Hold Your Breath

My mother and I walked into a diner off of Rockville Pike when I was 14. It was late winter. The sky was a brilliant magenta. The back of my neck to my lower right shoulder felt like an explosion of social anxiety, stress, OCD, and other conditions -- threatening to humiliate me in front of a crowd of people who were now participants in social jenga to which no one consented. I shout f*ck at the top of my lungs. Heads cock. The diner falls silent.

My thesis is an introspective and diaristic conversation about my condition, Tourette Syndrome, and its comorbid conditions. The work is intended to advocate and spread awareness for Tourette Syndrome. As it happened in the diner when I was young, the work references the gaze, ostracization, and shame I feel as an outsider, not accepted by our ableist social architecture.