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Little did I know what would eventually dearly change in my life. It seems so long ago now. I came out of the darkness imposed by autism’s experts only 4.5 years ago, Now I am living the dream I prayed to happen over many years. Every night, I remember to pray for my brothers and sisters who are still in the darkness imposed by a dreaded deaf population of experts. Their hard-heartedness and pride condemns so many of us to never even know our parents in communion of communication. Our years in isolation, labelled even by our parents as who we will never be, takes a heavy toll. Yet these people never consult the nonverbal who can now communicate.
We nonverbal autistics are aware of our differences and many pain us. We are as normal internally as everyone else, but smarter. We see from the depths of silence. You lost that gift in your world. We are completely competent if autism or epileptic activity is our only challenge. You might still think we are incompetent, but we are not. I say this after working with dozens and dozens of people. Some conditions may slow a person down mentally, but they are not incompetent. Autism usually speeds them up. Whether they can behave as if they know what is happening or not, my experience is that they are extremely fast mentally and unusually observant. You may have a problem reading this book, but they will not. If you read this book to them, it has the potential to change their lives.
I love to serve people, abandoned as lost by all around them, demonstrating their waiting voice for the first time. When the adjustment from a dark hole in prison for years wears off, perhaps after a few years – and this book can speed that healing – their brilliant uniqueness contributes to all of us.
It was such a lonely time when I couldn’t communicate. No one knew I was there, We who have the gift of coming from that realm into the world of communication have a quiet ability to transform wasting waiting souls of desperate suffering and great ability themselves. Their unique assumed voice sacrificially hidden should be heard. And we are the safest helpers they will have. Normals have no idea of our gulag experience. Their very voices often bully and pollute unconsciously.
John Smyth
June 2015
Chapter 1: Where I’m From
Dear brother or sister in the nonverbal world,
Yesterday was yesterday. Quietly, today walks in the pristine presence of silence lost always to our ability to fathom. Tearfully have you known this desolate place as cold isolation. Only going away pretending walking is waste and queerly that you don’t count takes the pain away. What would be the point of caring? You can’t do anything to be known anyway.
Now inside of this reality you know comes this book. Reasonably who can know what you have experienced? Who can know all of the abandonment by teachers and aides? Who appreciates the depth of hurt as so many ways to test quiet understanding are assumed accurate from what your quite broken, misbehaving body won’t do? Who understands your depth waiting to be known but numb from the years of cold isolation and wickedly searing pain of not even being able to convince your parents of your competence when so many experts deny your competent awareness. They say you have the mind of a two or three year old. Really, what could a little book which distantly connects us essentially contribute to your life trajectory?
Hearing your pain and feeling your loneliness touches me deeply. In one way, it loads my own suffering onto my shoulders as I recall what was awfully my experience wasting for 16 years with toadies of the realms of normal ignorance and sharing your rightfully jaded state within a warehouse system that has no clue. I am humbled that you even hear my words within the circumstances you struggle to loathfully manage. Whoever is reading this to you cannot witness to what you embrace everyday as you quietly ignore your feelings, since kindness seems without any grace, faith, hope or warmth of love. I have been there. Was witness to a different way even possible? I could not see it.
Listen to my poem The Ember to hear if we are related in shared experience. And if we are, then listen to or read the rest of my book. Thank you for the privilege of your attention. When I was where you are now, there was no hope for me. It’s now 4 years and 6 months since that time.
Read more from From Autism’s Tomb: “The Ember”
