My Autistic Diary 1

I always hid myself

in order to stand on my feet

Never knew whom I was

I was neither complete nor disintegrated

even though I spoke the same language

even though I took the bite of the same

I always stood a stranger

within the enormous crowds

For as long as I can remember, I have dwelled upon who I am because I have always been the weird one.

When I was five years old, my mother and father were hospitalised for two years as a result of a road accident, and then finally, my mother died. Everyone connected my weirdness to what I had been through. Therefore, there was always a tolerance mixed with pity around me, which I hated. However, before the accident, I was a charming, cheeky monkey as well as being weird. I was constantly speaking, forever curious, always asking questions, observing everything, spending time with adults instead of playing with my peers. And at this time I discovered if you are a child, adults think you do not understand what they are talking about when they speak to each other; that you do not notice their hypocrisy and self-deceit. They are wrong. When I understood their behavior I lost my trust in them

It was not easy for me: I didn’t trust anyone so it was at that same time that I decided to learn and do everything by myself. If you have this mindset very early, you forget to be afraid and authority doesn’t mean anything to you.

I had two important questions: Is this thing called God punishing us? And if God punishes in this way then why must I love God? Nobody could or would answer these questions. My teacher, my friends, my lessons didn’t help me to find an answer; if anything they were afraid of my questions and tried to stop me from finding answers. As a result of this, I began to hate school.

My teachers heard some different kinds of discussions and uncommon questions from me. They didn’t like that. They thought I’m a trouble maker. To always identified as “a problem” in the worst sort of trouble for me.

But I had discovered books. When I was in primary school, it wasn’t unusual for me to be able to remember whole poems which we learned, everybody’s birthday and phone numbers. Before my teenage years, I read every holy book: the Koran, the Bible, the Torah. And at the same time I read Kafka, Camus, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Nabokov.

My reflection in the mirror does not resemble my relatives creates singularization in a child’s perception. The inexplicable petulance arising from not getting any meaningful reply to my questions, rapidly turning me inwards more and more by the day…

The more petulant I became, the more walls I built between myself and the world and the greater the desire to flee grew. Not knowing from whom and from what I'm running away but only having the desire to shelter somewhere else, anywhere else.

It is hard to be weird and different to others but not knowing why, and it has done serious damage, irreparable damage to my self-esteem. In the years when I was growing up and living in Turkey, it felt like I had fallen into a vortex where I was constantly having the same nightmare.

Alien to my culture and to my species. I always felt I was not from the same planet as everyone else. I always felt I was literally in the wrong world, in the wrong family; that there had been some sort of terrible mistake.

Within the darkest nights

I used to know

the falling stars

hear them scream

silent and lightless

I used to listen to the waters

wouldn’t understand the answers

I used to look at the skies

would my clouds carry me

alone for years

my knotted emotions

If I leave myself to the winds

would they carry me to the lands I belong

why, what for, where

being dispersed unknowingly