In an autism fruit salad can be a range of things and two of us in The Aspinauts experience Tourette’s tics, our keyboard player, Anthony Julian and me.  We’re both had our tics all our lives and we both get a little nervous when our tics spring out and require a social introduction to those we’re with.  Tics are generally caused by a combination of things, high dopamine levels to start with, and so, they co-occur in a lot of people who also have OCD (not to be confused with OCPD which is obsessional interests) which I also manage as does Anthony and which we both had from mid childhood.

Both tics and OCD compulsions in those on the autism spectrum are commonly mistaken for stims (self stimulatory behaviours) but are nothing to do with volition.  Both Anthony and I have had the compulsions to check, straighten, balance and repeat patterns until they feel ‘perfect’.  They can be epilepsy related (I was diagnosed with atypical epilepsy in my 20s), brain scarring, especially from the Strep Virus (I had 2 primary immune deficiencies), aggravated by allergies and set off by things like overstimulation.  For both of us, these have driven us nuts and driven those in our environments nuts too.  And though we share tics, our tics are very different.

My tics began by age two and a half, involving compulsive stomach tensing and compulsive coughing to the degree I was coughing blood and this, combined with being meaning deaf, and having visual, verbal and body agnosias (meaning deaf, meaning blind, face blind and pain agnosia) got me assessed in a hospital assessment as psychotic in 1965 at the age of two.  By age three fist clenching, sideways looking, lip pursing and a spitting tic added themselves but the compulsive coughing and throat clearing remained the main ones.  By age four the lungeing came and by late childhood the noises and blinking tics added themselves and the coughing and throat clearing got so bad I was stood in the corridor for around 30% of my school year in grade 3 (the teacher felt I wasn’t complying to stop this annoying others).  In my teens a hand weaving tic emerged and left after being suddenly slapped (I don’t recommend this ‘treatment’) and the noises had expanded to verbal tics of ‘almond-ah’, ‘mini-mop’, ‘boggledeeboo’, ‘have a party’ and the lengthy ‘hiya woman, how’s ya hormones’.  And of course, there was me, trying to be an equal human being in a fruit salad of agnosias, semantic pragmatic disorder, severe Exposure Anxiety, untreated bipolar, OCD, Tourette’s and associated gut, immune, metabolic disorders wrapped up in an ‘autistic’ personality package and pattern of autistic development, perception, cognition and behaviour.

But conditions also become family, they travel through your life with you, sometimes they go on holiday for days, weeks, other times they are there experiencing who hates them, who loves them, experiencing the it from the I and the confusions of the two, experiencing the bigotry, the shame, and the moments of equality where they become part of the wallpaper.

Anthony and I were on the train after an Aspinauts gig in Federation Square.  We’d been out in the square dagging about, singing, performing, little kids dancing to our music in front of us.  We were happy and buzzing, with quiet Aspie Stuart along with us, enjoying our madness with his Mona Lisa smile.  And as we sat sharing poetic surrealism on the train Anthony after the buzz and our tics interrupted now and then.  He winked and shrugged and tapped.  My complex tic fired with an occasional hand clap with a hand flick and action akin to pegging on a clothes line which I’m told collectively makes me look like a rapper.  Accompanied for the last month by the longest verbal tic I’ve ever had, ng-guh-ee-im-ah-way, Anthony quipped this makes me sound African.  And as we buzzed and chatted and shared surrealist poetry, the tics became wallpaper.  It’s a long way from the years of bullying Anthony knew which left him homeschooled or my year in the corridor, but there are kids with tics, with and without additional autism spectrum fruit salad, who are still living not only with far more severe Tourette’s but with daily bullying by those ignorant about or embarassed by difference.   Let’s change that.

—
Donna Williams *)
author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.

Ever the arty Autie.
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.myspace.com/donnaandtheaspinauts
http://www.auties.org