My eyes are sore, red, and they burn when I close them. I yawn a rasping sound, my throat hoarse. I wish I could lay down in bed and let the exhaustion sweep over me, but it is impossible because I have Tourette Syndrome. Currently, it isn’t that bad- just so enough to keep me awake. I’m making throaty noises that sound like an aggressively squeaky door pushing open. I can’t stop. My throat is sore from my other two tics I possess; clearing my throat or coughing, and flexing my windpipe. My tender neck aches with pain that no amount of ibuprofen can cure. It gives me migraines. My joints hurt. It’s not so bad outside of school, but I wish it would go away. My family isn’t the most understanding. My little brother is the worst; he enjoys making fun of me for it. If we are in the same room or if he hears me ticking, he will immediately mock me by copying my tick in an over exaggerated, repeated fashion. It makes me so mad that I want to cry and hit him. He said once, when I angrily asked him what his problem was, that I was ‘doing it for attention.’

Right. I’ve been having involuntary spasms for the last eight years because I was looking for attention. Of-freaking-course! Problem solved! Not.

I hate him sometimes for the way he treats me. My dad is almost as bad- he has a short temper when it comes to my tics. If it happens in the car while he is on the phone, he will glare at me and yell for me to stop. My mother also asks me to stop. Don’t they understand that I can’t? They’ve known my problem since it started. I feel like a burden for expecting my family to understand.

I’ve gone through many, many tics. Some repeated, some never came back. Some random, some learned. I remember that the worst was when I was twelve- I had this problem with scrunching up my face, like I was sneezing, burning my eyes, and having a tooth ache all at the same time. My eyes would shut as hard as they could, my mouth would pucker in the corner, and my nose would shoot up, casting wrinkles across my face. It happened every few minutes, for months. Sometimes my neck would even shoot out. I’ve been through countless tics; balling my hands, kicking, neck jerking, nose twitching, humming, throat clearing, moaning, yelling, punching something, pinching myself, repeating actions, scrunching my toes, flexing various muscles, rolling my eyes, blinking rapidly, clacking my teeth together, popping my knuckles, vibrating in place… None were what you would call ‘severe’ tics, but they were bad enough to disrupt everyday life. To annoy my parents. To earn whispers from school kids and parent-teacher conferences from my teachers who didn’t believe me. Recently, I’ve had a problem with cursing. Not really screaming out the words, but the littlest annoyance will set off the urge…

And that’s what Tourette feels like; a constant, always unsatisfied urge that drives me crazy. I wish it would stop. I wish I could stop. All I want to do is sleep. All I want to do is be normal.