She reaches home and sprints to the bed. She no longer has any feelings, she is numb. There is only the monster, who had taken up residence inside her brain, telling her to cringe and contort her body in every which way. She lay on the bed squealing and jerking, like a rusty faucet being turned off in one cold hard gesture. But the faucet still leaked, her eyes poured as her mother and father sprinted in, holding each other’s hands and crying. They peered down at her with sympathy; “Honey, please…I’m sorry” her dad spoke. She barely heard him. The monster is taking control.

After many fits she was told what she had. Tourette’s syndrome was the name of the diagnosis the doctor had derived. This was the monster she needed to defeat. She stayed out of school for a week. When she went back she learned to cope with the disorder. The first day she was back in school she spent her time in the nurse’s office, confessing her problems. She couldn’t tell anyone else, she knew she was different. Her good friends Jan and Zack asked her what was wrong when she went back to class. “Nothing,” she explained, with a calming and unique smile spread across her face, almost fake, like a painting. She looked like she was mimicking the Mona Lisa, a painting her father had shown her at the age of five. She kept having doubts of her sanity, of her normality. She wished she were just a painting with no feelings or thoughts, just a bland and pretty face. The thought still lingered in the back of her mind. “Am I a freak? Am I no longer normal?” She wished she didn’t even know this about herself. It wasn’t fair and that was all she knew. The monster was trying to take control.

As she sat in the neurologist’s office, she shook like a bobble head doll, petrified. She had no idea what was wrong with her, and tears flowed from her eyes, a leaky faucet. They stopped and started as the doctor paced back and forth, ignoring her cringing gestures and squealing noises, and the sound of her chest rising and falling. The monster had taken control…she didn’t even know it. The doctor was focusing on a diagnosis. She took her mom aside and gave her some sort of explanation, and then she was handed a pill. “Take this with some water.” The doctor cooed, somewhat sympathetic towards a case the young girl was unaware of. This perplexed the young girl because it had to do with her, it was about her, yet she was ill informed. Her body was a lab, the medicine was a scientific experiment; hopefully there would be no explosion. The monster had taken control.


She finishes writing her poem. She briefly takes a sip from her Starbucks caramel macchiato. She doesn’t know where she’s going from here, but her journey will be filled with progress and success, as her life continues to shine and glow like a star on a Christmas tree. That boy assisted her six years ago. He changed her life. She loves him. She hears her phone ringing she looks at the caller ID and her eyes glean before she answers it with a “Hey babe!” She loves his voice, melodious like the symphony playing at the Met that she went to see as a freshman in high school. She tells him about her poem. It’s about the horrific issues she went through years ago. She hangs up the phone finished reminiscing, and smiles, realizing the hell she has overcome. Control has been taken.

She sprints from the mall in pure agony, her boyfriend trotting along next to her, with a look of worry across his handsome face. As she reaches the clearing outside of JC Penny’s with the looming trees barricading her in a prison of humanity, she notices that she is alone. She screeches high pitched and pierces the ears of the brick wall, well, if it was even listening. She gestures to Dan Coleman to hand her her half drunken water bottle and chucks it with paralyzing force and petrifying anger at the brick wall. She runs back to her boyfriends arms and he holds her as tears and sweat mingle and drips from her eyes and brow. The monster had taken control. She wraps her arms around his neck and jerks her body around while squealing like a mouse being attacked. “I’ve never done this in front of anyone besides my parents before. It’s not fair” She whispers in her boyfriend’s ear, her voice rising and falling like the ocean waves crashing and swelling; melodious. She had done this and told him this once before. She knew she could trust him. She knew what love was. Real love, without a concept of forever, or a telepathic mindset to see into the future, she knows she has fallen. Then she jumps onto the ground and lets out a final squeal, jerks her leg a final time; and the day is complete. “I love you. Be strong.” he coos in her ear and the warm tickle jerks her awake. She knows she will be fine. He has taught her more than a text book or a dictionary ever could, with those words she has the power to go on. She knows she can make it and take control, after everything he stands for and everything he has taught her…Taking control.



She sits in Starbucks, on the corner of Fifth Avenue in the big apple frantically writing her experiences in a yellow notepad. She has lived in China and written in Chinese for a newspaper there. Her experiences will be kept in this journal. Six years ago a boy taught her what it was to help herself. He helped her with the self esteem she needed to keep going on through the strenuous days. She is turning out her novel, about China, some in Mandarin and some in English. This novel stresses the days in china where she made friends, built relationships. She knows she can continue on. Five years ago, Melissa went off of this medication. She began to learn how to control herself and her life. She can keep going, with or without the medication, with or without the Tourette’s. Despite her handicap she has learned to pull through and shine. She has taken control.