I know I have lots of pleasant memories, but my flashback memories are always bad ones, and from out of the blue I get incredibly distressed, burst into tears or just start panicking. Never mind that it’s a memory from ages ago—the same helpless feeling I had then overflows and floods out and it just won’t stop.

So when this happens, just let us have a good cry, and then we can get back onto our feet. Maybe the racket we make will get on your nerves a bit, but please try to understand what we’re going through, and stay with us.

Q20 Why do you make a huge fuss over tiny mistakes?

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. For example, when I pour water into a glass, I can’t stand it if I spill even a drop.

It must be hard for you to understand why this could make me so unhappy. And even to me, I know really that it’s not such a big deal. But it’s almost impossible for me to keep my emotions contained. Once I’ve made a mistake, the fact of it starts rushing toward me like a tsunami. And then, like trees or houses being destroyed by the tsunami, Iget destroyed by the shock. 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 …

Finally, finally, I’ll calm down and come back to myself. Then I see no sign of the tsunami attack—only the wreckage I’ve made. And when I see that, I hate myself. I just hate myself.

Q21 Why don’t you do what you’re told right away?

There are times when I can’t do what I want to, or what I have to. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it. I just can’t get it all together, somehow. Even performing one straightforward task, I can’t get started as smoothly as you can. 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.

How smoothly I can do the job depends on how smoothly this process goes.

There are times when I can’t act, even though I really, badly want to. This is when my body is beyond my control. I don’t mean I’m ill or anything. It’s as if my whole body, except for my soul, feels as if it belongs to somebody else and I have zero control over it. I don’t think you could ever imagine what an agonizing sensation this is.

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.

Q22 Do you hate it when we make you do things?

Us kids with autism would like you to watch out for us—meaning, “Please never give up on us.” The reason I say “watch out for us” is that we can be made stronger just by the fact you’re watching.

Just going by how we respond, it’s difficult for you to tell if we’ve understood what you’re saying or not. And often we still can’t do something however often you’ve shown us how to do it.

That’s just the way we are. On our own we simply don’t know how to get things done the same way you do them. But, like everyone else, we want to do the best we possibly can. When we sense you’ve given up on us, it makes us feel miserable. So please keep helping us, through to the end.

Q23 What’s the worst thing about having autism?

You never notice. Really, you have no idea quite how miserable we are. The people who are looking after us may say, “Minding these kids is reallyhard work, you know!” but for us—who are always causing the problems and are useless at pretty much everything we try to do—you can’t begin to imagine how miserable and sad we get.

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.

But I ask you, those of you who are with us all day, not to stress yourselves out because of us. When you do this, it feels as if you’re denying any value at all that our lives may have—and that saps the spirit we need to soldier on. 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.

Q24 Would you like to be “normal”?

What would we do if there was some way that we could be “normal”? Well, I bet the people around us—our parents and teachers—would be ecstatic with joy and say, “Hallelujah! We’ll change them back to normal right now!” And for ages and ages I badly wanted to be normal, too. Living with special needs is so depressing and so relentless; I used to think it’d be the best thing if I could just live my life like a normal person.

But now, even if somebody developed a medicine to cure autism, I might well choose to stay as I am. Why have I come around to thinking this way?

To give the short version, 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. For us, you see, having autism is normal—so we can’t know for sure what your “normal” is even like. But so long as we can learn to love ourselves, I’m not sure how much it matters whether we’re normal or autistic.

Earthling and Autisman

I was traveling with my family to Hokkaido by airplane. It was the first time I’d flown for many years, and I was surprised to find that the sensation of gravity pulling at my body was really pleasant. I hadn’t noticed this the time I’d flown before, because I was still a little kid back then. Anyway, I made up this very short story …

Once upon a time on a small, green, quiet planet.

Autisman :So—welcome to my home world.

Earthling :Don’t you feel weighed down? It feels as if I’ve got weights strapped to my arms and legs.

Autisman :Ah, but on your planet, Ialways feel as if I’m swimming around in space, weightlessly.

Earthling :Okay. Now I understand you. I really understand.

If only there was a planet somewhere with a gravitational pull perfect for people with autism, then we’d be able to move around freely.

Q25 What’s the reason you jump?

What do you think I’m feeling when I’m jumping up and down clapping my hands? I bet you think I’m not really feeling anything much beyond the manic glee all over my face.

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’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.

So that’s one reason why I jump, and recently I’ve noticed another reason. 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.

“Seizing up” doesn’t mean that my muscles literally get stiff and immobile—rather, it means that I’m not free to move the way I want. So by jumping up and down, it’s as if I’m shaking loose the ropes that are tying up my body. 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.