Dyspraxia Art Expression | Rabiah M - British Pakistani
I guess this is my very first vent piece. I’m not really one to talk about my own problems as often as I should and I’ve never really “artistically expressed” anything before. So I debated posting this for a long while but I guess I am.
I have a learning difficulty known as Dyspraxia, think of it as dyslexia’s annoying cousin. I struggle to read and/or write at times, I lose my focus easily and become very easily emotional even at the littlest things (I think I have minor ADHD too but that’s beside the point.) it took until 2020 for it to get diagnosed and I struggled with it silently for ages.
Why is this relevant? Well, another symptom includes sudden and/or constant hand tremors and terrible co-ordination, literally making me diagnosed clumsy. It’s something that others and myself constantly laugh at, bc I really can’t go a minute without dropping something or banging into something. It’s really something that’s just a minor inconvenience rather than any real struggle. Until recently. I don’t know why, maybe it’s general anxiety, depression or a
lack of vitamins but I’ve been noticing my hands shaking more and more and now when I act ‘clumsy’ I get so angry because I know I can’t do anything about it.
I’m used to getting yelled at for dropping things, for making a joke out of tripping over my feet constantly, but more so, I’m just getting so tired about it.
A few days ago I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to draw traditionally, but I couldn’t bc my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t get a line of paper. I got really worked up about it and just kinda sat in anger for a long while bc there was nothing I could do about it. In the end, I made this on my iPad, with the stabilisation turned off and I tried not to press “undo” as often as I would.
Digital art honestly feels like such a lifesaver for me at times, because Inking traditionally is literally impossible when at times I lose control of my hands. Being able to quickly undo my mistakes and have stabilisation enabled really helps. Sometimes I worry that’s it’s become too much of a clutch for me, or I’ll forget how to draw traditionally but It doesn’t really matter, art is art regardless of medium or how you choose to create it.