Calm Returning, Sort Of

I have reread my entries for the last month or two, and it is easy for me to see in them that my stress level was rising. It is a bit lower, now that I've been taking it easy for almost a month. Piss & vinegar make me want to write, so unless I redirect my tendency for bitching (I get a laugh out of it, but I'm not sure anyone else does) into non-anger/stress driven humor, this blog might turn boring.

I can see the funny in situations that weren't, but I think I'm the only one there who will look back on it and laugh. Sometimes I say or do things just so I can laugh about it later.

I have Tourette's. I have never had the part of the syndrome where you randomly shout out swear words, thank God. But I have wondered if being a "blurter" as my family calls it, is the better behaved sister of the swear word blurting. The "twitches", shoulder jerking, throat clearing, finger flicking, eye blinking etc.. come and go, switch sides after years for no reason, and basically have a mind of their own. Some of them are quite painful and relentless.

As a little kid, the eye blinking was the first thing I noticed. My Mom would say that she thought I must be tired, when she noticed me doing it. But there was no name for it. I would lie in bed trying to go to sleep, and I could feel the blinking muscles going full out. It didn't make any sense to me; my eyes were closed, but my body kept trying to keep up the rapid blinking. I have been lucky, in that I can try to hide some of the twitches. In high school, because of the blinking, classmates would ask me if I wore contact lenses, I don't, but the other symptoms were mostly in remission or slight most of the time, back then, so I don't think anyone really saw much of anything.

Now, my husband will tell me when my symptoms are strong, because I can be twitching away, and not be conscious of it. The medicines for it suck, so I take one that doesn't control the twitches as well, but it doesn't make me too miserable with side affects. Contrary to most of the liturature you will find about Tourette's syndrome, my symptoms have gotten stronger as I have gotten older.