tik tok?

I can't stop ticking.

Plus, I've picked up a new one. Hand-wringing.

(Tics are exacerbated by stress, of course. But with the exception of maybe 2 incidents of coprolalia, my tics haven't waxed or waned* since I was a kid. Apparently my current emotional state is hitting me hard.)

You have no idea how distressing it is to not have control over what your hands are doing. To become aware of it, and stop yourself, but then the second you stop paying attention, they go right back to it. Or not stop yourself, because you know it'll just start up again, plus it's so calming to just release and let your body do what it needs to do...

*It's normal for tics to wax and wane, that is, one might disappear for a while and sometime later a new one might crop up. But for me it's been flapping, leg-bouncing, and silent palilalia (?) pretty consistently since, like, middle school.

http://www.tsa-usa.org/aMedical/whatists.html

The label I forget

I rarely write about TS, or talk about it. I don't even think about it much, really. Usually as soon as I notice I'm ticking I stop, and that's that.

While in the bathroom tonight getting ready for bed, I noticed that I was flapping pretty hard. Then, sitting on my bed after putting in my retainers, I realized my wrist was starting to get tired, I was flapping so hard. Do you know how much I tic, and how fast? (In case you didn't catch my tone there, the answers are A LOT and VERY.) I don't recall EVER getting sore from it before.

I wish I knew why I was ticking so hard. Then some mental post-it note appears, left over from the days of agonizing over calc homework, reminding me that stress makes it worse. I'm stressed? I don't think I'm stressed about anything. I pause and my mind lands on a sentence: it's when I feel that my surroundings are out of my control.

And that's it exactly. If my life strays a little from the routine, flapping...it comforts me greatly. Which is strange to say. That's one thing about TS I never really experience--ticking as relief of an urge--as a way to feel good. Because I'm not usually aware that I am ticking.

When I tic I surrender control of my body and my mind. It is pure chaos.

And it's dangerous:
I don't mind if someone sees me bounce or wave, but when I give myself over to it? Fingers a blur, wrists rotating bizarrely, arms held out rigidly ahead of me. Mouth wide open, tongue pressed against my teeth, eyes glazed over.
I don't want anyone to EVER see me like that.

I fall into a state where I'm not in control of my body and I am aware of nothing, completely in a trance. Yet in that double loss I am free. Free from being a control freak. Free from needing every question answered. Free from needing every detail planned. Free from bullshit stresses like homework. Free from the bigger stresses that don't go away, about my future or whatever.

Usually once I notice I'm ticking I stop; it's almost never lucid. Once my mind is back my body feels awkward and follows suit.

But tonight as my wrists started to cramp, I put my finger on a Truth about myself I had no idea I was missing. I'm finally seeing that Tourette's can mean something to me.



Edit: umm. More recent use of that mental post-it note here. As well as another reference to being sore. BUT STILL. hahaha.

Edit 2: is this interesting? I'm very self-conscious talking about it. Is this over-sharing in a cool, memoir-y kinda way or in a, oh my god she's a freak way? Please don't tell me the latter just to mess with me; I am extremely sensitive about this and sincerely want to know if it makes me sound like a freak.

Life Decisions

A. I typically end up where I'm supposed to be. You could call it intuition--I tend to not give myself quite that much credit. To use the language I grew up with, the framework I don't know how to discard, I always end up where God wants me. Example: in the back of my mind, I always knew I was meant to be a teacher, and here I am.

B. I am also very stubborn. Once I decide something, I can't rest until I follow through.* Example: I was determined that I didn't want to be a teacher. I didn't study education. I turned down a pretty significant scholarship offer in high school because it was for education majors. But what happened as college graduation approached? That final semester, too late to change my major, I finally admitted that my passion lay in teaching.

A. But I landed my wonderful, perfect-for-me job, through a barely-friend-of-a-friend. And I stayed in Springfield; THAT one I hadn't seen coming. And stuff about getting my teacher certification post-grad fell through, so I stayed and got promoted at my job. And I know that that was exactly what I needed to do at that time. Where I was supposed to be.

It's an A-B-A sequence. I know some Truth about myself in the back of my head, maybe even below a conscious level. I deny it because it's not what I want at the moment, and I pursue whatever it is I do want. But then it just doesn't work out and I end up at square 1, only this time I realize that that's what I really needed.

