The Dropsies and the Voices

I've said this a few times, but my favorite part of starting this blog has been becoming a member of the vibrant TS community online. Tuesday morning on the way into work, I was holding an extra large coffee in my right hand and I started doing my usual unusual drink-carrying thing with my right hand. If you want to know what it's like, grab an empty non-breakable cup (you're not yet experts, like I am) and hold it in your hand as you normally would. Now, while keeping the rest of the surface of your fingers against the glass, take your fingertips off. Basically this tic (that I've only recently realized is a tic) causes me to almost drop/barely hold onto drinks and other delicate stuff. I thought to myself, "Gosh, this is a weird one." Then I started wondering if it's actually weird or not, so I reached out on Twitter and got some great responses. Turns out that a couple other people have an identical/similar tic/compulsion. I find that these small connections really help me feel less frustrated when dealing with my TS, so thanks to everyone who responded. If you put enough people on a deserted island, it's not deserted anymore.

There's another aspect of my Tourette's I haven't talked much about on here, and that's my head's co-occupant Wesley Crusher. I'm a little loathe to bring this up for a few reasons. First, as soon as you tell a layperson that you frequently hear a nagging voice in your head, they immediately think you're schizophrenic. I don't want to stigmatize schizophrenia, but it's important to differentiate between the two symptoms. What I experience isn't an auditory hallucination. I'm fully aware that Ensign Crusher is just another part of my brain that likes to talk shit to me about myself and other people. He is the anti-me in most ways. The second reason I hesitate to bring this up is that this symptom is often considered part of  OCD, which I'll say again I've never been diagnosed with.  There seems to be a fairly heated online debate about the validity of self-diagnosis and I have zero desire to dip my feet into it. I walk around with enough anxiety without being worried that I upset someone on Twitter. Thirdly, this topic brings up some pretty raw stuff for me and it's not necessarily something I'm comfortable sharing. I hope that by doing so, maybe someone else who deals with the same problem will feel like there's another person sharing her/his deserted island.

But yeah, there's an unauthorized part of my brain that frequently tells me I'm worthless and I'll never accomplish anything and should just never try because I'll just fail anyway and end up feeling even worse about myself. Just switch all those pronouns from the first person to the second person and you'll get what it sounds like (and now your third grade teacher can rest comfortably knowing that you DID end up using all that grammar she taught!). One of the voice's favorite refrains for years and years and years was something like, "Men have walked on the moon and you can't even keep your body still for thirty seconds. What do you really think you'll ever accomplish?" Wesley has been quieter than usual of late, which is nice, and I think part of it is that I learned that not everyone deals with this problem. I was listening to an episode of the Tourette's Podcast (I forget which one) and the guest mentioned something about his Tourette's voice beating him down and I was like "Hey! I have one of those! It's terrible and I hate him!" I vividly remember sitting at a traffic light after the ep ended and talking to my wife about it over the phone and I said something to the effect of "You know that voice in your head that constantly tells you what a piece of shit you are?" and she was like, "Uh, no. I can't imagine what that would be like!" It was then that I started wondering how atypical my experience of perceiving and engaging the world was. I have an aforementioned friend with OCD who I talked about it with, and she told me she'd learned to "bully the bully". She basically talks shit right back to her voice. Before starting this blog, I had to do just that to convince myself it wouldn't be a total waste of time and that no one would ever read it, because who'd want to hear you whine about your itty bitty Tourette's? A few people, it turns out. I won that battle, and a few months later a reader mentioned that she'd named her voice "Mr. Data" after the android lieutenant on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I liked her idea so much that I stole it and named him "Wesley Crusher" after the most annoying character in Star Trek history.

So yeah, Wesley and I go a long way back and he's made moments/chunks of my life pretty hellish. He told me that I didn't deserve my wife, he told me I'd be a terrible father, and he's told me to stay quiet around people I don't know because no one in his right mind would want to get to know me.

Fuck you, Wesley.

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