Create it Away
Katie Danis
�
Copyright 2018 by Katie Danis
Honorable Mention--2018 Biographical Nonfiction
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"Create
it Away" explores my lifelong experience with Tourette Syndrome.
It focuses on how the condition intertwines with my memories of
childhood, approaching a frequently misunderstood topic with humor
and hope.
The
first time I got my leg stuck in a broken drainpipe, I was naked. As
my preschool teacher dismantled the pipe to free my entrapped (and
freshly nude) limb, a new crease crept from her cheek to her chin.
She was twenty-five and had eight wrinkles. When school began she had
zero. (In my defense, I held direct responsibility for only seven,
and I contest the validity of the evidence that charged me with
three.)
When
my parents regaled Dr. McGoogan with my laundry list of strange
behaviors,
he smiled rows of perfect teeth like books facing the wrong way on
the shelf. Glossy white pages tumbled open to words like �creative�
and �neurodivergent� and �comorbidity,� nice
words with nice �t�s to turn over and over on your
tongue. As I sat on my hands and swung my legs, my eyes wandered over
the upside-down scrawl on his black-and-white sheet: Diagnosis:
Tourette Syndrome.
Tourette
Syndrome (also known as �Tourette�s� or �TS�)
is a neurological condition �characterized by repetitive,
stereotyped, involuntary movements and vocalizations called tics�
(National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke). TS
involves at least one vocal tic. It is hereditary and comorbid with
OCD and ADHD. (If you have all three, congratulations! You win a can
of Campbell�s Neuropsychological Alphabet Soup.) Approximately
200,000 Americans live with TS. The condition is named for
neurologist Dr. Georges Gilles de la Tourette, who discovered it in
1885.
I
would learn all of this later.
For
years, I knew Tourette�s as my built-in brain gremlin, the
voice that commanded me to bang my head and clear my throat and twist
my eyebrows until the hairs pirouetted like helicopter seeds. Yet the
voice told me to do not-so-suffocating things, too. Spinning in the
rain until the world smeared like watercolors. Scaling beech trees
despite my fear of heights. Disrobing, jumping in the inflatable pool
on the playground, and then investigating a shattered drainpipe. (For
the record, the school gave me an award for exposing that public
health hazard. However, the accolade�s name � the �Nudie
Beauty� award � somewhat undermined its r�sum�
potential.)
I breathed adventure, ticking and ticcing towards the next discovery
like a neurotic Indiana Jones. No matter how many times I lost my
path, the chatter of compulsions and curiosities followed me through
the maze. A constant, if unsolicited, companion in exploration.
The
DSM-V classifies Tourette�s as a tic �disorder,� a
problem that requires treatment. Something broken. Something
not-quite-right. Something you can pinch and tuck and drown in Xanax
and proclaim, �All better.� Dr. McGoogan and my parents
carefully floated words towards each other like day-old helium
balloons, stiffly volleying them as they trembled in the air. I
glanced back at the sheet, turning the word over on my tongue.
Tourette. It tasted French, and I liked it. I also liked that it
contained the word �tour� because a tour promised an
adventure: an old-smelling art gallery, a rain-scented path through a
tangle of beech trees, or, best of all, a library with a twisty
staircase like the one in Beauty and the Beast. I lived for the
labyrinth: sometimes I was Theseus; sometimes I was Daedalus; always
I was David Bowie, magic-dancing through the shelves.
However,
not all magic twirls through tangled bookshelves and sings in the
rain and sparkles like fairy dust and releases chart-topping reggae
fusion singles.
The voice in my head is my curse. I felt like Aurora in Sleeping
Beauty: bewitched at birth to prick my finger on a spinning wheel
(again and again and again and again). But this curse lurked in my
DNA, incurable by kiss (true love�s or otherwise) or
prescription. I wondered if a demon lived inside me. The Catholic
officiaries in my community did not help to ease these suspicions,
instead reprimanding me for asking too many questions in Sunday
School (�If Noah�s ark landed in ancient Mesopotamia
after Pangea fractured, then how did wallabies get to Australia?�
and for repeatedly clearing my throat during Communion.) I became a
disciple of loneliness, resigned to weave through the labyrinth with
only a friendly, twitching demon by my side.
There�s
a saying that goes something like, �You are never so alone as
in a crowd.� (I don�t know who said it. Maybe I did.)
Tourette�s has a way of making you feel alone, like you�re
onstage squinting through the spotlights at an audience that won�t
look you in the eye. When I tic in church, I am alone. When I tic in
school, I am alone. When I tic at the supermarket or the committee
meeting or the hardware store, the library or the parking lot or the
elevator, the soccer game or the Christmas party or Carnegie Hall, I
am alone. Then I feel a different kind of lost, the kind that makes
you hug your knees under the nightshade, or where the path lies
before you (all bright and alive) but you just stare, stare, stare.