The problem is that both A and B are very strong; I often can't tell the difference between them until B goes south. My intuition (A) might be screaming at me to change my ways, but my stubbornness (B) yells back, embracing whatever it is that I'm trying to do.

This is where I lose agency. What I'm told to do is "leave it in God's hands." Wait for Him to "close a door" to direct me to the right path. And honestly, there are decisions where that's the only thing to do. Wait it out and eventually Decision B will show itself to be unhealthy.

All that to say: I don't know what to do...

*I don't know if this is normal, or if it's just a little quirk, or if it's a really complicated tic. It feels exactly like a tic. I have the urge, urge, urge, and I can't get it out of my head until I release it through taking action. Or I just go ahead and do the action before I have a chance to think about it and to be aware of the urge.

How crazy do I sound now? lol.

Should I write a book?

So, my ambitions as a writer passed away years ago, but I've lately been possessed with a passion, perhaps derived from nothing more than boredom,* to write a book. Not fiction (I never learned to write fiction), but instead the height of self-centeredness: a memoir. Who cares, right? I'm a 22-year-old chick no different from bazillions of other recent liberal arts grads from a middle-class background. Well, I can write pretty well, I think, and I'm pretty funny, plus this is my working title:
DAMN: A Young Woman's Reckoning with Tourette Syndrome

I would so read that. LMAO.

the question, though, is would I WRITE it. I do not have a history of being able to motivate myself for, well, anything...but I already have a scratch outline! But it'll require a lot of research...lol. We'll see. it could be fun. even if no one but y'all ever read it. hahaha.

*A discussion with my aunt a few weeks ago helped spark this. She was telling me about a professor in Denver who has autism and has written about having autism. I was saying that I didn't think I could speak for TS because my case was so mild, but my aunt thought this was baloney. My experience is perfectly valid. Sensational cases are the exception; there are lots of people going through something mild just like me.

I don't usually talk about this

So, I have quirky conceptions of privacy, I think. For most of my life I was fine with discussing the TS thing...then I learned to be embarrassed about it, just a couple of years ago, probably. Meanwhile I'm fine with discussing my boy troubles with just about anyone, I only draw the line at, say, my parents.

I work with kids with autism. One feature of autism is self-stimulation: sensory stuff. One example of "stimming," as we call it, would be a kid flapping his hands in front of his eyes. A couple of my kids stim like this. It's interesting to me because it greatly resembles my main tic.

One thing that's always been unique about my TS is that I don't realize when I'm ticking. It's more like I just space out. Once something--a noise, usually--brings me back to reality, I snap out of it, instantly ceasing to perform the tics. I never experienced an urge to tic; I never fought the tics.

"Ryan, quiet hands!"

Just a few weeks of being hyperaware of stimming with my kids at work has changed my own experience. I now am aware of when I am ticking. This was kind of cool at first. I had never been mentally "there" while ticking, I didn't know what it felt like; now, instead of stopping the behavior once I realize I'm doing it, it's more of a, "huh, I'm ticking." And I keep doing it until I am interrupted.

This has transformed from cool to scary. I don't have control of my own body when I get like this. Just now I was watching tv by myself, and during a commercial break my hands were flapping, my tongue was pressed against my teeth, my eyes were glazed; I was aware that I looked like an idiot. I wanted to stop. I couldn't. I mean, I could physically stop the actions, and I tried, but I experienced a knot of anxiety in my chest and I had to resume the tics to relieve it.

God, TS has always just been an accessory on my life, a neat little bit of trivia. Something else for me to boast about. "Yeah, I have what can manifest into a crippling learning disability, yet I have academic honors XYZ." It was never a disorder. Every now and then someone would catch me ticking and I would get a little flustered but that was all there was to it.

I never experienced it mentally. The stress of being trapped in a tic, with relief on a timeline outside of my control. (Well, that's kind of a lie, I've always had a couple of small verbal tics that were like that, but they do not occur with anywhere near the same frequency as my motor tics.)

It's horrible...

happy march!

ugh, i'm just sitting here ticking like crazy and thinking, thinking, thinking worrying.
try not to get worried, try not to turn onto problems that upset you, oh, don't you know everything's all right, yes, everything's fine...
tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic
honors...
i really think it's a lost cause for tonight.
but i HAVE to.
my shoulders are cramping, i'm ticking so hard.
(for a comparison, i rarely notice myself ticking at ALL.)
lesson learned: stress exacerbates it. i guess that makes sense lol...