How Autism Feels ~ December 20, 2005 ~ by Kate Goldfield
(a senior at Goucher College wrote this for the Baltimore Sun)

When I was a freshman in college, someone asked a friend of
mine if I was autistic. Having almost no knowledge about what
autism was other than a dim memory of a "Rain Man"-like
character rocking in the corner and nonverbal, I was appalled.
How could anyone possibly think I was like that?

Two years later, I rediscovered the subject of autism after seeing
a Lifetime movie about it. I was intrigued by some of the
concepts in it and began reading everything I could find about
autism, purely out of intellectual interest.

I awakened to the notion that a lot of what I was reading sounded
like me. I learned that autism is actually a spectrum disorder,
which means that there are people who are affected by it on
different levels. I discovered something called Asperger's
Syndrome, which is high-functioning autism and markedly
different in its presentation from what we could call classic
autism.

People with Asperger's Syndrome, or AS, I learned, have trouble
reading social cues and understanding nonverbal language.
They have trouble knowing what to say in conversations, when to
start speaking and when to stop speaking. They fail to notice
subtle conversational cues like change in tone of voice or body
posture. In fact, they have trouble with social language in
general.

They are often highly intelligent, especially with special interests
that they pursue, but have trouble conversing. Because of this,
they have trouble making friends and many will go through all of
high school and college without having ever really made a good
friend.

Sensory issues are very prevalent in people with AS. They can
hear the sound of a person tapping their pencil from across the
room. The smell of cigarette smoke or cleaning agents will drive
them crazy. Lights are either too bright or too dim and they often
have a difficult time finding clothes that they can bear wearing
because of the way they feel on their skin. Often, they will have
sensory overloads and need some time out from an activity to
process all that is happening to them.

For this reason, eye contact can hurt. Social interactions for
someone with AS can be like trying to put together a 500-piece
puzzle before the time is up. We even speak differently; our
conversational manner tends to be quite genuine. We say what
we're thinking.

It is this genuineness, though, that endears us to many people.
We don't play guessing games with people; we say what we
mean. As employees and friends, we are loyal. We have the
ability to focus completely on tasks of interest for hours at a time
and also to remember huge amounts of facts related to our
interests quite easily.

When I was diagnosed with AS last summer, it came as an
enormous relief. I finally knew why I had always hovered on the
outside of social life, always wanting to join in but somehow
never being able to figure out quite how. I could find other people
who understood me and were like me.

Unfortunately, many people are not as fortunate as I was to gain
this understanding about myself. There is comparatively little
information available about AS. It was put into the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Disorders (the official handbook of what is
and what is not a psychological disorder) in 1994. There are
many people out there who wonder why they are different, who
are desperate to find the missing piece, but have never heard of
AS.

I explain all of this just to give the average person an idea of what
it is like to live on the autistic spectrum. I feel that it is only by
learning about others' struggles and truly trying to understand
them that we can build a world that is safe for everyone - a world
where we can grow and improve because we are taking
advantage of everyone's strengths, not just the strengths of a
selective few. That's the kind of world I want to live in. It's the kind
of world we all want to live in.