Time, in the mind of a person with autism, is very difficult to understand. So problematic, it almost has us wondering if clocks are really useful at all.
I don’t join the passage of time meeting minutes or hours. When I am with people I love, I look at the clock and time runs away from me too fast. The clock gives no explanation for the hours that disappear like minutes in my mind.
And I put it in my head “just a minute” because I am so often told to wait for that amount of time; yet, it never is 60 seconds and can feel more like a long slow hour. Perhaps the most normal person knows that judging time is related to letting ourselves experience the most beautiful things in the rushing wind of sensation, feeling it slipping past us.
For those with autism, the same rushing highly fleeting moments lose their place on the clock. We never lose this mainly fearful feeling in our minds that the great time will leave and that bad moments or difficult occurrences will run into forever.
Like powerful images, time presses memories into our hearts. Length of time never fades both fantastic and fearful events in our life. And time cannot possibly move us from any moment we love.
