Metaphor: Becoming a Butterfly. Butterfly? Nah, More Like Becoming a Frog.

Greetings from planet Amy.

So, if you read my last post you'll understand this one.

Some people don't understand optimism.  That I'll never understand.  What good is life without happiness or hope?  In Greek mythology, Pandora became the owner of a small box she was told never to open.  However, the gods made women curious so of course, Pandora opened it.  Pandora's box released all the horrible things in the world: death, monsters, torture, hatred, war, disease, and so on.
             It kept one good thing that the world refused to let go of: hope.
So how can we live in a world of so much evil but still continue to carry on and succeed?  

On that note let me reveal my plan.
Again, many people don't understand optimism.  People don't understand the will to continue, the will to succeed, or the will to be who you are even with difficulties in your life.  For the longest time, that was me.  I was ashamed and afraid of what my peers would think of me and my best friend.  Until this summer, when I took a Youth Advocacy workshop at the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living and we went to the US Social Forum in Detroit.  Seeing all those people there, people who were disabled and people who were able-bodied together, of all different causes, races, religions, and backgrounds being themselves and not caring about the hateful people in the world.  It was amazing.

Another reason for this idea, this self reform was that most inspirational and amazing person ever, Brad Cohen.  Brad Cohen has severe TS and living with TS in the 1980's is rough.  Most doctors didn't even know what TS was.  He struggled and fought his way through school, succeeding despite of his TS and the schools' ignorance and became a teacher.  After 24 schools turned him down because of his TS (he was magna cum lade at his school and had hundreds of awards) and not because of his teaching ability one school gave him a chance for a year.
That year he won Georgia's Teacher of the Year award.
His book/Hallmark Movie, Front of the Class: How Tourette syndrome Made Me the Teacher I Never Had, is nothing but optimism in a time of terrible struggling.  I've decided I wanted that.

So, I'm going to be open about it.  No more hiding or biting my tongue (literally).  I'm going to be me, TS and all.  TS, like any disability, does not define me.  It strengthens me.
From now on, you'll here me all day long, you'll see me all day long, you'll see me in a play, you'll see me on the Student Counsel, and you'll see the real me.  Not some kid who looks like a zombie all day.  Not the fake "normal" me, you'll see Amy Moorman, that fun kid who enjoys lots of things at school who, oh yeah, also happens to have Tourette syndrome and OCD.
Who says optimists are fools?  Who says a disability limits people?  Who says people can't?  I say I can, watch me!

For now,
Your twitchy friend