Not Born to be a Watchmaker - Coming to Terms with My Physical Limitations

When I was 12, I was traumatised by a lump of clay.

The setting was my compulsory school art class. We had all been told to create a building out of our imaginations and form it from the cold, wet lump we were all given.

As the rest of the class created turrets, towers, and ramparts straight out of Disney or Tolkien, my lump simply changed from one amorphous, unrecognisable mass to another.

Eventually, several lessons in and having tried every method of coaching in the book, from gentle encouragement to firm instructions to get my act together, the teacher took pity on me.

He did 95% of the work to create the most basic of castles and left me to add a bit of decoration.

The end product that I took home to my proud parents was in no way my work.

This remains, unfortunately, the pattern with me and any kind of physical task beyond simple labouring.

I am heavy handed, imprecise, and clumsy.

I break things all the time, no matter how careful I am.

I spent my childhood covered in bruises (and still regularly find them on my body), with no idea how they got there.

My children would point out to me that I was bleeding again, because I felt nothing from the latest cuts on my arms.

It is enormously frustrating.

I would very much like to be able to do at least the most basic of physical tasks without breaking something, needing a trip to the hospital, or both.

But that is not me.

Now, with the benefit of 50 years of hindsight, I think that there are several different things going on.

Firstly, to go with my autism and ADHD, I am dyspraxic.

This is a neurodivergent difference which is characterised by difficulty with coordination and movement.

When I grew up, nobody had heard of these differences.

I was just the clumsy kid who should not be left alone with anything remotely fragile.

I never have been able to do anything delicate that required precise and accurate hand movements.

But it is more complex than that for me.

When I was born, I was oxygen deprived for a short time, leading to issues all down the right side of my body.

I have had issues with my right eye, right ear, and right hand.

Now this is nothing major and I cannot complain.

But it is there.

Perhaps more significantly, my parents were very well aware of this when I was growing up, and sought to give me whatever support I needed.

I had trouble with keeping my handwriting legible, and they investigated whether I would be entitled to extra time in exams. (I wasn’t and didn’t need it in the end.)

But I think that the unfortunate consequence was that this known issue masked any of us realising that there were other things going on, not that I would have been diagnosed with dyspraxia in the seventies anyway!

Finally, there is also a mental aspect to my physical struggles.

I cannot visualise things, nor can I see how something works or fits together by looking at it.

While I studied maths at university, I found geometry extremely difficult because I could never get my head around three-dimensional shapes without physically having one in front of me.

Combine this mental block with a lack of fine motor skills and DIY was never going to be my thing!

Only now am I coming to a proper understanding and acceptance of all of this.

It is frustrating.

I would love to be able to carry out at least basic tasks in the home without a major incident, and I would have been very grateful to have had just a tiny bit of ability at sport or music.

I know that I have other strengths, and I try to focus on them.

I know that I am able to do a great deal more physically than many, and I try not to take that for granted.

I can understand how numbers and words fit together perfectly, even if I cannot envisage how cogs can form a gearbox.

In some ways, we never stop growing up.

We are always learning about and understanding ourselves better.

With understanding, for me at least, comes greater self-acceptance.

But please don’t ask me to put up a shelf for you unless you want your house demolished!

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