I was talking to my dad about my conditions, and oh yeah i was saying that i've been thinking for a couple years that my tics have grown worse and turned into something more drawn out, more insane, almost dystonic, and then today i was reading that there are three categories tics get put into, and one is actually called 'dystonic' – because it's when you get frozen into one long drawn-out position due to the tic, you look totally spastic, and yeah my arms, especially the left, are doing that, my hands freeze up, and i'm double-jointed at my elbows and all 10 fingers and kinda in all of my toes as well, but it's harder to notice cause they're so short compared to my fingers, less space between the joints, but anyway my hands get frozen in these almost pouncing paw-like configurations, it's horrible. [br][br]so i mentioned this to my dad cause he's got dystonia, and he was telling me how his form of dystonia they've found can be induced through repetitive motions, and i said yeah but surely you have to be genetically predisposed to it, and he denied he thought that was true, and i said yeah but i mean…come on, it's not like that's your only condition, you've also got ocd.  and he goes silent and then is all unhappy about it and tells me i can't go superimposing my own impressions on other people, diagnosing other people – and i said dad, i'm not, i'm seriously not, you've got ocd – EVERY MORNING you would REFUSE to eat breakfast because you'd spot ONE fingerprint on the coffee table in the NEXT ROOM and then have to clean ALL the glass in the WHOLE apt before you were willing to sit down and eat again.  he says 'vrinda, everyone likes to be tidy' i'm like um…that's not tidiness!!!  tidiness would be thinking 'oh there's a fingerprint', eating, and then later cleaning that ONE spot, or you know…not caring at all because it's ONE fingerprint!!  and i was like, dad you don't know what a long list i could read out to you of all your symptoms, you've got ocd, how can you still be denying this and acting like it's some mean thing of me to be suggesting it??  finally i even had to resort to genetics – point out to him that girls only account for 25% of tourettics and that the modern theory is that boys can get TS through just one gene-carrying parent, but girls can't get it unless both their parents are carriers, and that it doesn't have to be that the parents have TS, they can have OCD or ADHD instead – and that means…ta-da!  my dad has ocd.  he seemed quite non-plussed by this info.  he was just like '…really?  hm…' and didn't seem sure what to say.  it's absolutely unbelievable the way he still doesn't even like to acknowledge my conditions – TS he's fine with, because it's physical, he can see it, but all my more mental conditions he has always treated with this attitude of 'i'm sure everyone's like that, you can't just apply labels to yourself like that', it doesn't matter that drs have diagnosed me, he doesn't really buy into it all somehow, not 100%.  [br][br]and when i was talking to him about borderline personality disorder, he kept saying (as a way of trying to convince me that i don't really have some condition), 'yeah but vrinda, i do that too,' to all these things like, say, plummeting to the depths of depression in a fraction of a second, the wild intense explosive mood swings, and the self-harming behaviour, all kinds of things.  and i said 'um dad…yes i KNOW you do all these things – that's because these are genetic too, i had to get them from somewhere, and i got them from you and mom, you've got this too.'  i mean, what does he think, that i'm some freak case of four conditions plus some aspects of autism, and that it's totally inexplicable because no one else in the family has it?  he still won't admit any of the other conditions everyone in our family so clearly have – he couldn't even believe my mom's dad had ocd, and my mom and i were like uh were you not there the time he decided to go out and buy like six VCRs and a camcorder and then film his blank WALLPAPER with an audiocassette about vitamins playing for the sound, and then copy it with effects all over the other VCRs and then make numerous copies and pack them all up into a box that was 15 times the size of the contents in order to account for the endless layers of packing tape and newspaper and styrofoam peanuts, etc. surrounding the tapes no one was ever going to watch anyway??  or how about the vitamin obsession in the first place, how as soon as my grandma died he decided to become such an obsessive health freak he actually wound up developing one of the rarest blood disorders that ONLY affects the super-healthy?  or the way he had to unplug every appliance in the house immediately after use?  how did my dad miss all this??  and even after that's pointed out to him, he's like 'oh, huh…yeah i guess so' – he guesses so?? [br][br]like, if it weren't so utterly sad, it'd be hilarious, is how i felt about it when i got off the phone.  i mean…haha yeah i know he's borderline, it's the only thing that has finally FINALLY helped me to accept and forgive his sudden rages and all the domestic violence, or (in the case of ocd) the strict rules at home in order to follow religious regiment i didn't even believe in but was too scared not to follow.  like, how do i make him realise that acknowledging he's got ocd and bpd is what has allowed me to move on and reconnect with him and finally establish the friendship i've always wanted with him – that these things are what make me feel like i can relate to him, now that i'm old enough to understand it all – that i now understand he wasn't disinterested in me when i was growing up, he just had no idea how to connect or relate because he's got such social issues and such an inclination for self-imposed hermitage because basically he's so screwed up in the head.  (and btw, that's all a rhetorical question – i know there's no way; either he learns to open his mind and accept these things or he doesn't, and i can't do it for him.) [br][br]ugh i feel like i have so much to say but my hands are hurting so much from my tics, i'm just in so much intense pain and yet i can't stop talking/typing, i'm bubbling over…i think i'm going to go downstairs and watch more of 'takin' over the asylum' – surely david tennant will make me smile again 🙂 [br][br]and damn that was a good note to end this on, but i wanted to add: oh oh !!  i ordered the dvd of 'jeckyll' today, because my friend veronica kept telling me to watch it back when it was on tv but i don't know, i never get around to watching most things when they're first airing, and then i found out it was written by steven moffat, who writes all my favourite most twisted clever episodes of 'dr who', and then george said yeah he'd seen parts of it and it was great, so i ordered it as my end of week treat this week (because it's the close of week 3 and i'm still doing fantastically with this sticker chart thing!!), and we were watching it today – has anyone here seen it?? anyway, he's there leaving himself messages on this dictaphone for his other self to listen to so he knows what's going on, it's how his two personalities communicate, god it's a good show, i realised i was actually like holding my breath toward the end, it got so exciting, and anyway it's set in modern times, and the good side wanted to keep his wife and children a secret from the evil side, but someone was talking to him about his family when he suddenly transformed without them realising, it was SO EERIE OMG like when you suddenly realised what had happened – and so the evil side goes and visits the family and then leaves a disturbing message on the dictaphone and at the end the good side is there leaving his response into it, at the very end of the show, and he's like shaking and near tears saying 'you've crossed the line – from now on, this means WAR'.  and i mean…take a moment and think about what he's saying – he's furious with HIMSELF, he's raging war on HIMSELF, his own alter ego (and that alter ego earlier was said to have threatened to blow his own brains out if the good side ever tried to find a cure, so the good side was trapped, unable to shed the bad side).  anyway, i think it's obvious why i'm sharing this – i completely relate.  my two sides, the me i want to be, and the me that keeps fighting to be let out and threatens to take over and destroy everything i've built up in life.  like…yeah okay time to watch david tennant play a manic-depressive and touch my heart 🙂