Go­ing your own way…

Sun­day, 16.03.25

I’ve been tra­vel­ling for th­ree weeks now and the last one was full of chal­lenges and ideas for new paths, in hi­king and in life. To­day, Sun­day af­ter­noon, it’s rai­ning and I’m re­ally en­joy­ing it. I’m sit­ting on the bed in my ho­tel room in Santa Cruz, Sil­veira, han­ging out. And I think it’s re­ally good.

Let’s start from the be­gin­ning. Last Mon­day in Lis­bon, there were se­vere wea­ther war­nings on all my in­for­ma­tion chan­nels for the co­as­tal re­gion wi­thin a ra­dius of 100 ki­lo­me­t­res. I the­r­e­fore spon­ta­neously ex­ten­ded my stay in Lis­bon and stayed un­til Wed­nes­day mor­ning. In­s­tead of hi­king my own first stage, on Mon­day I vi­si­ted the Oce­aná­rio de Lis­boa, which is of­ten de­scri­bed and men­tio­ned there. An Ocea­neum with the lar­gest in­door aqua­rium in Eu­rope, al­most 5 mil­lion li­t­res of sea­wa­ter, over two flo­ors, with sharks, rays, tuna, moon­fish, mola mola…

And I was sho­cked. I don’t know whe­ther I was more sho­cked at mys­elf for not rea­li­sing that this re­ally was­n’t for me, or whe­ther it was the si­tua­tion there in the Ocea­neum its­elf. It was pro­ba­bly both. The wea­ther on Mon­day was bad, as pre­dic­ted, and so the Ocea­neum was very crow­ded. Peo­ple crow­ded in clus­ters in front of the aqua­rium win­dows, but wi­t­hout re­ally loo­king in and ma­king cont­act. They loo­ked th­rough their mo­bile pho­nes and filmed, of­ten po­sing with them­sel­ves in front of it, with fake smi­les to boot. And quickly mo­ved on. The fish were truly beau­tiful, huge and im­pres­sive, but they all loo­ked so in­cre­di­bly sad. They swam in cir­cles over and over again, loo­king very apa­the­tic. From their per­spec­tive, they could­n’t see us hu­mans, so many a shark’s eye and many a sad fish’s mouth ap­peared right in front of my eyes and slowly mo­ved past me. Don’t think I’m crazy, be­cause I’ve of­ten been fa­sci­na­ted by fish and other sea crea­tures in films about un­der­wa­ter worlds in the open ocean. But these had happy ex­pres­si­ons, cheerful eyes, beau­tiful fa­cial ex­pres­si­ons and re­la­xed cor­ners of their mouths.

I las­ted exactly 30 mi­nu­tes in this buil­ding and fled in the di­rec­tion of the city centre. Sit­ting in the Uber, the dri­ver, a very young Bra­zi­lian, as­ked me how I found the Ocea­neum and I ans­we­red ho­nestly. He smi­led with a gleam in his eye and said that his fa­mily of­ten de­scri­bed him as au­tis­tic be­cause he ‘also’ has pro­blems with this type of group of peo­ple and seeks to es­cape into so­li­tude and na­ture. As we said good­bye, he than­ked me for the con­ver­sa­tion and the in­vi­ta­tion (bet­ween the li­nes?) to take more care of his own needs and fi­nally seek out na­ture and si­lence. How lovely! I had in­spi­red so­meone to take them­sel­ves se­riously and get in touch with them­sel­ves. That made me very happy.

For the next day and a half in Lis­bon, I lon­ged for the de­ser­ted co­ast, me­a­dows, beach, rocks and sea.

Forces of na­ture, mould sta­ins and clo­sed rooms

Fi­nally back on the hike to my next lo­ca­tion on Wed­nes­day, cal­led ‘Praia das Ma­çãs’, even more vio­lent wa­ves were cras­hing against rocks and cliffs on the At­lan­tic, streams were floo­ded by pre­vious rain­fall and paths were muddy. My own first stage was ex­haus­ting but won­derfully rough, the de­sti­na­tion, an­o­ther in­ter­na­tio­nal surf spot in sum­mer, was de­ser­ted and beautiful.

