SINGAPORE: Through his childhood and adolescence, Eric Chen was sure he did not belong on Earth.
He looks up ever so slightly, as he does every time he finishes a thought. With 20 years of “work” done on himself since his diagnosis, making eye contact is less of a chore.That work, he describes, includes “accepting that he’s part of the human race”, learning to communicate and “awakening to emotions”.
Puzzled as to how the world worked, he shut himself off and was “driven by instructions” from his parents or teachers. On the outside, he was quiet and compliant. But on the inside, there were bizarre sensations he could not process, much less describe. When classmates picked on him, passing his schoolbag around and taunting him about it, he had no idea it was bullying. He had no idea he was feeling a rush of anger. He could only wait for it to “disappear into a black hole”.Eric threw himself into books, chores and homework — notwithstanding his fumbling — or observed insects because the world was “aimless” and “disconnected”.
“You don’t have to rely on others to make choices when you can choose your own future,” the book read, roughly paraphrased. “That insight changed everything,” he recalls. After completing his logistics engineering and management studies at polytechnic, he chanced upon an article on “the geek syndrome” in Silicon Valley, where cases of autism and Asperger’s syndrome in children were surging.
“Most people don’t understand what to do with this knowledge. A number of people would say things like, ‘You look normal. How can you be autistic?’” he cites. But he did not know how to explain or advocate for himself.“It inspired me to look at the world in a different way,” he says. “I don’t see myself as serving a sentence where I have to suffer.”In 2005, Eric published his first book, Mirror Mind, on what autism had been like for him.
One aspect of ASD is the inability to relate to others. So for him, it felt as if the world of “relational meaning” had opened up and he was taking his first baby steps. He could “sense relative positions in 3-D space and was rid of extreme clumsiness”. He could look people in the eye longer without feeling uncomfortable.
Singapore Latest News, Singapore Headlines
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