Does anyone else have next to no sense of direction?

[ThePinkCushion]

It's so frustrating. I have almost no mental map of places in my head. Even places that I've been a hundred times I can still get lost when going there. I do have dyspraxia and I don't drive which is probably a good thing because I have enough trouble walking.

Can anyone else relate?

I get lost on the way to work. I take buses going in the wrong direction. I have to have someone with me in car parks because otherwise I'm screwed. I also struggle with up and down. Each journey is new to me even when I've made it 100s of times. I learnt from being a child to memorise one landmark on each journey so that I could navigate around it. Coping skills.

That scene in Still Alice at the beginning where she goes for a run and gets lost. That's me. Every day. I wish it were different. I can't imagine life with navigation.

My partner is exactly this. It was a bit of a struggle for me to understand at first as I'm the complete opposite, if I go somewhere a couple of times, even to other countries, I can get back there again, and I'm pretty good at remembering time estimates between places. In my old job we had 120 locations to deliver to, and I never used a sat nav, never got lost. My memory is awful in other regards though, likes peoples names, or things people tell me.

I've indulged in that bit of innocent bragging just to highlight the contrast with my partner, who I thought at times when I met her was pulling my leg. She can get lost in a tescos, certainly coming out of one. If the exit is to the left of the checkouts, she will instinctively want to go right (assuming she cant see the exit from where we are). She's terrible at remembering landmarks.

We can do the same journey, say to my Mums house, a week apart, and I will be the passenger acting as the sat nav, and very little from the 20 minute journey stays in her mind, so we'll get to the same, very recognisable roundabout from the week before, and she will ask left or right?

It's become one of those little quirks that I truly love about her.

I am starting at a new store next week for work, not joking it will take me at least two weeks to navigate the warehouse.

When I come out of shops I need to stand for a minute figuring out which direction to go back where I came from. I was in Primark changing rooms a couple of weeks ago and went the wrong way out of the cubicle, I ended up at the very end of changing area, opposite exit. I actually had to ask someone how I got out of there - that was really embarrassing, they looked at me like I was bonkers, pointing over my shoulder to the exit.

It’s a joke in my family how bad my sense of direction is. I once tried to go somewhere about 6 miles from my home and ended up outside Euston station in London. I went down one way streets the wrong way and even moved barriers from the ends of roads just hoping the police would stop me so I could get some help but no. I then drove round until I get stuck in traffic then I knocked on the window of the car next to me and explained that I was list. I told them where I wanted to go and in between much laughter they said I had knocked on the right window because they lived round the corner from where I wanted to go and I should follow them. I was so grateful I nearly kissed them. I also had 3 kids asleep in the back of the car.