Blue Hospital Socks

Backstory: Tourettes

Tou·rette's syn·drometo͝oˈrets ˌsindrōm/nouna neurological disorder characterized by involuntary tics and vocalizations and often the compulsive utterance of obscenities.

I do not remember my first tics, when or where they happened; but I do remember what they feel like and what they made me do. It was only blinking and clearing my throat, but it was repetitive all day in my second grade classroom and at night at home with my mother. She took me to the doctor and they brushed it aside perhaps as anxiety. Then like how it began it vanished without saying goodbye, it packed its things and left my life, good riddance. It would be back again.

Summer in middle school is a time to relax and forget all those assignments forced down your throat. I would receive an unexpected visitor that august before 7th grade that would make itself at home in the guestroom in my head. It started with the constant blinking like it did when I was younger it was like someone had poisoned my eyes and it burned so much I would need to blink it out drop by drop until a pool of dark poison lay at my feet. The following is a list of what the poison made me do that year:

-Scrunch my face 

-Jerk my head back and forth and up and down

-Hit my nose

-Tense my shoulder blades

-Rotate my wrist into fist and hit my shoulders

-clapping

-Tense my stomach

-Tense my legs 

-Rotate my ankles

-blacking out 

-falling on my knees

-whole body contortions

The poison spread throughout my entire body, it pumped through my veins making it to every join every artery and every muscle until it drowned me and a doctor was called.

Diagnosis: generalized tic disorder.

My parents rejoiced in the fact that is was not a tumor, another seizure or physiological, they also were glad it was not full blown Tourettes syndrome, later they would be disappointed. I lived my seventh grade life with these symptoms, it went mainly unnoticed and ignored to my delight. A reminder: I was in seventh grade, the year that everyone says is the hardest and when the kids are the most cruel and immature. I was ridiculed for others things than my tourettes, which was bitter sweet knowing.

The following year from the onset of the comeback of my tics it the poison increased and spread to something we all have and often take for granted, our voice. I remember specifically what happened and how it happened. My chest felt a increase pressure rising up my throat like a violent storm surge before the hurricane makes landfall it spilled out my mouth and into my dad's work office with a single noise: yeet. I know, how hilarious, the famous vine "This bitch empty YEET".  At the time I was a classic eighth grade boy, full of memes and inappropriate jokes, I still am, I will admit. When my dad came back into the office he found me out of control the noise spilling out my mouth filling the room with a loudnest that sounded like pain. The poison filled my lungs and throat and mouth overflowing into multiple words and sounds:

-Yeet

-Shook

-Screaming

-clearing my throat

-tic-tac

-Gerard way

-form voltron

At first glance these are hilarious and I joke about them myself all the time as a way to cope. My parents were very concerned for my well being they called my neurologist I have had since grade school that I have happend to know very well over the years.

Diagnosis: Tourettes Syndrome

The scary diagnosis my parents and I have been dreading; it was not as bad as cancer or AIDS but it was a disease nonetheless. This was a scary time. 

I did not want to be like that person I saw on that youtube video yelling "bob saget!" or the south park kids, I was not them. I was also not a normal eighth grader I was out of control, on multiple medications just to try to control by body and mind. I felt at war with my body like I was two people. My mind was an emotional loving artist and writer that wanted to help others and find peace; My body was an uncontrollable maniac that sought violence and destruction that could not be held down no matter what. That terrified me. 

I know my future will be full of more misunderstandings, more tic attacks, more ER visits and doctors appointments, but that is not all of my future. My future is a therapist working with children and an artist on the side, I will hopefully find someone I love and adopt a kid. My Tourettes will still be in my future but it is not my future.

Currently, I am 13 years old in 8th grade and still battling tourettes. 

*Disclaimer* I am not asking for pity or playing victim I simply want to get my story out to help and connect with others. Thanks for reading.