The Electricity of Every Living Thing

“The term ‘spectrum’ is a poor way of capturing the sheer diversity of our experience. If you want to learn about autism, read as many perspectives as you can, and get ready to put aside all your preconceptions. I wrote Electricity is the white heat of transformation, flooded with new self-knowledge. I’ve learned a lot since then. I have realized that I was trying to crowbar myself into a life made for someone else, not me, and it was frequently making me sick. I have accepted, finally, that I need to take better care of myself, because I cannot be fixed or reformed, and I don’t want to be. Those insights—that deep embodied learning—are what I poured into my book Wintering. They have helped all kinds of people, but they are rooted in my neurodivergent perception of the world. Wintering is what you come to know if you are autistic, and you learn to survive. This book shows the painful process of getting there.”

“I talk about spending my days under assault from light and smell and noise, how people—the chaos of people—sends me skittering for cover. I talk about how I can’t bear to be touched, and how I can get physically sick, shivering, aching, from social contact.”

“The nothingness of the sea is what I came here for. It is empty, wide, rhythmic; it’s the ultimate antidote to the brash noise of people. Certainly, the sea is loud too, but it’s the sort of sound that has no meaning or sense, and therefore asks nothing of you. Mine is a fragile peace with the everyday world. Every scrap of noise—and I mean visual noise too, and the noise made by chaos and movement—drains me. Half an hour in a crowd or a noisy bar and I’m hollowed out entirely. But the noise of the sea nourishes me. It allows me to reset.”