we’ll get used to the idea. And until we reach that point, we’d like you to stick with it, and stick with us.

And the black crow looked no less perfect against the deep blue than the white dove.

❤️

But the fact is, doing the action without the cue can be really, really tough.

because I feel so much more relaxed when I am moving, it took me quite a while to work out exactly what their “calm down” even meant.