Tic Tap Tou(rette's)

I had a conversation semi-recently, about what kinds of interesting things I could possibly bring to this little blog that others might not. I drew a complete blank. I mean, middle class college-educated twenty-something? Not too un-normal, right?

Ooh yeah, right, also, I have Tourette's Syndrome.

It's mild, so most people don't notice it and so I forget that it's an unusual way to live, with constant numbers and repetitions and convoluted algebra dancing through my head, tingling in my fingertips. I hide it instinctively, keeping twitches to my fingers and tongue, and holding out until I'm alone to do the really weird stuff. That's the thing about (mild) Tourette's; it's controllable to a certain point, but then you've just got to go do something big so you can breathe right again.

I didn't know it was weird, I was weird, until I was almost an adult. I have vague recollections of doctor-hopping and finally learning about "tics," which were explained to me as very different from the tiny black things I always managed to bring in after tromping around the southern Kentucky hillsides. I understood that the compulsions I had to blink hard and often had a name, but I didn't understand that this was something different from other kids. I later learned that I also had a head-jerking tic that terrified my parents, who thought brain cancer. The subsequent doctor-hopping, and stress, only made me worse, until finally the assuaging diagnosis of Tourette's. The doctor told my parents to just leave me alone, and they did, and my outward symptoms all but disappeared.

This happens to a lot of kids with Tourette's as they grow older; I don't know why. I read it somewhere, and lived it, so it must be true.

What I'm left with is a jumble of controllable compulsions to count, to make shapes, to repeat things over and over. They are so intrinsic to my personality at this point that I don't know what I would do without them. It feels terrible when things are off, or I can't get something out of my head in just the right way, but it feels so good when it's right, when it's even. When the world is smooth.

I have good days and bad ones; usually I can step on cracks but sometimes I can't, sometimes labels have to be turned a certain way but usually it doesn't matter. Echolalia, however, is ever-present. I like echolalia. Sounds, and their repetition. It feels great on my tongue, on my lips, on my teeth, in my fingers as I trace letters in the air at my sides. Until, of course, my carpal tunnel acts up or I rub a blister into my tongue.

The disorder affects me now in ways that it never did before; years of repetition have worn paths into my muscles, my bones, my nerves, etched worry lines into my psyche. I am who I am in large part because of this disorder, it gives me the freedom to be impulsive because I'm already compulsive. But sometimes, when my wrists and tendons are sore from fiercely scratching words into the air and I can't unlock my jaw because my teeth aren't straight, I do really wish this burden was not mine to bear.

I love my Tourette's because it feels so good when I get things right; I hate my Tourette's because that is what makes the world feel off kilter in the first place.

Context

So the Navy's newest battleship, the USS New York, has a bow built from steel salvaged from Ground Zero. According to naval officials, this symbolizes the fact that the United States will always persevere.

Does it, though? To me, that symbolizes more than perseverance. It symbolizes aggression. So much more than "We Shall Overcome," it seems to tread near the bounds of "An Eye for an Eye." The bow of the ship, the sharpest, most intimidating part of the ship, the part that cuts through the air and casts a long shadow over any unlucky smaller vessels that get in the way, is the part that is made from the once-office building steel. This does not, to me, connect in any way to the World Trade Center and what happened in 2001. It connects to what happened after, most definitely, but when I think of the steel from the World Trade Center, the actual metal that held up the buildings when they were standing, I don't think of what happened after. I think of what it was before, and I get uncomfortable. The people who died in the towers on that day were not, as a group, associated with the military. They were largely white collar office workers who were not prepared to be martyrs or symbols. They were victims of overwhelming hatred and violence, and to associate the memory of that terrible day with our own military might just seems wrong in some way.

To take the steel from what was an office building that became the site of a terrible, world-shattering tragedy and reuse it to create a memorial is a beautiful idea. It symbolizes rebirth and gives the phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes kind of imagery that we as a still hurting society need. But to put it on a battleship? That says something entirely different, and not altogether benign.