What do Daniel Radcliffe, Cara Delevingne, David Bailey, Marilyn Monroe, and Richard Branson have in common? Besides being rich, these celebrities have (or are thought to have had) a condition known as dyspraxia.

Dyspraxia, also known as developmental coordination disorder, is a learning disability in the same category as dyslexia, Asperger’s Syndrome, and ADHD. Dyspraxia can be thought of as the lesser-known cousin of dyslexia, though it is relatively unknown outside of the U.K. People with dyslexia have trouble reading, but their skills are visual. People with dyspraxia, on the other hand, have no trouble reading; but have trouble with hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, and sensory perception.

This means that I have a college reading level, but have trouble walking down a sidewalk without tripping. However, having dyspraxia is more than just being clumsy. It affects me in a lot of other ways.

As is typical for someone with dyspraxia, I have terrible short-term-memory. It’s quite bad. I have to ask people repeat instructions three times before I retain them. I often get “Why aren’t you listening?”, which confuses me because I am listening. It’s just that I’m processing at a slower rate, so I process half of the instructions the first time around. This has caused me problems with family members and teachers because they think that I am not listening. Then I get frustrated.

I have trouble organizing my thoughts, or things that are in steps. I can’t put on makeup, and I know that people think I am stupid because I have a university degree, yet I can’t do simple tasks. Sorry, but that smoky-eye makeup the girl on YouTube puts on so effortlessly is not possible for me to do. It takes me nearly an hour to blow-dry my hair because you must use two hands, one to hold the hair-dryer and the other for the brush, and then my brain gets the two mixed up. If you were to ask me which hand is my left hand and which is my right hand, I could show you; but when I am doing something that has multiple steps I get mixed up; my brain feels overloaded. I feel like a malfunctioning computer that people are putting commands into, and then it keeps crashing.

Many years ago, when I was in elementary school, one of my teachers gave me a workbook to improve handwriting. I filled out the entire workbook and took it to school the next day. As my teacher flipped through the pages, I could tell by the look on her face that my handwriting hadn’t improved. I could see her disappointment, and I wished I lived in a world where I could be me.

The problem with dyspraxia support and advocacy is that it focuses largely on children. Most of the groups or advice when you type “dyspraxia” into Google is for parents of elementary school children. I remember getting occupational therapy (OT) around the second grade (which was an hour or two per school day of drawing and coloring in pictures of animals and practicing saying words. After that I don’t remember getting a lot of support for it. I did get extra time on tests, which helped, but I mean not much support for practical things. What good does coloring in animals do once you’re grown up and expected to be able to follow table manners (See: Learning Martian), cook, pour juice without spilling it, blow-dry your hair, drive a car, and maintain an acceptable fitness level? I can drive, but only around the neighborhood and on back roads; which makes finding employment difficult. It’s no wonder that many people with dyspraxia struggle with anxiety.

As much as dyspraxia makes certain tasks difficult, there are benefits to it as well. We tend to be creative and we enjoy caring for others. I have excellent long-term memory, and can still remember the names of actors in a movie I saw ten years ago. Most of us have found a way around tasks we find difficult, whether if that’s switching up the people we ask to repeat instructions so they don’t get annoyed, or watching a YouTube tutorial about how to slice up a tomato. I just wish that more people knew what dyspraxia was, that it is a learning disorder like ADHD. No, I’m not stupid; I have an average IQ, and I’m not trying to irritate you or “be a smart aleck” when I ask how to do tasks that might seem simple to you.