This is the essay I submitted to the NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome & Associated Disorders (NJCTS) for their 2015 Children’s Scholarship Award contest. I hope you enjoy it!
Tourette’s hasn’t played a small part in my life, it’s played in a majority of it. I like to think that I have it under control and that it doesn’t control me, but it still dictates most of my daily life. I don’t do these things because I want to, but because I feel the need to. I have to.
People sometimes give me funny looks and ask if I’m alright. I’ll just nod because if I told them I’m not alright and that I feel bothered all the time, they wouldn’t understand. Because they can’t understand what I am going through is the reason why I try to hide it. Suppress it.
I also have OCD so during school, most of my time is either spent doing tics or checking things, or, trying to stop these things from happening. I get so caught up in my image that I forget to actually live my life sometimes. Medication and therapy has helped me come a long way, but there is only so far someone can walk away from their true self. This is who I am, and no amount of medication or therapy can change that.
People will sometimes ask me I if took my medication that day. I take it at night anyway but the point is that I can’t change who I am, I’m stuck like this. If I could have changed, trust me, I would have right when I heard that diagnosis.
The physical effects are hard enough to bear but couple that with the mental hardship of knowing almost no one understands and that you can’t fix your problem. It eats away at you. The social stigma associated with mental disorders doesn’t do me any justice either. People stereotype me for something I can’t change, much like an ethnicity or nationality. No one wants to take into account that everyone is different, and that you don’t have to judge everyone all the time. Everyone just wants to make themselves feel superior and target people like me in the process. The result of being a potential target of ridicule has led me to better understand and accept others better. I may still laugh at how someone dresses or holds themselves, but I will never laugh at things that they can’t change, I just won’t. I’ve been through what they have and have realized,they don’t need any more hardship in their lives, especially for something that can’t go away.
Tourette’s might have brought me suffering, but it’s also brought me the ability to feel empathy towards those suffering around me. It has molded me to be the person that I am today and in conjunction with a recent death in the family, has guided me to select medicine as a career so I will be a pre-med major in college.