My ac­com­mo­da­tion see­med clean as al­ways, but un­fort­u­na­tely it was ex­tre­mely cold and damp again. There were a lot of mould sta­ins, and on top of that I could­n’t open a win­dow as there was only one sky­light, which is elec­tro­ni­cally con­trol­led and does­n’t open at all in cer­tain hu­mid out­side tem­pe­ra­tures. Des­pair spread th­rough me. A back and forth with the land­lady cla­ri­fied: I had to spend the night in this room wi­t­hout an open win­dow. Af­ter 8 hours of hi­king with ‘nor­mal’ ad­ver­si­ties, my own stage to this point was marked as red to black on Ko­moot, I was ex­haus­ted and ex­haus­ted. The si­lence and lo­neli­ness, not ha­ving been able to talk to an­yone for many days, made it dif­fi­cult to deal with the si­tua­tion as a whole.

A large tank full of vitality

As I neither drink al­co­hol nor smoke to re­lax a little, I had no choice but to eat bis­cuits and spend hours on You­Tube, sear­ching the in­ter­net for al­ter­na­tive tra­vel blogs and tra­vel tips for Por­tu­gal, re­a­ding and wat­ching a lot. As in the first two weeks, I re­pea­tedly fell as­leep very late at night and got up early in the mor­ning af­ter a very short night in or­der to get to the next hi­king trail as quickly as pos­si­ble. Be­ing out in the fresh air, just wal­king. I knew that would calm me down, that I would come back to mys­elf. And it did.

Over the next few hours and days, I con­tin­ued to think a lot about my si­tua­tion here on my jour­ney, about these ex­treme dif­fe­ren­ces that I am ex­pe­ri­en­cing here. Out on the hi­king trails, deep peace, tran­quil­lity and hap­pi­ness that I only re­mem­ber from my child­hood. Breathing freely and ex­pe­ri­en­cing na­ture and si­lence, like a large tank full of life en­ergy, con­stant mo­ve­ment and mo­ti­on­less­ness at the same time. Ani­mals along the way give me back my smile and even spon­ta­neous laugh­ter. Funny black pigs run­ning free in the vil­lage, don­keys, sheep, tame seagulls sit­ting on the wall 30 cm in front of me, wat­ching me with amu­se­ment to see if a crumb falls off the biscuit.

On the other hand, I am so ex­tre­mely chal­len­ged at the de­sti­na­ti­ons, in­cre­asingly sen­si­tive to the things that I have per­haps been unable to to­le­rate in my en­tire life, even in Ger­many: loud ma­chi­nes, cars, the stench of ex­haust fu­mes, full and very noisy re­stau­rants (of the few that are open), crowds of peo­ple, clo­sed rooms, no win­dows, no fresh air, in­s­tead slight mouldy damp­ness or per­fu­mes from many sources such as de­ter­gents, so­aps, sham­poos, creams etc. I’m start­ing to ch­ange my ac­com­mo­da­tion stra­tegy and only book ho­tels, as they de­fi­ni­tely deal with the damp and cold dif­fer­ently. They are pro­ba­bly just more con­sis­t­ently oc­cu­p­ied. In any case, the mould, odour and air pro­blem has been sol­ved since then. In the evening, I con­ti­nue my search for al­ter­na­tive hi­king or tra­vel in­for­ma­tion for this re­gion and sud­denly find so­me­thing com­ple­tely dif­fe­rent, es­sen­tial and very emo­tio­nal for me.

Solo tra­vel­ler with neurodiversity?

An ar­ticle by a young wo­man who de­ve­lo­ped pro­blems on her world tra­vels that were so si­mi­lar to mine sud­denly made me rea­lise. I don’t want to bo­ther you with it here, but in this si­tua­tion here and now in this last week on the co­ast in Por­tu­gal, I sim­ply rea­li­sed that my long-known dia­gno­sis, which I had tried to keep very far away from me for ye­ars, was co­ming at me with all its force, like the vio­lent wa­ves of the At­lan­tic. I sud­denly rea­li­sed why I had kept this dia­gno­sis so far away from me. On the one hand, like a clas­sic in­tro­vert, I des­pi­sed these parts of my per­so­na­lity so much that I re­jec­ted them in others and in ge­ne­ral and sim­ply wan­ted not­hing to do with them. On the other hand, I did­n’t and still don’t know what the con­se­quen­ces of such dia­gno­ses ac­tually entail.

