I'm a duck. Quack! Quack!
Quack!
VOICEOVER: This is who I am, and I can still just
be a normal person and live normally, even though I have it.
I don't like you!
Sugar, sugar! Sugar, sugar, sugar!
You make unicorns cry...
..all the time.
VOICEOVER: For a while, a lot of my vocal tics were about, like,
drugs and prostitutes, basically.
And they just kind of latched on to that. Don't know why.
And then they can go quite dark, to be fair.
Like, sometimes they can be just, like, about bunnies and
fairy princesses, and ice kingdoms.
And then they'll be, like...
..backstreet abortion and...prostitutes, yeah!
You can have vocal tics and motor tics. So, the vocal tics are...
SHE COUGHS, CLICKS AND MEOWS
That was, like, a vocal tic, so vocal tics are sounds.
And then the motor tics are the movements, et cetera.
And then...
So, my, my most common tics are...
SHE CLEARS HER THROAT AND SNIFFS
That one. That's there, like, all the time.
Touch my nose a lot and, like, make that clicking sort of sound.
I meow quite a bit!
Except from the sort of meowing,
they mostly are just random gibberish that comes out.
So, the biggest stereotype that I come across with Tourette's is
sort of everyone just seeing it as a swearing disease,
which is not true.
We don't just walk around yelling expletives and stuff.
Emilly's birth was quite traumatic.
She was very poorly for the first couple of days.
And she had her stomach pumped. She had to be force-fed.
And...
..she used to wake herself up in the middle of the night.
And I'm not exaggerating when I say 52 times a night was normal.
She would just twitch and wake herself up all the time.
That's where you started, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah. ..eventually...
VOICEOVER: The paediatrician thinks that it could have been
from as young as eight weeks.
I love these. I love that one,
because you were just...a crackpot!
There were six girls in my year and they were just really nasty.
And they'd sort of imitate me and throw my medication about...
..and hide my stuff, and they were just really nasty.
One lunchtime, I was taking my meds and they sort of took them
off me and were, you know, throwing the packet about and stuff,
and just generally being...not nice.
And I just really hated school, hated, just, everything.
Just became a really... kind of shy...person.
But now I'm not.
Now, I just talk to anyone and stuff, like, I'm fine with it.
We met on the very first day of college.
I'd never met anyone with Tourette's,
but I knew of the condition.
I know that she's been through a lot with this syndrome.
Like, she said that she was bullied because of it, which is horrible.
Obviously, if I knew her then, I would have stood up for her.
And, you know, and I'll do it now if anyone does, you know?
But, yeah, I think it's amazing and, you know, it's a part of her,
and I love that about her.
So, yeah.
I tend to suppress quite a bit.
Like, holding in my tics, and...
It's a form of self-preservation for myself, I guess.
I mean, if you're just walking along the street
and you start doing all weird movements
and stuff, people do kind of look, like, "What are you doing?"
And if I'm at uni and...I'm in a lecture with loads of people
that I don't know, I tend to hold it in,
because otherwise they're just going to be like, "What are you doing?
"Who is this girl?!" Like, "She's so weird."
VOICEOVER: Yeah, I wouldn't recommend suppressing to anyone!
Because how is anyone ever going to be OK with it if we don't show it?
But when I'm with my friends, I don't feel the need to suppress.
Even if I'm out in public, and I'm with my friends,
I don't feel the need to suppress as much.
We're friends now. Yeah! This is a thing.
I thought it was quite nice to actually have a friend that has Tourette's... We're not friends!
Oh, no!
THEY LAUGH
# Run fast for your mother and fast for your father... #
VOICEOVER: Music, in general, really helps with my Tourette's.
I literally listen to music, like, probably all the time.
It just calms me down a lot.
When I start singing, it feels really good.
I don't have to supress or anything, I just don't tic when I sing.
Like, that's the good thing about it and I think that's why
I enjoy music and singing so much.
It's a release.
When I watch Emilly perform, it's quite amazing,
because she's always been a very shy person.
It wasn't until she was about 15 that she would actually talk
to someone face to face.
She used to hide behind me and talk through me.
But if you put her on a stage, there could be hundreds and hundreds
of people sitting in front of her and it didn't faze her at all.
# Why is every single second filled up with you?
# I really don't know
# It's what I'm used to. #
The thing I admire most about Emilly is her courage...
..and her determination.
Nothing...nothing stands in her way.
# Don't leave me this way... #
Yeah, Tourette's is a bit of a ball-ache, really.
But I wouldn't change her.
I think the biggest challenge of...
..living with Tourette's was just becoming a confident person.
And just accept it as,
"This is who I am, this is going to be part of my life."
And I can still just be a normal person and live normally,
even though I have it, and just, sort of, coming to terms with that.
When I am on stage and singing, it's, like, the best feeling ever!
SHE LAUGHS
Especially if it is, like, a big performance.
You can't really see the audience, but you know there's loads of people there, listening to you sing.
And it's just, it's a really nice feeling.
I just become really confident and...
..just, yeah, a completely different person.