(I am never sure if I am travelling, if I am hiding, surviving, or just running away. Is there actually a difference I wonder?)

The word journey seems to be used to describe life. It seems to be used to emphasise stress and struggle and the striving that it takes to overcome. Or at least that it how talent show contestants use it in order to tell their ‘story’ so we understand them better and emphasise with the reason why it is so important that they are chosen. The two seem to be linked. If the ‘journey’ has been difficult and painful, then the story needs to be heard, it seems.

Well, if this is true, if this is the new way that we live, then perhaps my stories might be worthy of being told. If life is now described as my journey, well then it has been, and still is, very difficult, painful, and full of uncertainty. The perfect travelogue you might say.

If journeying is what I have been doing, then surely another word to describe this trip of a lifetime is travel. Not travel in the traditional sense which involves a short trip somewhere in the world planned and packed for in advance, but travel meaning the navigation of a life: a life lived.

When you feel and see and feel and hear the world differently it follows that every experience is more intense. This can be debilitating and painful, but it can be an amazing opportunity to view a world with awe and wonder.

When every moment is uncertain and unclear, and filled with the fears that the unknown brings, then simply living becomes an epic travel journey; simply trying to be and to exist becomes the journey of a lifetime.

Travel for some of us might be the planning and energy that it takes to get out of bed and get dressed. Travel on another day might be a trip to Timbuktu. But when the world and its people and its rules and its expectations are unknown and often inaccessible, then whether a supermarket or the Serengeti, we have a journey to undertake.

I am autistic, which came as quite a shock to me. But it doesn’t end there. Once you start to recognise yourself you realise that lots of other companions are along for the ride. I was diagnosed as autistic at aged 50 and that alone is a completely different story.

Since then, I have been able to welcome on board ADHD, Dyspraxia, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Rejection Sensitivity Disorder and Fibromyalgia. There are others, but they sometime stay at home whereas this gang always come along for the ride. And I am wondering if you might like to join us?

Lots of autistic people that I meet and speak to say that they don’t like to travel. It seems fraught with the dangers of the unknown and unpredictable. And of course, affordability affects this decision.

Autistic people are more likely to be unemployed than any other minority group and more than any other group who are classified as ‘disabled’, whether this description is wanted or not. Add into this the fact that autism still seems to be shrouded in misunderstanding, myths, and misconceptions, it is hardly surprising that autistic people often find it easier and more comfortable to stay at home.

But because of these misunderstandings, myths, and misconceptions there are lots of people who have to travel, or choose to travel, but don’t recognise that some of the challenges are actually because they are autistic. If autism and the many other neurological differences we affect the ways that people feel the world differently were recognised for what they really are, then I believe that many more people would identify themselves and recognise their own difference. Others would no longer be afraid to disclose who they are and why.

I have always loved to travel and have always dreaded it. That is the dichotomy of my autistic brain.

But after fifty years of chaos and confusion, I finally know who I am and why, and this is gradually enabling me to navigate my way better. For over half a century I was wandering aimlessly with the wrong guidebook and the wrong map, never understanding why I always ended up back where I started. I was trying to fit into a culture that I didn’t understand and that didn’t understand me. What I should have been doing was being proud to fit out.

So now I am writing my own guidebook, with my own map, and trying to find the place where I do fit in, and where I am recognised for who I really am instead of being rejected and criticised for who I am not.

I can only ever talk about me because I don’t know how it feels to be someone else, but I am hopeful that with more open and honest discussions we can all become more aware, more accepting, and more understanding of the differences of us all.

Different but equal; equal but different.