Do you know that feeling when you have something to say but you don’t know how to say it? It’s like you know the thoughts and you can feel the emotions, but you don’t know the words.
Every morning you wake up, brush your teeth, put some clothes on, eat some food, go to school or work, meet people, eat food in between, come home, do more work, eat more food, wrap up, and go to sleep only to repeat it all over again the next day, and the day after that, and so on.
And each day when you go through your routine, you think:
Nothing’s wrong
Because the fact is, you can’t put into words exactly what is wrong. It’s like you’re forgetting something.
No, not some ‘thing’, some ‘thought’
And not ‘forgetting’, more like ‘needing to know’
You don’t know what it is you’re supposed to think but it’s there in your brain. It’s an abstract, mind boggling idea churning through you like you’re in the middle of a giant city and you just. Don’t. Know.
You don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing
Or where you are supposed to be going
Or even who you’re supposed to be.
All you know is:
Where you are now.
There is something that has been plaguing me for 9 years. 9 and a half actually. It’s very real, it’s very alive, it’s something that I can’t change. And it’s taken me this long to come to terms with it.
I have this thing, which causes me to be awkward in public—not in what I say, but more in what I do.
I have this thing, which causes people to look at me weirdly—not that I’m disgusting but more like I’m crazy and mental, and not in a good way.
I have this thing which causes me to be so self conscious but at the same time in the heat of the moment I forget I have that thing until someone reminds me with just one look, one laugh, one smirk.
I have this thing…
I have tics.
No, not ticks like from deer that make you break out into rashes and look like a tomato.
According the Merriam Webster a tic is:
Full:
“Local and habitual spasmodic motion of particular muscles especially of the face. A frequent usually unconscious quirk of behavior or speech <”you know” is a verbal tic>”
Simple:
“A small repeated movement of a muscle especially in the face that cannot be controlled. A word or phrase that someone frequently says or an action that someone frequently does without intending to.”
Cannot be controlled. Without intending to. Unconscious.
People don’t see that. All people see are the spasms and the repeated movements and the frequent words or actions. All they see is what annoys them and not what the person is going through—they see the funny weird things that they don’t know about and they laugh, they imitate, they take someone’s weakness and exploit it.
Because that’s all it is…
A thing.
A thing with no cure, a thing that doesn’t go away, a thing I am stuck with for the rest of my life.
I can’t even have a conversation with someone without getting stared at. I know in the other person’s head they’re thinking, “What is that? What is she doing?” because it’s written all over their face.
What am I doing?
I want you to open your eyes, right now, and keep them open…
Still keep them open.
And open
Did you blink yet? Eventually, you will because after some time you will blink naturally. This is how I feel every day. The unexplainable need to go through with the action is, to me, as automatic as blinking is to you.
But what are these actions?
Tics are either motor or vocal. Motor tics consist of nose twitching, hair fixing, obsessive touching, face grimacing, hand stressing, and more. Vocal tics involve grunting, humming, blowing, or saying actual words, like curses. They worsen when under stressful conditions, but are also temporary until the next need arises.
Around 200,000 people in the U.S have the condition, however there is no exact number because many people are not diagnosed. Symptoms typically show in adolescent years and over time, most people improve. This condition isn’t something I just picked up from someone sneezing, its genetic, passed down through many ways but to me specifically, from my aunt.
Treatments include taking drugs that make you feel like you’re drunk.
Sometimes I want to feel like I’m drunk. When I’m all alone in my bedroom on a Friday night because no one wants to be associated with the mental girl. When I’m on my way back from the bathroom and I overhear my cousins laughing at what I was doing, imitating me. When my parents are yelling at me to stop because they don’t understand that I can’t stop, that I don’t know how to stop. And I don’t know how to tell them, any of them, about what I have.
How do you tell someone that you have a disorder?
Sometimes I feel like I’m gay and I’m coming out of the closet, except I’m not gay and there is no actual closet… I want to scream at the world that I am in fact not crazy, that what I do is not uncommon, that just because I do weird things on the outside doesn’t mean I’m a bad person on the inside. I wish that I could make people understand what I have.
* * * * * * * * *
I miss the me that I was back then. Years ago, when we were all friends—laughing and smiling. Not worried about impressing anyone or our looks or being the best. When we were just. Us.
Now, we worry. We worry about who is dressed the best and who has the most followers on Instagram, and likes, and pictures. We worry about making that shot in basketball to impress a girl or worrying about not tripping over our heels while we are already tripping over our words to impress a guy. We worry and we worry and we worry, about being like everyone else, about fitting in, about being liked and loved, about having friends and being popular. But never do we actually take the time to think about ourselves.
Life is made up of moments. Hard fast and blinding moments and when they pass they pass only to make room for more moments. And those moments make you, You. I have a moment, a hard fast and blinding moment, where I realized I have a thing—a thing that makes me, Me.
