Autism Stories
My Autistic Eyes Make Contact — Uniquely
Some blessings and challenges of having autistic eyes
Were we to have met yesterday or a score of years ago, I would remember the color of your eyes. I can close my own eyes and picture yours: brown into black, hazel, peacock blue, shades of green, even amber-yellow. All the colors in magnificent splendor.
I never knew the origin, the why of this gift, until I learned about autism, that I am autistic. Of all possible autistic superpowers, this one was graced to me. Though I’m not a musical or mathematical savant, I can’t complain. Whenever or wherever I want, I can access the liquid beauty palette painting your eyes. And those of every person, every creature, having eyes.
I knew I had the gift of eye color memory, but the source of this gift I did not know. Nor did I know or understand that my unusual visual perception is not limited to eye color. It is part of a much broader autistic quality of sensory acuity. Many autistics are unusually perceptive in one or more of our senses.
Autistic Eye Contact — Not What You Think
Autistics avoid eye contact, right? Notice, however, that my eye color memory depends on looking directly into a person’s eyes long enough for color to register. It’s true that eye contact often makes autistics uncomfortable, but that is not the full picture. It’s cheap eye contact we avoid, the shallow small-talk eye contact that dominates “normal” interactions. For when we look into your eyes, we voyage from iris and pupil into your deepest self. An autistic therapist told me she sees into people’s souls.
We want this intimate connection; we crave it, but most people are uncomfortable with our gaze. Often they fear it. So we, having learned our neurodivergent lessons well, strive to reserve authentic eye contact for those rare people who welcome it.
Years ago in high school, I looked into another student’s eyes, and I saw, I saw, the authentic person hiding behind the façade. Lowering their gaze, they turned away, saying, “Stop, you’re freaking me out!” I stopped, but I did not understand. Not then, anyway.
Nor did I understand when I was the one freaking out. I picture my hospitalized father, gowned and dying, as he looked up at me. In a moment lasting longer than the clock’s ticking time, he probed my eyes, with those hazel (sometimes green!) eyes of his. I felt the connection, the depth, the mystery, as his eyes entered mine and reached into my consciousness. It was I who looked away. Years later, remembering this moment, I realized: He was autistic too.
Beyond Eye Contact: The Pleasures of Deeply Seeing
Remembering eye color can be a fun party trick. But for me, it is an altar adorned with art and beauty and profound meaning. As I see the kaleidoscope in each iris, the starbursts, the shining radiance, I long to swim into those eyes. I remember when as a teenager I began to become romantically attracted to people, first I would seek patterns in their eyes to see if they might compel me. Only then would I wander into the typical teenaged attractions, such as symmetry of face or compelling physical form.
Some dew-grassed mornings I look into the opaque eyes of wild animals, sharing with them a moment of wildness. Or I gaze upon the grassy ground at noon and see literal movement, waves of energy, atoms, and molecules dancing in the grass and bare earth. I cast my visual consciousness into art, into sculpture, and it is as if my hands touch carved stone, feel its grain, the alternating roughness and smoothness, the almost-human aliveness. Rarest of all, through her creations sometimes I can see God. Those are the best days.
The Loudness of Seeing
The sword of my hyper-vision is of course double-edged. Our visual world can be, how do I put this, overpoweringly loud. Details dart in from all directions, like trying to listen to every conversation at a dinner party. I become overwhelmed, needing to escape, even to shut down, for reasons I rarely perceive or understand at the time. No one yelled at me. I suffered no misfortune. But my eyes have been onboarding so much information that I cannot process all. The mechanism that is my mind overheats and spins down, safety features engaged.
Even before being diagnosed as autistic, before I knew about sensory overstimulation, I developed ways to manage visual loudness. As I described in my essay “Why I Walk with Eyes Closed,” I do just that. If I am in a safe place, or with safe people, I like to close my eyes, if only for a moment. Longer is better. The world suddenly quiets, and my other senses amplify. I hear the variety in crow caws. I smell the widow cooking soup for one. I taste the dark chocolate eaten 15 minutes earlier. I feel the slightest wisp of wind on my face. When again I open my eyes, the cacophony resumes and my other senses recede. But I am refreshed, and I can always close my eyes again.
In the world of people, my visual acuity presents its own challenges. I look into a crowd, or in faces at a library table, and see disguised pain in their eyes, in their countenance. My own emotions become unbalanced. Or I notice too much when I am with another person, and wonder whether it is acceptable to comment. Layered into memory is an encounter with my therapist. I noticed during a session that she was not wearing her wedding band; when I mentioned this, her expression changed and darkened. She said it felt invasive, like I was over-studying her. I guess I was, but not intentionally, and not in a male-gazy way. Just in the way my brain takes in information. That autistic way.
With a Wink and a Hope
A Persian proverb says the eyes can do a thousand things that the fingers cannot. This is true for many of us in the autism community. Our eyes, those hyper-sensitive eyes, bless us and curse us. I guess, as with the double-edged sword, if we can use them in ways that nourish us, and perhaps benefit others, then we have made good use of our visual gifts. This is the challenge, to augment the good and diminish the bad, without crashing the entire system.
As I learn about my autistic systems, hopefully, I can joyfully accept the gifts while forgiving the rest. For they all are with me, all part of my unique brain, and will be until my internal clock ticks its last.
