Loving Someone Unable to Communicate
Over the course of a human's life our lives revolve around verbal communication. We barely make it out of the womb before our parents are saying nothing but, "Ma-ma-ma-ma, da-da-da-da-da". Our parents first, and most proud memories are our first words. My father is 46 and both of his parents still reminisce on his first words. As we grow and change we're taught verbal cues, how to communicate, how to relay our emotions our wants our needs. Over the course of our lives communication becomes the hub for which we rely everything on. Whether we're outright saying something, texting it, emailing it, writing it in a letter, or anything else society has come up with in the last 25 years. We blame failed relationships on a lack of communication, we credit the successful ones on being able to always successfully communicate. Communication is our life line. What though, if we come across someone completely unable to communicate? What then?
The past two years of my life have been dedicated to a child who is not only completely non-verbal, but also a child who cannot write, cannot read, cannot do anything but wail. He only occasionally registers picture communications when they are very basic, and very clear. If you've ever read "The Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman then you know one of the ways people feel and give love is by verbal affirmation. For me, my strongest area is just that. So, in meeting, we'll call him "David", I was challenged beyond any boundaries I had as a person. If you know nothing about Autism, it is an epidemic that affects 1 in 68 children and is characterized by an inability to form bonds (among other things). So on top of having zero ability to properly communicate anything, he also doesn't particularly like a lot of people. I however, am one of few people lucky enough to have been gifted this special bond.
In present times, "David" and I communicate with nothing more than eye contact and a strange and unexplainable intuition we both have towards each other. In the beginning though, I struggled. I've learned however, that he never did. It was myself who had a wall up of confusion and murk that disabled me from being able to fully get a hold on whatever it was he wanted me to feel, or whatever it is he wanted to say. Through the breaking down of this very wall I had to learn so much, and grow so much out of my very vain self absorbed world. To sit on the floor with someone repeating the same phrases, the same commands, the same questions time and time again is exhausting. Yet the more I grew to love him, the easier it became. I learned to instead of using words watch the way his eyes moved, to observe where they went and where they stayed. I began to learn and understand the cues he had created for himself his entire life, I developed an intuition I had never had before. There are many, many ways to communicate in this life yet I've found no one seems to pay attention to the ways that appear to be more difficult, but in reality, are much much more rewarding and offer a sense of deeper connection.
It is incredibly difficult to explain the way it feels to just merely lock eyes with someone and be able to have an entire conversation in seconds, or to be able to convey a day of emotions in minutes. Never have I ever attained a thing remotely close to this with anyone but the one human being who forced me to do so, and I have never been more grateful for such a challenge in my life. It gives you such a sense of the energy and the world around you, because for once in a busy day your focus is not on your own emotions, thoughts, physicalities that inevitably and subconsciously chew at you in interactions, but it's solely on the other person and understanding them. Due to my acquired ability in this area with "David" to master this talent, I've found myself opened up to a broader sense not just of self but more than anything-others. It's as if because of the time I spend analyzing and focusing on "David" I have trained my mind and my spirit. That being said, I have found it thousands of times easier to understand others around me without any communication from them.
To be given an opportunity to fully engulf yourself in this concept is life altering. I question what life would be like if we were unable to communicate the way that we do, if we had to really strain and stretch ourselves daily to figure out the puzzle pieces that every one of us is. I believe we would live in a different world, a better world.
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