Hopelessly uncoordinated

 As well as discovering that I am autistic, I have been mulling over the idea that I might be dyspraxic. I had a general idea what dyspraxia was but hadn't really looked the criteria in any detail to see is this a label that would fit my lived experience.

For those of you unfamiliar it is a disorder that affects movement and coordination.

Now for the evidence, lest anyone think I am in the habit of looking up complicated things and saying that I have them for fun. I can tell you there are lots of different reasons I have suspected dyspraxia for a number of years.

for starters coordination. I am terribly, disastrously uncoordinated. I remember hating team sports in school and the urge to duck when someone throws a ball to me is still very much in play. I have noticed in the years I have been doing Crossfit that the movements I struggle most with are the ones that require coordination. For example I look hilarious attempting to do a jumping jack.

Another thing is driving. While I am perfectly adequate driver I struggle with reversing when it is not on a straight bit of road, parallel parking and parking in any sort of awkward space. My brain just struggles to compute what it should be doing and I get hopelessly stressed out. 

Not being able to skip is also a sign. We do a move called a double under in Crossfit and its like this super fast skipping where you allow the rope to pass under your feet twice each time you jump and a good portion of my gym have mastered it especially those who have been training as long as I have. Those who can't do it can skip really fast and efficiently and me, I struggle. I have made some improvement but I am the worst in any given class and I frequently get the rope caught in my hair or trip on it.

Another is having difficultly telling left from right. I've personally been a little embarrassed by this one. It seems to come naturally to most people but I have always had to give it extra thought. And I have to take a minute to orientate myself when someone mentions something being on the left or right.

This next one will make sense but having a really bad sense of direction is something else that's a sign of dyspraxia. I have a terrible sense of direction and also I can neither give good directions to other people nor can I follow them accurately. The day they brought in eircodes in Ireland was an absolute godsend. If I am being given directions to get somewhere and more than three turns are mentioned then I automatically stop listening as I know for a fact I will not retain this information and will have to rely on google maps to get me there.

Also poor spatial awareness meaning extra bruises and bumps and yes I am the queen of mystery bruises. As a small child I used to dread the summer because the bare legs meant I had less protection for my legs when I would inevitably fall over.

My handwriting is pretty much a scrawl, so much so that in secondary school a teacher recommended I see an education psychologist and I was given an allowance during my junior cert exams so that I would not lose marks over it. Now it is is legible but just about.

By no means is any of this evidence definitive but I think the fact that I can easily amass a volume of it says a lot about the probability that this is another facet of my being. Another puzzle piece slotting into place.

I think there are ways you can go to seek an official diagnosis but for the most part I don't feel this is majorly impairing how I am living my life and all it is really doing is giving me a little more context to make sense of myself and also allowing me to give myself some grace for the things I cannot do with ease.

From now on I can shrug at my poor sense of direction or my abysmal attempts at skipping and simply say I might just be dyspraxic