GLYNN WASHINGTON, HOST:
Welcome back to SNAP JUDGMENT, the Simpatico episode. Today, we're digging into what it's like to find yourself on someone else's wavelength, to feel that connection to someone other than yourself, no matter how briefly. And we're bringing it back, way back - think origins of man back. That's where we're headed with our next piece, a story told by a woman who always, always felt more than a little removed.
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DAWN PRINCE-HUGHES: I really didn't understand fully that I was different because I really felt like I was part of everything around me. I really didn't understand that I had a separate body, so I felt, you know, the plants around me. I felt the animals around me. I had cross-sensing as well, so I could, for example, I could see very loud noises...
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PRINCE-HUGHES: ...Taste sounds.
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PRINCE-HUGHES: It's really difficult to explain. It's almost like trying to explain a color somebody's never seen. It's a very integrated experience. This overstimulation problem leads to difficulties communicating with people. I had a really difficult time in school. On a sensory level, public school is a real nightmare. It smells bad, the clanking of the lockers are loud, the halls make noise reverberate. You sit in a hard chair at a hard desk looking at a hard chalkboard.
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PRINCE-HUGHES: People really couldn't tolerate the ways that I was strange. They really did just think I was weird. A lot of the things I did with great intentions and an open heart were misunderstood. One example comes to mind. When I was in third grade, I was really struggling by then.
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PRINCE-HUGHES: So I had this great idea that everyone likes dogs, and dogs learn really fast. So I'll just be a dog in class, and everything will go better. My teacher will have an easier time. The kids will like me better.
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PRINCE-HUGHES: I got down on all fours and did a dog smile and sort of opened my mouth and put my tongue out and crawled around and approached people in a friendly manner and wagged my tail and...
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PRINCE-HUGHES: ...Sat down on my haunches and paid attention when it was time to listen to the teacher.
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PRINCE-HUGHES: Well, she yanked me up by my ear and threw me in the corner and yelled at the class to quit laughing. Certainly my family were not immune to misunderstanding my intentions, and I was often at odds with them. So I was going outside in the nighttime to sort of calm down, and I scooted around the house and looked in the window and was able to really see my family in a way that was, I guess, a lot clearer because I had a lot less sensory input. I could look in through the window and see my family and feel closer to them than if I had been in the same room. It was a convenient barrier that allowed me to turn down the volume on all my senses so that I could relax and see things a little bit, I guess, like most people do.
I left home at about 15. At that point in my life, I knew people were not feeling connected to me. I just decided to leave. I went down to the end of the driveway and stuck out my thumb and...
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PRINCE-HUGHES: It was roughly five years I was homeless, off and on. I went all over the country that way, and I really can't believe I'm still alive, to be honest. I ended up in Seattle. I stayed on the streets. I remember in a really cold December, I spent most of my time in the stairwell of a church up on Capitol Hill, just sitting on a cardboard box flattened out on the concrete. And being homeless was really terrible - hot, cold, loud, hard. I used to go to the clubs, talk my way in, just because there was something about that level of - maybe it was the beat of the music that was really persistent and almost familiar, maybe like a heartbeat or something very primal about it. It was really comforting to me, so I would go to clubs. And I liked to move with the music, and somebody said, you're a good dancer. You should make some money with that. And I said, no, not if it's what I'm thinking of (laughter). And they said, well, you know, you can't really be snobbish about this. You're homeless. And I thought, well, that's true. So, yeah, I ended up as an erotic dancer for a while.
Interestingly, once again, looking through the glass at people - that was the setup, but was more or less a stage surrounded by windows. People put quarters in and the little shade lifts up, and you have so many seconds per quarter or something. Anything like a wall or a window would serve as an artificial barrier or a means of containment. I didn't feel like being homeless was a good life for me, but I didn't think there was a good life for me in any context.
