How Living in My Van Helps Me Fight Depression

I wanted to talk today a little bit about why it was that I chose to move into my van and live on the road. Right now I am in coastal Maine, which is a beautiful place to spend summer, and my cat and I have been camping out on a friend's screen porch. That's where I am right now. And you'll hear cars going by periodically. I can't help that. I'm not on Highway 1, but I'm on sort of the alternate route so a lot of traffic comes through here even though this is a pretty rural area. My life before I moved into my van, I was depressed. I was living a life that wasn't making me happy. I felt really isolated from people. I had some wonderful friends in the gay, lesbian, trans, asexual, et cetera community and they helped me ... stay alive. It really is that intense, my Pocatello friends, you know who you are, thank you. I probably wouldn't be here today if it weren't for you, plus my online Autistic friends who kept me going. What made me want to talk about this today is I read an article talking about why traveling is a great way to fight depression. Their number one point -- I don't think these are in any particular order -- traveling opens up unique situations. When you travel, everything is changing around you all the time because you're moving around. Having a changing environment all the time, having to solve problems all the time... I had a tire blow out on the Jersey Turnpike last summer and my first reaction was it felt like the end of the world. What was I going to do? I had no idea what to do. Piece by piece, I solved the problem with help from others and it gave me added confidence that when a disaster hits I can figure out what to do. That when I need help I can call on my self-advocacy skills, which I'm still working on developing. It's really hard for me to ask for help from people. Blowing out a tire with no savings, I had to ask for help and it was really hard, but I succeeded and I got help and that gave me a little more confidence that the next time I got in trouble I would be able to figure out what to do. When I'm traveling around, I'm meeting new people and I'm seeing new places and I'm solving problems, my brain is making new connections, laying down new memories, and some of those memories are memories of me being competent with something. Because every time I solve a problem, I add a little counterweight. I have this balance in my head of do I feel competent or incompetent. And it's completely subjective, but if you think of it as like a balance scale, every time that I am competent at something, that I'm challenged and rise to the occasion, I get a little marker on that side of the scale and it weighs it down a little more into feeling like I might have what it takes to face challenges and tackle them successfully. The second point, travel teaches you what's possible. Even just getting on the road at all was a lesson in what was possible. I researched for about a year and a half before I moved into my van and during that time a lot of people were supportive. And then I had... interestingly the most helpful people of all were ones that they were not positive or negative but they were questioning. One person in particular, one friend, was tremendously helpful in getting me on the road just by asking, "what will you do if this happens?" And I would either say, "oh, I've already thought about that and here's my solution," or I'd say, "I'll get back to you on that. Thanks for asking." And within a day or two, I would have figured out and I'd say, "well if that happens, this is what I'll do." Just figuring out how to do it really gave me a boost of understanding what could be possible in my life. Point number three, getting out and meeting people helps overcome depression. This is a tricky one. When an Autistic person goes to a therapist, quite often they're told, "you just need to put yourself out there more, you need to get out and meet more people, be more social." With Autistic people, we have to be careful because it takes a lot of energy to interact with people, especially new people. It can be really frustrating and draining. so getting out and meeting people sometimes can actually add to my depression. So I have to save back a certain amount of energy. But, it has tremendously helped my overall level of depression to get out and meet people and have successful interactions with people. And I find, often, keeping my interactions short tends to make them more successful because it minimizes the chances of things going wrong. And then when I go to events, like conferences, or when I visit people that I've known online and get to know them I get to connect with fellow Autistic people and that's huge. Do not underestimate the value of knowing other Autistic people. Point number four, traveling helps you see the big picture. In that point in the article, they talk about how when you're depressed your life narrows down to this little point and it's usually focused on your own problems. Traveling has helped me to see a bigger picture with autism. Meeting people who are all ages, getting to know them, getting to know their whole family, has helped me to have a broader perspective on what we Autistic people, as a community, need. Something bigger than just what affects my life, but what affects all of our lives? And then, point number five, the world itself can be a natural anti-depressant. They talk about things like having a sense of awe. Seeing things that are bigger than myself, whether they're projects that human beings came together on or whether they are the forces of nature, take me outside myself. Traveling and seeing beauty everywhere I go has made me realize how beautiful it was where I was living, when I was too depressed to appreciate it. People all the time will ask me, "so you've traveled quite a bit now. What's your favorite place?" That was always a hard question to answer because every place is so amazing. And I finally realized that my answer to "what's your favorite place?" is the place that I am when I'm asked that question. Because every place on Earth is so amazing and the people you'll find there are so tremendous that if I am not completely in love with a place, I'm turning the key in my van and driving someplace else. But honestly, every place I've gone -- and places so different from one another -- but every single one of them has been my favorite place to be. And so I think my favorite place in the United States is here. Now. Wherever that happens to be. 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