In the morning I opened LINE. A friend of mine (the person who is autistic as me) wrote her problems of character on a LINE group. I remember I cried a lot in front of the staff of the clinic when I checked if I was autistic. Needless to say, we hadn't wanted to be like this. I can remember that I have been learning about myself in my life since my childhood when I had experienced various irrational things like Kafka, and also as an adult, I had read a lot of books to check out if I had a personality disorder. After a long time, I met the core of the truth that I must be an autistic person. But I have to walk a long, long way from there. I have to walk till the end of this life.
But I love this personality, this character. Reading a lot of books, thinking strictly, and living this life awkwardly. If I weren't like this, I couldn't have met current friends in my life. Once I met a person at the BBS of Shinji Miyadai, and he said that "You must have a personality disorder". I couldn't find out how to change/rebuild myself and gave up. But now, the situation turns in contrast. People say that "Thank you for being you". These things bring me that I have experienced a dramatic change. From a personality disorder to autism, I have been walking this life... to where?
I went back to my parents' house. I watched my bookshelves and took books by Hiroki Azuma or Tamaki Saitou. I stayed with those books for a while. The books I bought and read, the road I had to walk with painful memories... I remember the hardest period of my life. Everything had started with a message I sent to a friend of mine on mixi. Thinking about Temple Grandin, I wrote to her that ”I will check myself if I was a person with Asperger Syndrome (we called autism like that in that time)”. She answered me that "This is too Asperger-Syndrome-like story if you never imagined you were with Asperger Syndrome"...
At night I listened to the talk about learning English on Clubhouse. The topic was why we do learn English. I thought that we have two ways of thinking about it. The one is that we draw the goals outside ourselves like studying abroad or stepping up our careers at first, and from there we consider what we should do. The other one is learning from inner voices like mine and feeling the pleasure of communicating or expressing in English, trying to connect every day's success of learning. Of course, both can work together if we wish. But whichever we choose, we need every day's practice steadily. I thought about this by watching a paperback on my bookshelf, which was a collection of Lou Reed's lyrics (I have forgotten I had bought it completely!). OK, I will read it.