The ques­tion that I have never as­ked, that no one in my life has ever ans­we­red and that I am only as­king mys­elf to­day is: How do I deal with such dif­fe­ren­ces? What does this dia­gno­sis mean for me in my ever­y­day life, in my so­cial and pro­fes­sio­nal en­vi­ron­ment? In­te­res­t­ingly, I have to rea­lise that I have cho­sen my pro­fes­sio­nal field ba­sed en­ti­rely on these spe­cial abili­ties wi­t­hout re­ally be­ing aware of it. I have al­re­ady uti­li­sed my ta­lents and strengths. The only thing miss­ing is my own re­co­gni­tion of this and a plan for how I can or­ga­nise the rest of my life ac­cor­din­gly in or­der to feel he­althy and well.

I call it by its name. It’s about neu­ro­sen­si­ti­vity, au­tism, ADHD, al­e­xithy­mia, ASD and a neu­ro­ty­pi­cal per­for­mance that goes hand in hand with all of this. The lat­ter even con­vin­ced me so much that I still don’t re­ally know, re­co­g­nise and ack­now­ledge mys­elf to this day, but my per­for­mance overs­ha­dows my ac­tual per­so­na­lity to a not in­con­sidera­ble extent.

Many of the peo­ple close to me will now say: But you knew that, El­len. No. I su­spec­ted it, did­n’t want to ad­mit it, sup­pres­sed it and above all: if I had re­ally known, I would have got help long ago! Be­cause one thing is clear: things will be dif­fe­rent for me from now on. And I’m start­ing my jour­ney right here.

Slow and mindful travelling

From now on, I won’t be hi­king to a dif­fe­rent place every day, che­cking in and che­cking out again the next mor­ning, be­cause my ner­vous sys­tem can’t handle it. I’ll stay at least two nights. Day trips and short hi­kes in the area are also very nice. And I’ll ea­sily co­ver one or two 5 km di­stances by bus or Uber. My back­pack now weighs about 13kg be­cause I had to re­place all of my func­tional and po­ly­es­ter clot­hing with pure cot­ton and lamb­s­wool clot­hing af­ter just ten days, and that weighs more. But I feel much more com­for­ta­ble in it.

I will learn a lot about mys­elf. At what points do I get stres­sed and what do I need to avoid get­ting stres­sed? Em­bra­cing my slow­ness. Not ha­ving to be fast, but be­ing al­lo­wed to be slow. So­me­thing that I have so far only stored in mys­elf as fla­wed, wrong and bad, which so­ciety has told me to pre­vent, over­come or co­ver up. The fas­ter the bet­ter, in all areas. In my per­cep­tion, this was and is nor­mal, de­si­ra­ble and good for many peo­ple. When I am al­lo­wed to be slow, I ac­tually en­joy al­most all things and suc­ceed much bet­ter. My sys­tem sim­ply does not un­der­stand time pres­sure and sees ab­so­lut­ely no sense in it. I can think of so many si­tua­tions from kin­der­gar­ten to school to uni­ver­sity and work in which I could not cope at all with what was nor­mal and ex­pec­ted of me.

Be­ing authentic

It’s time to be mys­elf. In the near fu­ture, I will be loo­king for sup­port­ive stra­te­gies, ex­ter­nal struc­tures, breaks and so­cial spaces that will help me to un­der­stand mys­elf bet­ter, to ac­cept mys­elf and to find au­then­tic self-ex­pres­sion. I know that many peo­ple out there think I al­re­ady have all of this. I am a strong per­so­na­lity who can also pre­sent hers­elf well. But in rea­lity, I sim­ply have a lot of ro­les that pro­tect me from ap­pearing in­se­cure, self-doubting or sad for no re­ason to the out­side world, but ra­ther to ap­pear self-con­fi­dent and strong in a va­riety of ways. Play­ing these ro­les, re­ac­ting very quickly, is so­me­thing I’m re­ally good at, but it’s ma­king me in­cre­asingly un­happy in­side. I want to say good­bye to that. In­s­tead, I look for­ward to be­ing mys­elf, no idea what will come of it.

This is the preli­mi­nary re­sult from last week. I’m in Santa Cruz, Sil­veira, 60 km north of Lis­bon, and I’ve hiked 50 of them. To­mor­row I’ll con­ti­nue in the di­rec­tion of Pe­ni­che. Wild At­lan­tic. As long as I like it.

I wish you a good start to the week! Stay strong and get a big hug!

See you soon,