Content
Reflexion on the movie « I Swear » The movie I Swear follows a man who has Tourette’s syndrome. It’s a completely different condition from stuttering (which I have had all my life), but the movie really resonated with my experience. The micro-humiliations every day, the loneliness, the exhaustion from the rigidity in the body that comes with stuttering, but also the cognitive exhaustion of always changing the way I phrase things to avoid stuttering. There is one scene in particular where the main character has a lot of vulgar tics and keeps saying sorry. At one point, a woman who takes him under her wing tells him that we only say sorry when we do something wrong — not when we do something we cannot control. That scene made me really emotional because it reminded me how much, when I was a child — and honestly still today — I say sorry when I stutter. Every single time. I grew up apologizing for taking too much time, for the inconvenience of my voice. It’s sad to imagine that my self-identity has been built around guilt and apology. I wanted to know if I’m the only one who experiences it that way. It’s also a brilliant film. I highly recommend it. It felt very close to home