What does Tourette"s mean to me.

Well, I am reminded each day that I have Tourette’s. Specially when I am alone, driving home from work, or right after I get home from work. It just all comes out, as they say. Neck shakes, arm jerks, leg jerks, the jaw grind. Starts simple and then becomes hard going through a set pattern till my evening medicines kick ins. The rest of the time I’m twitching, but I’m good at hiding it.  I twitch, motor and vocal all the time. I once had an attorney ask me a question about how long does my twitching affects my normal daily routine. I really didn’t have an answer, because I feel my twitch all the time. I’m surprise most people don’t even see it or notice them. I think it’s, if I say nothing, it will go away.
 When I’m working out a problem, or taking pictures, I can forget that I’m doing it. People tell me to reduce the stress in my life. They think I must be overly worried and stressing out over something and that why I have multiple tics. Well, I hate to tell them, stress doesn’t bother me.
 I’ve been working at a stress for job for over thirty-seven years, I’m used to it. Hey when I was five, I must have been stressing life too much, because I was ticking back then. We didn’t know what it was. That was way back in the 6o’s and few people know what Tourette Syndrome actually was.  Tourette’s to me is who I am. It made me pay attention to details, develop an interest into the arts. It made me know I can survive this world by myself, to explore different things, to look for the unique. But it has also held me back from approaching people and try to be close. Because it worried me, they would not accept me. Till this day, I’m great at developing a story, on paper or with images, but try to get me in front of an audience, then I clamp shut.
 What made me overcome this fear was my camera. With a camera, I can do something, like take pictures, I had a purpose there. People would only see the camera and not the tics. I became the lay back guy around the office, mostly to protect me from people that would turn my tics around against me.
 My career as a photographer has its up and down. Some people that I worked with haven’t been on my side, but that’s Ok, they were not my friend. But overall, my agency has been good.