This article originally appeared in Vol. 4 No. 2 (Feb. 1996) of the Facilitated Communication Digest, [p. 9].

[Editor's note: Jeff Powell wrote this essay as a way of introducing himself to the students in one of his high school classes. We reproduce this essay here, in part, because Jeff's writing reflects some of the themes presented by the other authors whose work is reviewed in Doug Biklen's article above.]

I am Jeff Powell, so the rest of you are at ease. I'll try to tell you about my autism and how it affects me. In most ways I am like you, the hard freedoms have to be reached through stages. The way I see my growth is the system ordered in my brain as numbers and colors, greatly reworded when I try to talk about them. The time before I was able to communicate through facilitated communication, which I learned six years ago, was a time of existing in my own time and often place. Its treasures were the unconditional love of family, familiar routines that were performed around me, and reading poetry; on the color scale -- green like Eden. The years following my emergence were blazed by red of the three-headed dragon; the heads were loneliness, regret, and, reddest of all, anger, and the name of the beast was Terror. Last year I felt the first stirrings of relief from the hold that fear retained. I faced the challenge of finishing my first short story, and the fours, known as the gateway to 5's -- creativity and grey far reaches -- revealed the first glimpses, veiled and mysterious but luring like siren's call. I am freest to look to that shore when I am in school with the people I have cared enough for and have tested enough to trust.

Scary times are ahead as I face loss at graduation of the person who herded me toward the gateway to freedom, and creation, and exquisite understanding of moguls of the future, and of my possibilities to expand starry wars into peace. The possibilities are fraught by the powerful fears that nip at my heels. Even when the gate is apparent, my autism would make me go back, but I have learned a lot about fighting it off.

The problem of perception confuses and haunts me. Colors and light bring intense pleasure though they do not always make sense as simple vision. A greater quietude gained from self stimulation I do, like forever flicking my hand or looking from the side with my eyes half closed. I know in my photographic mind what the keyboard and the thousand other items in each room look like, because I can see each tree in the forest more easily than I can understand the whole forest -- is the point of focus.

Sounds are even harder. Dreadful the loudness and cacophony that I hear when a normal day is in progress with rivalling voices, cars, horns, bells, screeches, trucks, laughter, cries, chairs, stepfalls, dropping pencils. Rewards were few coming from sound, though the voices of a few friends have become cherished.

The most terrifying and confusing of all is touch which seems intense. Reality reappears as strident burning if my clothes are new or tight or the wrong fabric. When starting to facilitate, I had to weaken my response to being held by the hand and I often needed to get away from the intensity of all the simultaneous stimulation. I learned to accommodate the touch of familiar facilitators, but the need to escape stimulation explains why I sometimes walk away or make another self-created noise to focus myself.

I want the way I feel inside myself -- as a competent, artistic and friendly, aware man -- to be known to you, and I am glad I will know some of you since we will stand together on the future podium at graduation. I hope you'll ask me any questions as I don't mind answering most, and the time to talk will be fun. Thanks for listening and accepting me.