Just Another Story. My Tourette's #6

Page 47.
     Concerning the reaction to my TS from friends and family... where to start, where to start, where to start...?
     I had so few friends to start with, that to a certain degree, the TS couldn't have made it worse, but it did. I was a little, gay nerd in the first place. I was bullied and beaten up a lot for being unpopular and bad at sports. So did the TS really add to that?  Not really. But it did add to the feelings by my classmates that I was a freak and beneath them. Subsequently, where the physical abuse ended, the psychological abuse began.
     My family just didn't understand what was going on, nor did I. So, my mother began me in psychotherapy when I was 12 years old, 6th grade, 1973. She assumed that my ticks were psychological in nature. I do give her credit for trying on this issue. In truth, my home life was so screwed up at that point that in a parallel universe my twitches really could've been nervous in nature. But, unfortunately, they weren't. People did address the twitches to my face; but as previously mentioned, I was so closed off and distant on every front that I couldn't even acknowledge, let alone talk about, them.
     Everybody noticed the twitches and even school mates who couldn't stand me were still curious.