People with autism learn very young to hold on to thought and to play those thoughts over and over again. We like to listen to the same songs and watch parts of movies until we’re told to knock it off, please. For me, “the same” feels good in my mind. I have to work at going forward. I have little desire to spend too much time thinking about the future unless it is highly anticipated events.
Unfortunately I live in a life that makes living on my own difficult to imagine. I don’t picture a future, I only see what was negative. Why our minds often attach us to our inside failure and lost friends and acquaintances is debated in science, psychology and theology.
All people string events in a chain, however autism processes it in an open and free flowing way that keeps it playing over again and again.
My greatest challenge—my very most common, soaring, talked about issue —is one we all fight to recognize and heal: How to forgive others, and more importantly, how to forgive ourselves. Rolling over and over the past blinds us to the light we have right here in this moment. Cutting the chains that bind us requires dimming the focus our broken hearts command and watching the live screen of life, seeing our choosing is writing our story from now on.
