“How did I find out? By other people telling me that I was different from everyone else, and that this was a problem.”

Higashida explains how he first discovered that he has autism. From the beginning, his autism was defined in terms of his difference from a standard of normality and was rooted in a normative judgment about the inferiority implied by this difference. Higashida spends much of the text trying to combat this negative societal judgment.

“It’s like being a doll spending your whole life in isolation, without dreams and without hopes.”

Higashida describes one of the most painful aspects of having autism: namely, that without the ability to fully express oneself, others assume that you have a reduced or non-existent inner life. Thus, one becomes the “doll” that they imagine cut off from others and from a shared humanity.

“To make myself understood, it’s like I have to speak in an unknown foreign language, every minute of every day.”

Higashida’s description of what it is like to try and communicate with others as a person with autism is analogous to constantly having to speak in a foreign language insofar as one is unfamiliar with the native language of others and is constantly anxious about making errors and being misunderstood. Just as there are aspects of a language that remain obscure or unknown to a non-native speaker, there are aspects of everyday communication, like body language, tone, and context, that remain opaque to some people with autism.