I was starving for nature, and so with one of my very first paychecks, I decided to brave the bus system and go to the zoo. It was a really major undertaking because when I get really overwhelmed, my senses start shutting down one at a time. So first, I'll lose my hearing. I'll lose my sense of touch. My sight gets down to the size of a dime. So here I am on the city streets, sort of trying to look around through this dime-size hole of vision for the bus number, how much money I put in. Luckily, I get off on the right stop. Then I have to go figure out how to get in the zoo. But then, when I turned the corner and saw the gorillas, I just sat there. I just sat there that day. And I sat there for hours, and I just watched them. And there was just this epiphany, this flood of identification where I thought, these are people, and more importantly, these are people that understand me, and they're people that I am going to understand for the first time in my life. I'm guessing that's what most people feel like with each other - most human beings feel like with each other. But I hadn't felt that before. It was just amazing. They didn't look me right in the eye for about an hour and a half. They very tenderly waited and kind of felt where I was, eventually glancing over at me really quickly and then putting their heads down again. It was just a very slow-moving, tender social interaction. It's so much different.
The way that it was set up at the Seattle Zoo, they had really big windows. I think that was the one time I felt that glass was an unfortunate body because I wanted to be with them. It's as if you were going home after years and years of being in the war, and you get home and your entire house is glassed-in. You can't find the door. You can't go in through the window. You just press your face against home.
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PRINCE-HUGHES: I went every day that I could possibly go, just to sit there, just to sit there and stare at the gorillas - not stare at them rudely, but just sort of diffusely stare, if that makes any sense, and watch what they were doing. And the public would just sort of vanish. Everything just slowed down. Watching the gorillas interact with each other was really heartwarming because even though they had squabbles, you know, they were still so much a part of each other. They really - I believe that they experience reality a lot more like I did, or a lot like other autistic, quote, unquote, "autistic" people, where they don't get the sense that they are just one individual person sort of floating out there, some kind of discrete consciousness in a body. So their behavior was really inspiring to me. I was really delighted to see that the gorillas made nests every day. When I was a kid, I remember making just those kinds of nests. I would weave branches together, put in leaves, make it really comfortable. I think the reasons that both of us did that is because we find smaller and smaller places to try to avoid feeling intensity of any kind. I was so obsessed, I would start to grab zoo workers that were walking by and pepper them with questions. And they were really patient with me, to their credit. There were people who saw how devoted I was to the gorillas and their well-being, and eventually, I got to work with them. It led to me going back to school, which I never thought I would do. I found a master's and Ph.D. program.
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PRINCE-HUGHES: It was after being there for probably - I guess it was about 10 years at that point at - you know, watching the gorillas and directly applying what I had learned from them in my human interactions. And I had a really bad week, but there were always those times where I felt like I took many steps backward. So that was one of those weeks. And I always wanted to just go see the gorillas when that happened, so...
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PRINCE-HUGHES: The gorilla I was closest to, Congo (ph), who was about - I think he was about 33 at the time - who had had a terrible, terrible life, he saw me that day that I had this terrible week, and immediately, he knew there was something wrong. He furrowed his brows and came rushing over to the window and searched my face, and then he could tell that I was just crushed. And so he pushed his shoulder against the glass and motioned with his hand for me to put my head down. And I put my head down on his shoulder and cried and cried, and he just...
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PRINCE-HUGHES: ...Made gorilla contentment noises while I cried and cried.
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PRINCE-HUGHES: I probably stayed with him like that, with my head on his shoulder, for 30 minutes or so. I think it was probably the first time I was genuinely comforted by another person. Congo really set the standard for what social interactions should be like between me and another living being. You just can't worry about looking like a fool. You can't worry about getting hurt. You can't worry about whether you're right or not. It just boils down to wanting to be connected at all costs, at all risks. I no longer wanted to allow the permeability of my spirit to seek smaller and smaller shelters. It requires a completely open heart. I felt like I found a way to go home through the glass.
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WASHINGTON: Here's what's even more amazing - Dawn went on to get a master's degree and a Ph.D. in anthropology. She was finally diagnosed with autism at the age of 38. She's worked with the Jane Goodall Institute, and she's published a whole slew of books. Find out all about her truly miraculous work at our website, snapjudgment.org. That story's produced by Anna Sussman, with sound design by Renzo Gorrio.
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WASHINGTON: When SNAP JUDGMENT returns, someone is looking for a miracle, and they find it.
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WASHINGTON: On SNAP JUDGMENT, the Simpatico episode. Stay tuned. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
