REFLECTIONS ON I SWEAR

I Swear was a great movie experience for me. Highly recommended. As someone who has Tourette’s Syndrome, it was a tremendously rare and emotional experience to see someone like me portrayed sympathetically in a movie. Basically never happens, certainly never this convincingly. I felt seen and understood and touched. It’s a tear-jerker. I also thought it might be worth trying compare the experience of the protagonist with my own, which is a little different. The fact that the main character in I Swear has such a severe case of Tourette’s Syndrome helps make the movie’s educational purpose crystal clear. At the same time, most people with Tourette's Syndrome have milder cases. In my case there are many differences with the experiences portrayed onscreen. The most obvious is that I've never been subjected to the kind of violence and level of humiliation that he has. It brought home how lucky I’ve been to have the family and friends I’ve had. Because his case was severe, its onset was…