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!
JuliaB
For my NJTCS scholarship application I decided to write a poem which describes my social experiences with peers over the years. I have had good experiences and bad experiences. I have had moments when friends can be very understanding and loyal and I have had “friends” who laugh or poke fun at my differences. These are the peers who will never understand unless they spent a day living inside of my body and experience its betrayal.
I also suffer from Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, Dyslexia and a poor working memory in addition to Tourettes. The Arthritis is painful and makes my knee and ankle swell and I sometimes can’t do the same activities as my peers but no one has ever put me down for having JRA yet what makes me different because of Tourettes and Dyslexia seems to incite ridicule from my peers. I hope that someday, all my differences would be viewed as something as simple as a difference in the color someone’s eyes.
Loyalty or Betrayal (First read forward then read backwards)
Loyalty
Can be deceitful. this is true,
My mind betrays my body and
Yet, you choose to not see that
There is pain and effort in hiding.
Though it should not be,
The ticks and jerks define me.
Sensing that,
You will accept me
is a lie, the reality is
Betrayal
