Autism Is My Superpower—Oops, I'm on the Spectrum

Everyone saw it. Nobody named it.

Understanding your weird brain matters more than getting a certificate for it.

My classmates were throwing my schoolbag around as if they were playing beach ball until one boy failed to catch it. My bag hit the street, the chocolate milk carton inside it burst open, and I spent the next hour in the changing room using napkins to wipe tears off my face and chocolate milk from my schoolbooks. For the rest of that school year, the brown-stained pages in my books were a daily reminder of my social status in our class.

It was just one of the many humiliations I had to endure as a teenager. The boys called me names, ruined my belongings, and casually threatened me with violence. And it was no secret why they did that.

I was weird.

I had significant problems in social areas because my social intuition was less well-developed than it was for other kids my age. In every break between classes, I walked the streets alone, always trying to evade the ones who were out to taunt or hurt me. When I interacted with others at all, I preferred one-on-one conversations, which felt much less threatening—less overwhelming. It probably didn’t help that, while the boys talked about girls and sex, I could rattle off the entire Dutch Top 40 plus the pop charts of the competing radio stations off the top of my head. Numbers fascinated me more than humans.

At night, I cried myself to sleep, afraid I would never have friends or romantic relationships. Nobody would ever like me.

I had to accept I wasn’t normal.

I’d have to remain solo for the rest of my life.

My outlook didn’t look so bleak a few years earlier at primary school. I was one of the smartest children in our class—unstoppably creative, good at analyzing problems, great at recognizing patterns. My Rubik’s Cube was the love of my life, even though it took me a while to solve it, a pattern that would repeat endlessly throughout my life. One comment from the head teacher stood out in my final report: “Jurgen is slow because of his preciseness.” The intelligence came at a price: my brain needed extra time to match the other smart kids in our class.

I had a Mercedes brain with a Tuk-Tuk engine. Brilliant, but with baggage.

So, I was socially awkward, always on my own, the first at seeing patterns, good at solving puzzles, and precise in everything I did, but also a tad slow in my thinking. It’s funny how those around me saw all the symptoms, but nobody named the problem.

None of that held me back, though.

Socially isolated as I was, my sluggish but determined mind got me through high school with flying colors—8 out of 10 across the board at my final exams and a perfect 10 for mathematics. My 9.45 score in English Language was the highest among 120 fellow graduates. I only left Dutch Language and Literature behind me with a meagre 6 out of 10, because, seriously, who in the world cared? Not me. The ability to focus includes letting go of what was irrelevant.

I was slow and weird, but not stupid.

Everything changed when I went to the Delft University of Technology to study Information and Computer Science. Suddenly, I wasn’t the only freaky person in class anymore. It seemed everyone around me was somewhere on the spectrum from slightly odd to completely bonkers. At the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, analysis and problem-solving was the goal. Preciseness was a virtue. Social awkwardness was the norm. I was literally among like-minded people, and for the first time in my life, I had friends.

I was happy.

Making my way through my studies (slowly but diligently, as always) I used every talent I possessed to compensate for six years of loneliness. I needed to know that I mattered after all. I wanted people to need me. I craved being liked. So I started exploiting my superpowers.

My excellent attention to detail allowed me to be a writer and editor on two yearbook committees. With my hyperfocus, I offered myself as a cartoonist to illustrate the faculty’s official publications. If someone needed marketing posters, they usually called me. When the bar needed coupons, they would always ask me. I probably spent more time in the faculty’s printing room than in any of my computer science classes.

On top of that, I used my talent for specialization to teach myself not only coding, writing, and drawing but also bookkeeping when I became the treasurer of the student society. And because I didn’t like our accounting software, my perfectionism drove me to write a near-flawless bookkeeping program—30,000 lines of code—entirely crafted by me.

For five or six years, I was everyone’s creative machine.

And still, nobody suspected that something was off.

After I finished my studies, my life swung back and forth between triumph and disaster, prosperity and loneliness, when I ventured back into the real world and started doing business with normies—those afflicted with neither my superpowers nor my shortcomings.

Whenever I worked on teams, the people I collaborated with inevitably came to judge my openness and straightforward comments as considerably rude or downright hurtful. My radical frankness and criticism were often a challenge for my coworkers, even by Dutch standards. My first manager said I had the uncanny talent of cutting into other people’s souls, without even being aware of it. I had the dubious talent to bring a few team members to tears with my honest assessment of the quality of their work. And I didn’t understand it at all. I was merely stating the facts. 🤷🏻‍♂️

On the other hand, those who could withstand the lashings of my tongue appreciated my unmatched ability to think outside the box. I had business ideas that nobody else had. I could focus intensely on a limited number of subjects. For thirty years, my mind was like a laser, targeting value and cutting through crap, which helped many colleagues and business partners earn a decent living—some of them hitting a jackpot thanks to me—as long as they forgave me for being reclusive, unreserved, and eccentric.

In my romantic relationships, a few partners likewise had to cope with a long list of peculiar quirks. I have no fondness for small talk, meaning my brain automatically tunes out when someone’s noise-to-signal ratio is too high, and I’d rather spend my time thinking about tomorrow’s puzzles and challenges. I am under-sensitive to sensory stimuli, meaning my mind ignores most environmental cues and changes. I don’t notice someone’s new haircut, do not see they’re wearing different glasses, and remain blissfully unaware that someone redecorated the entire room until they literally point it out to me. If the building is on fire, someone will have to drag me out, because I probably wouldn’t notice. Worst of all (and a quite challenging aspect in any love life, I suppose) my brain seems to show no interest in other people. (There’s emphasis on the word ‘seems’ but, nevertheless, it’s a pretty tough thing having to deal with for someone in a relationship with me.)

In between relationships, there were a few times when I thought it would be less stressful for everyone if I just stayed alone.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen. I found someone who’s been willing to suffer it all for twenty-five years and counting.

For our wedding fifteen years ago, I designed a symbol depicting a dog and a cat, symbolizing the nature of our relationship. I’m the cat, of course. I might travel the world and live countless adventures, but I always, always return. My home is where my spouse is.