Being autistic, my world is me as a spider, set within a web of stimuli. A quiet room, to you, may be a vague nothingness suffuse with silence, where you’d become bored.
To an autistic, I feel the room. I feel the air move, the walls vibrate as the world outside rumbles past, rattles, puffs, pushes upon me. Echoes upon echoes of living twinge me, I don’t just hear it, but feel it, as a twang on a guitar, a pluck on a violin. A spider centered in a web, I feel the life play upon strands of air.
I feel it all.
An autistic doesn’t know silence. Autistics get no reprieve, for us, meditation is a fight with clicks, clangs, bubbles and pops. In your quiet, I hear blood flow, heart beat, breath.
