Alone in a Crowd

I encountered someone with Tourette Syndrome last week—I think. Their tics, facial twitches, were subtle. I stared too long and probably got caught. Still unsure, I stared some more. Once I decided I had it right, I wanted to walk over and say “Hey, me too! Tell me your story.”

Susan said “Don’t, it’s none of your business.” Sometimes people don’t know. I didn’t until I turned fifty. I blamed my unrelenting eye tics on dry eyes. The ophthalmologists I saw six or eight times didn’t figure it out either. When the grunting started, we put the symptoms together.

I outed a guy once. He had the classic eye tic, a repeated long squeeze. I asked his girlfriend if he knew. She didn’t, and she had no idea if he knew either. “He’s pretty private, I don’t know if he would tell me.” I never asked her if they talked about it.

You might wonder why it matters. Maybe it doesn’t. It did for me. Besides avoiding a half dozen useless eye appointments, several mental health conditions usually accompany Tourette. With my diagnosis and subsequent research, my mental baggage, especially my undiagnosed OCD, suddenly made more sense.

For me, Tourette is a lonely disorder. I’m in a couple of unsatisfying Facebook groups. In flesh and blood, I’m all alone. I saw my recent encounter as a chance to build a community. To Susan: “What if I ask a mutual friend?”

Again, “Don’t do it. It’s not appropriate.” She’s right of course. If someone approached me before my diagnosis, I would have been confused and/or embarrassed and/or offended. I once asked a twitchy guy at the gym.

Me: “Hey man, do you have Tourette Syndrome?”

Twitchy guy: “Only when I forget my meds.” He walked away shaking his head.

Possibly, my encounter will resolve itself in the future. While many in my orbit swear they don’t know I have Tourette Syndrome until I tell them, they certainly see my tics. Maybe the next time this person and I wind up in the same place, which happens now and again, they will approach me. Maybe they will say something to feel out what I know about myself. Then I can start to build my community. Or possibly they have no idea they have Tourette, and they wonder why I make the same faces as them.

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Pronouns: I wrote this story with gender neutral pronouns to further anonymize the encounter. I’ve noticed that my kids generally use genderless pronouns when talking about others. This eliminates errors when talking about their non-binary friends. Leaving non-binary pronouns aside, dancing around pronouns in this story seems to violate everything I believe about writing.

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Previously Published on jefftcann.com and is republished on Medium.

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Photo credit: iStock