The Reason I Jump

I'm reading a book, called "The Reason I Jump". I'm not going to go on and on about it, although I'd like to, so here is the excerpt from Amazon:

     You’ve never read a book like The Reason I Jump. Written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart, very self-aware, and very charming thirteen-year-old boy with autism, it is a one-of-a-kind memoir that demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives, and responds in ways few of us can imagine. Parents and family members who never thought they could get inside the head of their autistic loved one at last have a way to break through to the curious, subtle, and complex life within.
     Using an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences, and thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud, Naoki answers even the most delicate questions that people want to know. 

I just want to share a few of the questions and answers that I enjoyed reading. I think they speak for themselves.

Question 42: Why do you memorize train timetables and calendars?

Because it is fun! We get a real kick out of numbers, us people with autism. 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.

Whoever reads any given timetable or calendar, its always, always the same. You can easily understand all of them by following the same set of rules. And when it comes to our favorite things, we can memorize these as easily as if they were jumping straight into out heads. Invisible things, like human relationships and ambiguous expressions, however, these are difficult for us people with autism to get our heads around.

Perhaps you're thinking that its no major effort for me to write these sentences, but that wouldnt be true at all. Always lurking at the back of my mind is an anxiety about whether or not I'm perceiving thing as in the same way that people without autism do.  So, via TV, books and just tuning into people around me, I'm constantly learning about how ordinary people are supposed to feel in given situations. And whenever I learn something new, I write a short story dealing with the situation in question. This way, with luck, it wont slip my mind.

Question 36: 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 is 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 first time we sit watching them, they rotate with perfect regularity. Whatever object we spin, this is always true. Unchanging things are comforting, and there is something beautiful about that.

Question 23: What is 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 really hard 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 ok, but the though that our lives are the source of other people's unhappiness, that's plain unbearable.

Hopefully the last question will make you stop and think for a moment. I know I did.