The
kind of lost where you don�t want to be found.
So
I discovered ways to lose myself.
When
I funneled all of my focus into an activity, the tics lessened. The
voice in my head did not go entirely mum, but it quieted. Stilled.
Listened. When I sang, the demon nodded its head to the beat. When I
wrote, my fingers danced and twitched about keyboard like a glitching
Franz Liszt.
When I ran, my legs windmilled in a familiar ticcing rhythm, the
demon heaving and straining until, eventually, it fell into pace. In
those breezy moments, I was free.
Of
course, exercising my creativity will not exorcise the voice in my
head. I could sprint from Greensboro to Galilee
and Ol� Faithful Azazel
would be waiting for me at the finish line. I will never outrun my
demons. All I can do is enter the labyrinth again and again, and
Bowie knows it isn�t a day outing. However, I�ve realized
that the mutation which condemns me to glitch like an infected Lenovo
ThinkPad also instills in me insatiable curiosity and an obsessive
drive to improve the world. (Not to mention a proclivity for punning
that may incite my brother to strangle me one day. I can�t help
but put some antics in semantics.)
Like Harry Potter�s psychic connection with Voldemort, my curse
is also my greatest blessing. (Except, unlike Harry, I can�t
innately speak to snakes. I had to take a class.)
Here�s
the thing: everyone�s fighting something. That�s one of
two things I know for sure. (The other is that oatmeal raisin cookies
were created by the CPSU during the Cold War to lower American
morale. They look like chocolate chip cookies and taste like trust
issues, and that�s a fact.) But in my extremely short time as a
moderately successful human (if we measure success by the amount of
peanut butter a person can consume in one sitting),
I find that the worst of the human experience can bring out the best
of human ingenuity. (Not in the case of the oatmeal raisin cookie,
but sometimes.) I accept that the voice in my head is here to stay
and, more importantly, that I don�t want it to leave. I�m
rather attached to it. Besides, it gets lonely in the labyrinth. It�s
nice to have the Minotaur (Minotourette?) for company.
When
I say that getting lost is my greatest gift, I receive a dismissive
waving of hands. (�Nice try, Katie. Your inability to locate
your living room without Google Maps
is not a superpower.�) But the subtle art of losing yourself is
just that � an art, the product of excess creative energy that
can be channeled through piano-playing, marathon-running,
poetry-writing, opera-singing, and the occasional drainpipe
misadventure. �Disorder� implies �wrong,� but
there is no right way to be. Heredity gave me a reservoir of nervous
energy, and rather than dulling it with dams and Dexedrine, I run
faster, write longer, sing higher, am kinder. I create it away. The
alleles that urge me to touchthefloortouchthefloortouchthefloor also
afford me laserlike focus, letting me lose myself in letters, people,
paintings, in winding woods and twisty staircases. I get lost to find
myself and to live with the self I find. The tics and twitches are me
like my matrimonial devotion to Justin�s chocolate hazelnut
butter is me or my passion for making academic rap videos is me or my
use of the vocative comma in email greetings is me or my desire to
befriend both Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway so I can make jokes
about �the importance of being Ernest�
is me. I do not succeed despite my condition; I succeed
because of it, and to mute it is to blunt my creativity, my
curiosity, my identity itself.
So
when Dr. McGoogan drifts a stale red balloon with an �Rx�
scribbled behind a boldfaced question mark, my mom stands. She plucks
the question out of the air and squeezes. It pops with a flat crack
and she flicks it onto the floor. As she strides toward the door,
tugging my dad along, she pauses. Turns. Smiles. �Let�s
go, Katie� she says. And for once in my life, I obey.
The
first time I got stuck in a broken drainpipe will not be the last. I
walk into the labyrinth again and again, a restless adventurer
getting lost, trying and testing and ticcing and knowing that I�ll
never get out, that I don�t want to, that all I can do is stand
at the crossroads of Was and Will and explore the maze in between,
and if I am wrong, at least I am myself. That�s the only life I
want to live.
Now, if you�ll
excuse me, I need to find my way down from this tree.
"Katie Danis�s
proudest achievements include devouring two watermelons in one
sitting, setting the plot of Oedipus Rex to the tune
of
�Rude� by Magic!, reading Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows 72 times, and running the research/commentary
blog www.probablylostkatie.wordpress.com
(Unless
you
type
the
author's name
in
the subject
line
of the message
we
won't know where to send it.)
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