EDITOR’S NOTE: Every Tuesday, noted Tourette Syndrome advocate Troye Evers shares his “52 Weeks of TS” blog journal with the TSParentsOnline community. With just 10 weeks remaining in this series, there’s a chance you missed one more entries from his exciting, revealing journey. You can read all of them here. For more information about Troye, please click on his name or visit his website.
Welcome to the wonderful world of TS, a world that brings on strange and mysterious underlying disorders. Additions to our state of mind that we might never expect, this week is depression. I don’t suffer from this much, but when I do, it hits me like a brick wall. Earlier this week that brick wall hit me out of nowhere.
It was a normal day, and by 5:00 pm, I felt the brick wall of depression crumbling around me. I ask myself, “why?” I have been working so hard to try to make changes to better my life. I just released a book, that I hope will help people all over, I changed jobs to get out of the negativity and immaturity of the previous job setting, but still the depression finds its way inside me.
On this night, I sat there and watched mindless TV with my husband, but I just sat there in a funk. The whole night I was on the verge of tears, but there was no explanation for it. My husband asked me a few times why I was so crabby, in which I responded, “I’m not crabby.” I couldn’t tell him that I was depressed, and had feelings of just not wanting to be here anymore. If I had said those words, he would have just asked why I was depressed.
How do you explain to someone that you have no idea why you’re going through this, but to link it back to this TS thing I have. We finally did go to bed and he still pushed me for an answer as to why I was acting so weird. As I sat there in the darkness of our room, the tears quietly rolled down and I still said nothing was wrong. By this point, he knew something was up, but I was still unable to explain it.
It scares me sometimes, because I don’t want to scare him. Maybe it’s the OCD inside me, but all I could think of is what was he thinking, “Did he think something is wrong with our relationship?” No, that’s not it. I don’t know why I am this way. It’s somewhat funny, ironically half way through the night he showed me an article about the creativity in writers with mental illness. As we laid there, he asked me if what I was going through had anything to do with that article. I told him, “No, ironically it started before I even read the article.”
The little bout of depression lasted just a couple days, as it always does. In the midst of my depression, I did have my acupuncture appointment. The anxiety and fear built up as the appointment approached. I actually tried to come up with excuses to cancel the appointment, but sucked up my fear and went to the appointment.
The appointment started with an interview about my medical history. I filled out a form checking off all my medical history. One of the things I did check off was depression. When the acupuncturist came back in the room, and looked over my form, she started asking about everything I checked off. When she asked about the depression I told her I go through it once a year for a couple days, and before I could even finished the sentence I burst into tears.
For no reason, I was sitting there crying in front of a woman I had known for about five minutes, how embarrassing… She said not to worry about it. I told her besides the depression I was also dealing with many OCD issues and increased anxiety about being there and having acupuncture. In actuality, it was not that bad. A few light pokes from clean, unused needles and I was quite relaxed.
I have to go back next week and do the acupuncture again, I think it might be a once a week thing. We’ll see how well it works with the tics and anxiety. I did tell her that I was on a new regimen of multivitamins, fish oil, and that I felt that it was working on my anxiety. She explained that fish oil could help with anxiety. I do have to say, I really feel like the fish oil has been helping. I usually have such horrible anxiety about leaving my apartment and getting on the subway, but now it’s not that bad of an event. There is still a little anxiety, but the level has dropped dramatically.
I hate talking about going to the bathroom, but I have discussed this a few times in the past weeks. Since the event back in august at the airport, I’ve been really trying to pay attention to my bathroom behavior. I have notice I actually do tic more during and after going to the bathroom. It’s one more strange realization, but it does put me into a small tic attack.
It’s a funny thing that we can walk through life but if we’re not paying attention, we might not realize certain things about ourselves. How are we supposed to educate others about a disorder that we have, if we don’t even know ourselves? This year has been a great year, and I have learned so much about my body, and my unwelcomed guests Tourette Syndrome, OCD, anxiety disorder, etc.
I’m glad I’m learning more about myself, and am now able to educate people about what I’m going through. Before coming out of the so-called, “TS closet”, I was uneducated about what I was going through. However, through research, asking questions, educating myself, and just looking into myself, I feel like I know my body more than ever.
While I was in the “TS closet”, I spent much of my time blaming others. I have stopped blaming others now. We can’t blame the world for our problems. We are the solution. If we educate ourselves, we can educate others. I think that we all will have to deal with experiences of ignorance, and all we can do is open our mouths and try to educate. If they are unwilling to learn, that is their own ignorance. We just have to remember that we are the solution.
Until next week, “I’ll tic to you later.”
