An appropriate place to start is the beginning, and so here it is :
I was born on the 30th of August 1997, I rudely arrived commandeering my Uncle's birthday (it being the same day) and just before Princess Diana was killed (the name Deanna, by the way, is not because of her untimely death but rather a name my mum had already chosen). I was born in Winchester and lived in Eastleigh near Southampton until I was 4, at this point we moved to Gloucestershire where I lived until I was 12 and this is where life gets twitchy.
At the age of 12 we moved to Somerset to a 'commune type thingy' in Doniford, this was 'different', I soon got used to it.
Life was filled with slightly angsty, resentful, puberty clouded emotions until I was fourteen.
At the age of fourteen I was an anxious, shaky thing with weird friends and weirder ideas (not all bad by the way!) and then life got complicated. REALLY complicated.
I was sexually assaulted. I stumbled through 3 odd relationships being used and made to feel vulnerable until one final assault that snapped me out of my naive trance. I'm not going to go into it too far but a series of events in varying magnitude triggered who I am today happened when I was fourteen and that, is when the 'invisible ukulele' started. To begin with it was an odd habit, I would sit and mime invisible ukulele playing most of the time. This was one of my frequent 'quirks', I had had a few in my life, various wobbles and noises that had stuck with me in times of stress and then left again, but (unknown to me) this was my first complex tic.
As I got older things got stranger. I would have periods in my life where I would uncontrollably make noises and throw myself around. The worst time was in sixth form, by this point I had begun to have intrusive thoughts and my OCD and anxiety were barely controllable. To make things worse my condition hadn't been diagnosed, other students mocked me, teachers called me a disruption and one therapist even told me that 'I would be sectioned' if i didn't stop. And so that was that. I had resigned myself to being a weird broken human who had nothing really wrong and made noises for no reason.
Over time the wounds of my sixth form have healed. I had a wonderful councilor through this time and through her and my faith and the support of so many others I am now doing well and feel less 'weird'.
Just one appointment with a neurologist confirmed that I have Tourettes syndrome, he was shocked that I had gone undiagnosed for so long. I had never even considered that it was Tourettes.
Being told I have Tourettes was like being told I was secretly a goldfish, it had never crossed my mind but then when I looked back there it was, staring at me! (disclaimer: I'm not a goldfish) all the twitches, all the habits, every odd moment, suddenly fell into place. I am not insane. I have a neurological condition. And that, strangely enough, is a new and comforting fact for me.
So this blog is a new adventure. And I hope you'll share it with me. A little note at a time.