What is loneliness and what purpose does it serve? What is it like to never be lonely? An Autistic point of view.

Read my commitment to writing again for Living Amongst Humans. I discuss the hiatus, my return, and what to expect from me in the future. I will continue to focus on Autism, bringing into the conversation what I have learned over the years while living amongst humans.

Autism is often identified as an epidemic. This graphic looks at the reality behind the autism epidemic and not just the hype.

Doug was my voice. He was my heart. I was his mind. He was brave and brash. I figured things out. I held him when he took his life.

Sherell Jacobson. November 3, 1928 - July 23, 2017

Jim, I just finished reading "Letting Him Out." I'm sorry you've suffered for decades, protecting that little autistic boy inside you. But I'm glad you're considering letting him out of that walled prison you've kept him in all these years. I like knowing the real you. Thank you, but I don't get enough credit for how well I've done without him. I've accomplished a lot — so much that people don't recognize the sacrifices I've made. They can't see my deep scars. It is so tirin

I have cursed myself, as a matter of survival. As a child, walking past a table of classmates in the cafeteria, and hearing their mocking laughter, I avoided emotional collapse only by — paradoxically — supporting the claims of my tormentors. I distracted myself from their words by doubling down with internal, vile self-indictment. Somehow my uncontrollable mind screams were able to mask the external cruelty.

Passing had a bad rap. The autistic survivors of lost generations need a different message: be proud. You passed to survive.

As a child, I needed three skills to effectively communicate with humans. First was the physical capacity to vocalize. Check. The next requirement was a reasonable vocabulary. Roger. The last ability was putting my voice together with the right language to express myself. Two out of three ain’t bad.

The use of the term “Autism Spectrum” is misleading. It gives the impression that there is a single scale by which you can classify every Autistic person. This infographic shows the disorder of the Autistic Spectrum.

Huillo is a lucky boy. Luis is a lucky dad. And I am lucky my words brought them to me. ‪#‎todossomoshuillo‬

I started writing a year ago, reaching tens of thousands, with hundreds of kind comments, exploring autism and my brand of it. I've learned a lot and have been thrilled to learn I've enriched others. I owe an explanation to those who have gracefully waited for more. Know that I haven't stopped.

People have been searching for the cause of autism for decades.

A neurodiverse relationship can be challenging. And rewarding. Can a man struggling to find himself discover extra-ordinary love in a world of humans?

Compare the clinical or parental viewpoint on the left, used to diagnose a child with a particular disorder, with the right side which represents the innate characteristics of the child, as seen from the inside. There is great value in early diagnosis. Treatment is an essential element of care and improves the lives of many autistic children, but that doesn’t change who they are.

It was 1971. It was nearly four decades before I knew I was autistic. It was 25 years before soccer moms. It was the year, on one particular day, I discovered magic inside my brain.

There must be a reason why a private person would risk this exposure. Take an autistic trip through physical pain, vulnerability and the joy of success.

The quickest way to insult a person is by intentionally using the wrong name. The same applies to names for groups of people. It is common for parents of autistic children to say that their child has autism. They believe in putting the person first (a "person with autism") rather than leading with the ailment. There are parents who would condemn me for calling their children autistic. I'm not. I'm talking about me. Calling me a person with autism contradicts my reality. Her

An autistic person compensates for the lack of natural social processing built into the brain

I am wrong 70% of the time. Don't ask me how I know it is 70%. I recognize numbers the way you recognize faces—a matter of familiarity and unconscious association, not calculation.

The autistic brain is not malformed nor diseased. It isn’t something to be pitied or corrected. Our brains just happen to be different from yours. That doesn’t make the autistic brain wrong. It does, however, make it somewhat incompatible with a world, a society, constructed by human brains.

When the People did not exist, when the Land did not exist, when all there was was starlight, it was enough. And so it existed before time started. Timeless, the Stars sang to each other without beat, without rhythm. It was enough.

Photo credit: Horia Varlan . Used under Creative Commons by 2.0 Many people find atheism to be freeing. It frees the mind of the shackles of indoctrinated scripture. Avoiding such false beliefs opens up a whole universe to explore -- granted. I want to speak, though, of a different kind of freedom. One of the hidden freeing aspects of atheism is being able to cut down the number of words used when talking about God. Theists, especially those who use the name "God" as their g

Of course I’m human. But what interests me, and what I talk about on this site, are the ways in which I am different.

I had a boy nobody knew about: a feeble autistic child. I was barely an adult myself when I put him away. I had no options. And I told no one what I did.

If you're autistic, talking to humans is a bit of a magic trick. When I was a child, I had yet to learn that trick. In fact, I didn't yet know that I was autistic. Talking to humans was a mystery to me, as was so much else in life. I was a frustrated quiet child.

I study humans as a matter of survival. I need to understand how humans work, because I live in a world full of them. I notice things about them that they don’t recognize themselves. For example, humans define boundaries. It's how they make sense of the world, how they organize it, how they pigeonhole all of its myriad bits.

I claim a copyright to all the words you see here, put together in the order you see them, or anything close to it. I started writing...