AUTISM AWARENESS: UNSPOKEN

I’m sitting by the swing with Luke like we do most days while he waits for the bus.

It’s an ordinary day and things are going good.

Then he starts crying. A sad hard cry. Not violent or hysteric. The kind of cry you’d have if you were utterly heartbroken.

I’ll never know why.

I ask him. He just gives me a scripted response, “I am sad because I’m tired.” It’s the same response he gives if he’s angry.

He doesn’t want a hug or comfort. He bristles against the burden of those kind of social interactions aside from an occasional “big tickle” when he’s feeling silly.

If I ask him what he wants he’ll say “I want swing” or “I want my Ipad” (the things he already has…again, scripted… giving the answer he thinks I want to here). He’s never told me about anything in his past. Ever. When I ask him what he did at school, he says “I learned.” Always. Every time.

If I dig deeper, it’s mostly other memorized responses.

I’m not sure he has the ability to speak about the past. His therapists and such have given up trying.

He also won’t ever tell me how he feels. If you ask if he’s sick, he’ll say “head hurts.”

Always, everytime.

He’ll say it quickly to shut you up.

Occasionally, we’ll get a call from school where they’ll report, “he says his head hurts.”

Yeah, maybe it does, but not because he says it.

Luke does talk about the now. He talks about the future. He asks about it. He obsesses over it. He’ll ask me ten times in a row what time school is. He’ll ask me five more times if we’re going to Aunt Donna or Aunt Roxanne’s house.

He watches the clock constantly. At exactly 10am he’ll ask for waffles, every day. At 10:30pm, he’ll ask for “Daddy, narration…”, a sort of bedtime story we do watching YouTube.

He’s had tantrums too. Bad ones. Scary ones. Ones where his self-injurious behavior kicked in. Ones where he bites and claws and pushes.

But even after twenty-minutes of rage… he flips the page and calmly goes back to normal, thinking about the future… “Daddy, narration at 10:30pm”

So here he is, sad… watching a YouTube clip of South Park… in tears…

He’ll get on the bus soon. Maybe he’ll happy, maybe he won’t. I’ll never know unless the teachers report back — and they rarely do as he gets older.

By the time he gets on the bus, maybe he’ll have turned the page, leaving the past in the past… and moving forward…