Q32 When you look at something, what do you see first?

So how do people with autism see the world, exactly? We, and only we, can ever know the answer to that one! Sometimes I actually pity you for not being able to see the beauty of the world in the same way we do. Really, our vision of the world can be incredible, just incredible …

You might reply, “But the eyes we all use to look at things work the same way, right?” Fair enough, you may be looking at the exact same things as us, but howwe perceive them appears to be different. 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. What part of the whole image captures our eyes first depends on a number of things. When a color is vivid or a shape is eye-catching, then that’s the detail that claims our attention, and then our hearts kind of drown in it, and we can’t concentrate on anything else.

Every single thing has its own unique beauty. People with autism get to cherish this beauty, as if it’s a kind of blessing given to us. Wherever we go, whatever we do, we can never be completely lonely. We may look like we’re not with anyone, but we’re always in the company of friends.

Q33 Is it difficult for you to choose appropriate clothing?

Whether it’s hot or whether it’s cold, I always have a hard time choosing the right clothing, as well as putting extra layers on or peeling them off accordingly. Some people with autism keep wearing exactly the same type of clothes all through the year, in fact. What’s the deal here? What’s so tricky about putting on or taking off clothes as you need to?

Well—search me. It might be scorching hot, and we knowit’s scorching hot, but it simply might not occur to a person with autism that taking off a layer is a good idea. It’s not that we don’t understand the logic—it’s just that we somehow forget. We forget what we’re wearing, and how to make ourselves cooler.

I can mop the sweat off my face with my handkerchief, at least—I’m used to doing this now—but adjusting my clothing is a taller order because the situation is often changing. So I can well sympathize with those people with autism who prefer to wear the same clothes day in, day out. Clothes are like an extension of our bodies, an outer skin, and so the day-in, day-outers find it reassuring to stick to the same outfit. 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.

Q34 Do you have a sense of time?

Time is a continuous thing with no clear boundaries, which is why it’s so confusing for people with autism. Perhaps you’re puzzled about why time intervals and the speed of time are so hard for us to gauge, and why time seems such slippery stuff for people with autism.

For us, time is as difficult to grasp as picturing a country we’ve never been to. You can’t capture the passing of time on a piece of paper. The hands of a clock may show that some time has passed, but the fact that we can’t actually feelit makes us nervous.

Because I have autism, I know all about this and I feel it myself—believe me, this is scary stuff. We’re anxious about what kind of condition we’ll be in at a future point, and what problems we’ll trigger. People who have effortless control over themselves and their bodies never really experience this fear.

For us, one second is infinitely long—yet twenty-four hours can hurtle by in a flash. Time can only be fixed in our memories in the form of visual scenes. For this reason there’s not a lot of difference between one second and twenty-four hours. Exactly what the next moment has in store for us never stops being a big, big worry.

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.