Doting Madwoman with Tic

I’m not sure when Tourettes was invented, but it’s definitely a great name for a disorder. I think back in the day when I was young we just identified people as having a ‘tic’.  I myself do not suffer from tourettes, but if I did, and if I were to describe myself on a dating website, I would definitely prefer to write ‘I have a bit of a tic in my left eye’ than to write ‘I suffer from Tourettes syndrome.’ But that’s just one of my little tics, not wanting to call things by their official names. Sometimes I think I have a yet undiscovered illness called ‘silent tourettes’. What I mean by that is that sometimes I find myself silently saying things in my head that I don’t really mean at all. For example, I might be talking to someone close to me whom I very much appreciate and like, but parallel to the nice conversation I’m thinking ‘cow, silly cow.’

I don’t know much about tourettes but I saw this girl who had it give an interview and she said that she can’t help herself but that she shouts things like ‘nigga’ at coloured people, even though that’s the last thing she means or wants to say. Well I have to admit that I silently hear those words sometimes. Like say, I see a guy begging on the street and I really feel for him, and I buy him a coffee and give him money and my heart is breaking for him, but somewhere in my head I’m going ‘ah get a job you lazy git.’ I’m not sure if it’s the remnants of the programmes that were put into my head at one stage but are now reprogrammed or if it might be this double condition: mute tourettes.

It could also be that I don’t have any condition at all, because I grew up when conditions weren’t conditions, they were classified as the following: a bit soft, mad altogether, doting, wild, the madman or the madwoman from wherever, tapped, distracted, raving and so on. I think it’s actually not PC anymore to use those expressions, you have to use official words like tourettes, aspergers or autism. Unless, of course, you’re the doting madwoman from Galway, then you’re allowed use other words because of your tic.