I don’t hate my Tourettes. I actually kind of like it. Now that I know what it is, of course. See when you’re a kid from a cultura afrocaribbeña like mine, your family doesn’t have the slightest clue what Tourette syndrome is!
If you don’t know, it’s a disorder whereby a neurological chemical imbalance makes it hard for people like me to control their impulses.
We develop physical and vocal tics. Some of us wink or scrunch up our faces. Some cough—I meow. Some of us have to try so hard to bury our impulses that when they finally come out it’s a firework of shit that spurts out of our mouths like fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckkkfujd
Growing up though, there was no way my parents, coming from a place like Caracas, knew what the hell that was. I was an intensely weird kid. I mean I was super loco. After watching the Lion King when I was four, I was so enamoured by scenes of Simba running through the desert that I literally ran on all fours through my house until I was 14.
Add to that an inability to control my impulses, brown skin and a name like Saúl? You have a pretty great recipe for bullying.
See Ah-Saul (asshole, get it? Kids are clever), as they used to call me (or Taco, or sometimes just Dirt), couldn’t stop making fart noises with his mouth! He didn’t know why he couldn’t stop, or why every ten seconds he had to violently whip his head to the left and let out a really loud MRRRRRRRRR with the back of his throat, he just had to do it, and the white kids loved that. They didn’t love him, of course, but they loved how pointing it out made them feel. Hell, even the teachers kinda hated him for being so disruptive. Can’t you just sit still, kid?
It wasn’t until I was 15 years old that my mother, worried out of her mind about my erratic behaviour and inability to sit still or be quiet, took me to a doctor. One day I broke up with a girlfriend or something and my body lost it. What I refused to process mentally manifested physically instead. I was biting at my cheeks, barking, meowing, violently thrashing and rolling my eyes into the back of my skull and it just would. not. stop.
See when I get stressed out, it is like my body becomes a marionette that a toddler who doesn’t know how strong they are just discovered and wants to see how far it can contort. My brain tumbles through my washing machine of a skull, while I try, desperately, to contain the ridiculous animal call I have caught in my throat.
Meow.
The first doctor told me that I was just hyperactive, and should try chamomile tea. After ignoring his bullshit, a couple of doctors later plus give or take a dozen or so medical tests, EEGs, MRIs, I was taken to a neurologist who, about a year after the first doctor visit, finally diagnosed me with Tourette syndrome.
This diagnosis became an intercontinental and intergenerational traveller. I had something that explained my ridiculous behaviour. I was still a damn weirdo who ran around like a cartoon lion for ten years of his life, but at least I knew why I meow when I’m stressed. I still squawked like a goddamned crow in the middle of my Year 12 exams, but hey, at least I knew why.
Most kids get diagnosed with Tourette syndrome before they are ten, and thankfully Australia’s mental health system is advanced enough that early diagnosis is a pretty common thing where accepting mental illness has become the cultural norm. Unfortunately, in Venezuela and its diaspora, that shit is obscure. We still tend to erase or minimise mental illness.
Ancillary to my own relief from the diagnosis, when word of it got around my extended family, memories of tios and abuelos who probably suffered similar disorders also surfaced. My diagnosis became an intergenerational traveller, with my father recognising tics he and other family members had, bringing explanation to decades of confusion, taboo, and scorn.
From the outside I seem pretty ‘normal’ (whatever that means) now. As we get older most people with Tourettes tend to mellow out. I usually just have to stretch my left arm. Or I have this one really weird tic where I take my left hand and I put it over the left side of my face and I blow into it to warm up my face. If I don’t do it I get an intense black pain in the back of my head that feels like I am slowly being enveloped in a malaise that could swallow me whole, so I tend to just let tics fly now.
If nothing else, it’s become a great conversation starter. I find it hilarious now, and I love that it brings me and my friends laughter. Now a stressed meow just releases tension rather than generating shame. I’ve learnt to love my tics as a unique quirk of my character.
The other week my friend brought around his three-year-old son to hang out with us and he decided it was fun to repeat the word catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy catboy
Now catboy is my newest tic; the little munch gave me something to remember him with. I guess that’s just who I am, isn’t it?
The dude who meows. Catboy. Get it?
Cover image via agsandrew/iStock
About the author
Saúl A. Zavarce C. is a Melbourne-based Venezuelan-Australian Human Rights advocate who migrated to Australia in 1992. He identifies as a mestizo and gender-queer, with Indigenous, Afro-Venezuelan and European heritage. He is the Head of Advocacy at the Venezuelan Australian Democratic Council and Campaign Officer at Plan International Australia. He holds a Master of International Relations, specialising in gender and radicalisation theory from Monash University.