Traveling With Aspergers

I’ve been on numerous trips in my life, but I’ve never been out of the country let alone the province by myself. I’ve always traveled with someone like family or a friend. That doesn’t mean I can’t travel by myself. I can do what a person without an autism spectrum disorder can do. I just haven’t felt like it was the right time to travel solo.

Sometimes I feel like my Aspergers shows and I don’t want to come off as nervous going through security and have them like I’m hiding something. I’ve had my bag checked before and it made me nervous. I know I have nothing to hide, it was just a random bag check, but it just made me anxious and it showed.

I know my way around the airport. I know I can go through security and customs without a problem. What I’m nervous about is when I land at the airport and getting to the hotel. I know there are shuttles that take you from the airport to where you’re staying. Knowing me, I’ll probably memorize the shuttle schedule and the names of the drivers weeks before I even leave for the trip, but there’s always that feeling of missing it by a few minutes or getting on the wrong shuttle by accident, telling the driver where I’m staying only to have him tell me that he doesn’t know where that hotel is and doesn’t know how to get there or the worst thing is having him take the long way to the hotel instead of the 45 minutes it would have taken if I just rented a car and drove myself. I’m tired and had a long day of flying. I don’t need him to decide to the back roads just to get me to where I need to go.

I always think of the worst-case scenarios before they even happen. If they ever happen. It just how my brain works. There are people out there who prefer to travel by themselves and be able to book a trip today and leave first thing in the morning, but foe me; I have to save up for weeks, months, sometimes even years just to go away for the weekend. I have to talk myself up regarding when and where I want to go for a trip and with the way the world is right now, it’s going to take me a couple years before I feel comfortable getting on a plane.

Everyone as the right to do what they want to do in the world, but there are things that should have waited until it was safe for everyone and not just because it’s convenient. If you want to travel right now, by all means, travel, but with what’s going on, I won’t be travelling any time soon.