I’m not doing all this moving around because it pleases me – it isn’t even all that calming. It’s like being teleported from one place to another without knowing it’s happening. Even if someone tries to prevent me, or if something else gets in the way, it happens anyway. I sort of lose myself for a little while. (..) I dash off as soon as I spot anything interesting. There’s a different reason for why we get lost so often, however, and I think it’s this: we don’t really know where we ought to be. You could tell us that we ought to follow someone else, or hold their hand, but the fact is that, with or without your suggestion, we’re still going to lose our way. Simply put, people with autism never, ever feel at ease, wherever we are. Because of this, we wander off – or run away – in search of some location where we do feel at ease. (..) While we’re on this search, it doesn’t occur to us to consider how or where we’re going to end up. We get swallowed up by the illusion that unless we can find a place to belong, we are going to be all alone in the world. Then eventually we get lost, and have to be escorted back to the place we were at, or the person we were with, before. But our uneasy, unsettled feeling doesn’t go away. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to reach our Shangri-La, however.
(..)
My body’s always moving about. I just can’t stay still. When I’m not moving, it feels as if my soul is detaching itself from my body, and this makes me so jumpy and scared that I can’t stay where I am. I’m always on the lookout for an exit. But even though I’m forever wanting to be some place else, I can never actually find my way there. I’m always struggling inside my own body, and staying still really hammers it home that I’m trapped here. But as long as I’m in a state of motion, I’m able to relax a little bit.

//Naoki Higashida, 2013, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy With Autism