Everything's so blurry

I was trying to read my book yesterday. Sometimes reading can be hard for me. This is usually true when I am thinking about something else. I get distracted and the tics take over. I am not just talking about the noises, facial contortions and random muscle flexing. I will read a line and then look away for a second and then have to repeat this action several times over again. I even read the same line over and over. I read it until I hate the damn sentence. For example I read a sentence and then just happened to move my eyes to the chapter title at the top of the page for a second. Forget about it. I did that like ten times. I got frustrated and stopped reading, altogether.
I have gone through many phases in my life with concerns to reading. I am a very well read man. I couldn't even begin to count the amount of books I have read in my short life. But there have been many stretches in which I have not been able to read for months at a time. I can't focus on the book. This isn't because the material is boring. It's because my brain is performing a million tedious compulsions while I am trying to read a book. One fun tic I have when reading is unfocusing my eyes. I make them go out of focus while I am looking at the page. I am not sure how I do it. I guess I am crossing my eyes or something. Hell, I am doing it right now as I write this. It gives me a headache sometimes. And it is certainly not conducive to reading.
All this talk of books reminds me of something. Years ago I was in a book store with an old friend. We were walking through the store and every time I picked up a book, I opened it, shoved my face into it and smelled the pages. I have to do it. I had to do it to every book I touched. Man, if no one was looking I would have smelled every book in that place. Hell, I am gonna do it right now. Hold on... Oh, that was good. Nothing beats getting your nose into a good book. Ha. He told me with a definite touch of annoyance in his voice, "Stop smelling all the books!" I would love to know what the hell he thought I was doing.
It is amazing how deep ticcing goes. I mean, there is a fine line between an OCD compulsion and a tic. There has to be loads of things touretters do and not even realize they are ticcing. So many of our daily actions are based on a compulsion to do them. There are so many different levels to TS.
I have seen blinkers and sniffers. All they do is abuse one tic. One tic ponies. Over and over. I am envious. That's all they have? One fucking tic? Ha! I can tame one tic. I am dealing with hundreds, maybe thousands if you count every thought that is compulsive.
And I have seen people who are completely controlled by countless tics. They have no control over their bodies. There is a guy in my gym who is so over run with tics that I am sure everyone in there, except for maybe us fellow ticcers, think he is absolutely insane and probably dangerous.
And then there is echolalia, which I have pretty bad. Some touretters don't have it at all. It is my soundtrack as far as I am concerned. Constantly running over and over in my head. The same lines over and over. I am repeating lines from a movie I saw ten years ago in my head over and over. And then it comes out of my mouth. At the most random times. "What was that?" "What did you say?"
And then there are touretters who have severe OCD. I have it pretty bad but it is definitely the least of my problems. I think my OCD is a breeze compared to the rest. I can mostly keep it to myself in my own private hell. It is not on display like the rest of my tics. But I know that is not true for everyone. Some people have it the complete opposite. Terrible OCD with a pinch of TS for flavor. I have often wondered about OCD and TS being the same damn disorder. I mean isn't TS just an exaggerated form of OCD? We don't just have compulsions to wash our hands and touch the lamp. We have compulsions to flare our nostrils or squint our eyes or crack our necks or jerk our arms or make kissy faces with our lips or stab our gums with our fingernails or smack our foreheads with our flat palms or wink or make a noise from somewhere deep in our throats or tighten our ab muscles over and over again or whistle or hoot or howl or cross our big toes over our smaller toes or curl our lips or close our eyes while driving or make fart noises with our mouths or shake our heads or shrug our shoulders or make fists or chatter our teeth or make owl noises or sniff or scratch our widow's peaks until it hurts or raise our eyebrows or make devil faces or TWITCH or TIC!
And then there is the infamous copralalia. I don't have this symptom, although I can definitely get a feel for where it comes from inside the touretter's brain. To be honest, I think I am capable of developing it and think I may in the future. I do have urges to curse out loud when I think about the symptom. Just thinking that it is a possibility creates an urge, albeit one I have never acted on. I almost want to join the club. Hell if I am gonna have this thing I might as well get on board with all the symptoms I can. It is probably the most interesting of all the symptoms and that's, most likely, why it has gained so much recognition in the media of our easily entertained nation. I am all for the jokes. Believe me. I think TS is funny. I laugh at myself all the time. But it is a shame that yelling fuck and tits in public is what we are best known for. We have so much more good material.
And the list goes on. The point I was trying to make was that TS goes so much deeper than can be explained. My brain never stops and is going at full speed all the goddamn time. Ticcing away in one way or another.
That was a long one. Goodnight.