Marking Time. And losing it

One of the hardest things for me, is linear memory.  I don't mean to suggest that I have absolutely NO memory of my past: it's more that the timeline of my life is confusing to me.Logically,  I know that things happened. I know that they happened in a particular order. However, my memory is more jumbled and random.  Sometimes I will be talking with someone; maybe exchanging stories, and they will tell me about something that they did when they were four. Or eight Or forty:  and I will try to share a story of my own. I will say maybe "when I was three years old, I ..."  and I will remember that I really was three years old when that thing happened. But then there will be a huge gap, Or I will try to explain how I developed an ability, or an idea over a period of time, only to realise that I can only see events unfolding in random flashes that jump backwards and forwards through the years until the process makes no sense to me.

This, in part, is what the condition that I haven't yet named, does to me. It confuses time so that events that happened decades ago will suddenly be immediate and affecting, where something that happened just an hour ago will seem to be so far away that it barely registers a response. It leaves huge, blank gaps that swallow weeks, months... occasionally even years of my life: chasms that I cannot cross; time I can never recover.

Again. I can see that this is where someone would ask what the hell this has to do with travelling. I guess for most,, the response would be "nothing".  But for me, the effect can be devastating... so I develop coping tools. I have rituals, routines. to help me remember: and to stop me from falling into one of those chasms: and the most important one of those for me, is that I write everything down. I make endless lists. I write down not only directions, but the routes and numbers of public transport. the numbers of, and (where possible) addresses for taxi companies.  bay numbers for bus stations: platform numbers for trains. I write the names of places I should see as I travel. Road names and intersections, Junction numbers. I write the names of streets I need to be close to.  I carry not only tickets, but enough cash to replace them should I lose them: plus an amount for cab fare just in case I can't cope with a bus. I label everything. I carry my folded stick tucked into my hand or into a pocket, it I have one large enough, but I have to write down where I have put it in case I become anxious or distressed, and my overtaxed concentration collapses.

Once, I stayed in a hotel where they provided not just internet access in the room, but a PC: and the means not only to work, but to watch films or TV on the monitor. I spent two hours researching routes from that hotel back to the railway station, along with timings, in case I blanked out and didn't have the time, or capacity to call a cab. and I listed every item I had carried with me so  that I could check each off as I replaced it in my bag.

I love travelling.. I love the feeling I get from it, But I  never once said, or expected, that it would be stressless or without complications for me.