From whence we came...

It seems I am at the tail end of a rough patch.  The tics are calming down.  They were very bad a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't even notice that they got better but here we are.  So, I'll enjoy this period of relative calm.  And of course I will be back where I was once again, in the future.  That's just the way it works.  I'm 32 years old.  I think I've got this thing down, by now.

When we think of diseases, sicknesses, syndromes; often there is an end to them.  People get better.  People beat cancer.  People get over the flu.  I was watching this HBO series on Alzheimer's.  There was an interview with a child of about ten years old.  He said something like: "My grandfather will have Alzheimer's until...until...he'll always have it."  This kid knows what Alzheimer's is.  He knows it will never go away but for a moment we could see him still grasping onto the fantasy that it will.

I totally relate to that glitch in acknowledgement of the reality of disease with my TS.  I often experience similar moments in which I almost forget that TS is here to stay.  For a second or two I look forward to its end.  And then of course I snap out of it and view the situation from an adult point of view.  There are moments of doubt, disbelief and hope.  It's amazing that I can still feel this way, if for only a moment, this late in the game.

TS does go away.  It will leave me with my last breath.  I will have Tourette Syndrome for as long as I am alive.  Death is the only relief.  And what a bitter reality that is.  For it will take death, where cognition and lucidity are no longer extant, to rid me of the suffering I feel in life.  It is in death (the very absence of everything we need to experience pain) when the suffering will finally take a bow.

Click, click, click boom!

The mouse. Right and left click.

I cannot just click the left. I cannot just click the right. I Have to do both over and over... Over and over. Click right, click left. NO!

It's no joke!

I'm on the goddamn computer all the fucking time and I have my hand on that mouse...

You know what I am talking about. That mouse...

Hand on it.

Left button. Right button. I am just Waiting for a goddamn reason to click! A fuckin click! Goddamn right to fuckin left! Ohhhh, and it doesn't fuckin matter cause it's always left....

and the the floodgate's open.

I click back and forth. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right...... etc.... and it goes on. Have to grab that goddamn mouse and go on and on and on and on...

I cannot control it. I can't even view a page.

I have to cick!

I have to go lkeft, right, left, roght, left, rigfht, etc...

I have to!

"From fossil to fossil, Dust to dust, I'll see you all in the earthy crust."

My grandmother died today.  I feel the same as I did yesterday.  I mean it wasn't a surprise. Even so...

I live 2,000 miles away.  I visited a couple of weeks ago.  I saw her right before she died,  I knew when I left that it was the last time I would ever see her.  

My girlfriend left at 9 AM for Cali this morning.  After she left I logged onto my computer and my sister in law sent me an I.M.  She said : "Are you OK?  Are you coming in?"  I knew right then that my grandmother was dead.   I immediately called my mother and it was confirmed.  

So, here I am alone with this.  I am actually calm.  My TS has been at its worst lately.  But not now.  I am calm.  No sounds and no one to here them, regardless.  Apparently, the passing of a life does not stress me out.  It does the opposite.  I have been very stressed lately.  I lost my job and am not seeing a new one on the horizon. Yet...Grandma dies and I am more calm than I have been.  Maybe I am relieved.  I went to NY to visit .  I had a week off from work and I knew she was in bad shape so I visited.  The day I saw her in her apartment in Queens freaked me out.  She looked really bad.  The last time I saw her a few months before she was walking and talking and joking.

I stood outside her apartment building and her nurse pulled up with grandma in a wheelchair, head down and hair gray.  I had no idea she looked so bad.

The next day as I was driving in to Queens to see her, I called and the nurse told me she just called an ambulance.  The next three visits were in the hospital.  I said goodbye and left.

I am alone in my house.  I am not as sad as one would think.  I don't know how to be.  My tics were so bad this week.  I mean, to the point where I didn't give a fuck who heard them.  I was ticcing it up.  

My girlfriend and I had a friend over last week.  We were sitting on the couch, watching T.V. and said friend said to me: "Are you aware of the sounds you're making?"

My heart sank.

Fuck!  I thought I was being quiet.  Hell, I was trying hard to be so. OK.  So, she heard me.  Big deal.  I said, "Of course."  That drives me nuts.  I mean, if someone notices your tics; fine.  But to insinuate that you are unaware of the noises your are making for all to hear, including yourself, is insulting!  Yes! I know I am making noises.  Do you not think I can hear them, too?  I am closer to them than you are!

Gladly, it ended there.  I don't mean the vocal tics.  I mean the comments on them from the gallery.  

And as the week went on, the vocals got worse.  I was just letting them fly around my girlfriend. More so than ever before.  She says nothing, though.  She knows I am doing something.  I am not sure she knows what.  Maybe I should just tell her.  She should know.

And so that was last week.  I fly to NY tomorrow and the funeral is the next day.  I can almost guarantee my tics will be on full display.  We'll see.