Tourette Syndrome

Something in you moves before you can decide whether you want it to. A twitch in the face, a shoulder jerk, a sound that breaks out of you — sometimes a word, sometimes a noise, sometimes something you would never say consciously. You feel the pressure before the tic arrives. An urge that builds like electrical tension, and then — whether you want it to or not — discharges. Briefly after, it is quiet. For a moment. Then it begins again.

Neurology describes Tourette's as a neurobiological particularity in which certain regulatory circuits in the brain — primarily in the basal ganglia and frontal cortex — work differently. This is not imagination, not an upbringing error, not a "nervous thing" in the dismissive sense, but a form of neurodivergence: a nervous system that is built differently from most. Not defective. Different.