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

constantly battling this impulse to run off and, compared to how it used to be, I’m slowly getting better at controlling it, I think. But I haven’t found a really effective way to fix this problem yet. Jogging and walking refresh my body, at least, and once refreshed, I kind of feel back home inside myself. My sense of gravity is restored, too, and that calms me down.

Q49 W HY DO YOU GET LOST SO OFTEN?
    I’ve already mentioned how I dash off as soon as I spot anything interesting. There’s a different reason for why we get lost so often, however, and I think it’s this: we don’t really know where we ought to be. You could tell us that we ought to follow someone else, or hold their hand, but the fact is that, with or without your suggestion, we’re still going to lose our way.
    Simply put, people with autism never, ever feel at ease, wherever we are. Because of this, we wander off – or run away – in search of some location where we
do
feel at ease. While we’re on this search, it doesn’t occur to us to consider how or where we’re going to end up. We get swallowed up by the illusion that unless we can find a place to belong, we are going to be all alone in the world. Then eventually we get lost, and have to be escorted back to the place we were at, or the person we were with, before.
    But our uneasy, unsettled feeling doesn’t go away. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to reach our Shangri-La, however. I know it exists only in the depths of the forest or at the bottom of the deep blue sea.



Q50 W HY DO YOU WANDER OFF FROM HOME?
    Once, when I was a little kid at kindergarten, I wandered off from home and had to be picked up by the police. Back then, in fact, I used to leave home quite regularly and, as I look back from this distance, I can think of several reasons why I did it. It wasn’t because I wanted to go out for a specific purpose, like wanting fresh air. It was because – this is hard to put into words – my body moved because it was lured outside by something there.
    As I was walking further from home, I didn’t feel any fear or anxiety. It came down to this: if I didn’t go outside, then I would cease to exist. Why? I can’t say, but I
had
to keep walking, on and on and on. Turning back was not permitted, because roads never come to an end. Roads speak to us people with autism, and invite us onwards. There’s not much logic in any of this, I know. Until someone brings us back home, we don’t know what we’ve done, and then we’re as shocked as anyone.
    I stopped wandering off from home on the day I very nearly got mown down by a car, because the fear of it made a deep impact on my memory. So when something drastic enough happens, I think we can rein in this habit of wandering off. Meanwhile, please keep an eye out for us …

Q51 W HY DO YOU REPEAT CERTAIN ACTIONS AGAIN AND AGAIN?
    The reason people with autism repeat actions isn’t simply because they enjoy what they’re doing. Watching us, some people can get shocked, as if we were possessed. However much you like doing something, it would normally be impossible to keep doing it as often as we do, right? But the repetition doesn’t come from our own free will. It’s more like our brains keep sending out the same order, time and time again. Then, while we’re repeating the action, we get to feel really good and incredibly comforted.
    From our standpoint, I feel a deep envy of people who can know what their own minds are saying, and who have the power to act accordingly. My brain is always sending me off on little missions, whether or not I want to do them. And if I don’t obey, then I have to fight a feeling of horror. Really, it’s like I’m being pushed over the brink into a kind of Hell.
    For people with autism, living itself is a battle.

Q52 W HY DON’T YOU DO WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO, EVEN AFTER BEING TOLD A MILLION TIMES?
    Kids with autism do what we’re not supposed to do again and again, however many times you’ve told us not to. We understand what you’re telling us okay, but somehow we just repeat the sequence. This happens to me, too, and I’ve thought about how the sequence gets imprinted. First I do some action or other that I’m not allowed to; then something else happens as a result; and then I get told off for it; and last, my impulse to recreate this sequence trumps the knowledge that I’ve been told not to do it, and I end up doing it again. The next thing I know, I feel a sort of