When I found out at the age of 22 that I was not somehow failing at being liked by others, but that a series of horribly well-meant mistakes by my parents, teachers and pediatricians had kept me from the autism diagnosis I should have had when I was eight, the only thing that cheered me up for months was hunting for serial killers in Copenhagen and Malmö.

"As a society, it’s time we woke up from our collective illusion that autism is a puzzle that’s going to be solved by a medical breakthrough that’s perpetually just around the corner. Autistic people have been here for millennia, but it’s only in the last few years that we’ve been able to see them clearly. Now we have the opportunity to focus our resources on giving them what they need."

Nintendo was to be my central fasciniche, and more than that: it would be my lantern in the dark, offering me the means to comprehend my existence and the will to try. I had been a boy without a role, trapped in a world I couldn’t understand. But a game gives you a role. A game gives you a world you’re meant to understand. In a game, it’s impossible not to belong.

The words always stood out ominously: “Tell me about yourself.” Any time I met potential new friends or went on a date or had a job interview, that’s when I’d get into trouble. Sooner or later, there would be the big open-ended question. Sooner or later I’d have to talk about myself. I would try and start off by listing and explaining my interests, and then after a while I might say, “Well, I’m a…

"I have to tell you something about myself, something important," I said to my boyfriend. We were lying on a bed in a University dorm, a girl and boy who at nineteen were taking our first tentative steps into the world of relationships. "You can tell me anything," he said. "There's something wrong with me," I said. "I mean, socially. I mean, I’m autistic. Well, on the autistic spectrum, and it sometimes makes me seem…

If you spend enough time in group therapy you gain a kind of second sense for whatever particular ailment landed you in it. It’s akin to being in a funhouse, each mirror image distinct but recognizable enough to provide you some reflection of yourself and illustrate the ways in which, through different eyes, you jut out from the world’s flat background in strange (and sometimes wonderful) ways. My rehabilitation from willfully oblivious, difficult autistic child…