#(this is also why neil having dissociative identity disorder makes a lot of sense to me)

[asexualannoyance]

#well so did neil #but thats how he copes w a lot of his own trauma honestly #he disassociates. he forgets. and if he still remember he tries to forget #the two traumatic events that stick w him and he dwells on are his mothers death and the man being chopped up #he has stated time and time again that awful things have been done to him. that he was basically gutted by his fathers ppl #and i suppose he does dwell on that minutely. to mention it. but its an aside #he usually dwells on running. the fear of getting caught than all the implied injuries he has #when youre running you cannot afford to process certain events #correct me if im wrong but i also remember it implied that nathan abused neil in a way he instinctually knows not to touch him back #but neil rarely dwells on the full extent of this abuse. he rarely dwells on so much until its right in front of him #honestly evermore is just a classic. breakdown. dont think. dont think. drink like im on the road again w my mother. run- #from the thoughts so i can be strong enough not to bolt #also doesnt neil mention andrews memory vs his own. and how there are gaps in his own where he knows something bad happened #<- im being v iffy on if that happened. my memory is literally the worst thing in the world. disregard if untrue #anyways where was i going w this? #dissassociative. neil disassociates. you can also see this in his identity issues. neil vs nathaniel vs other identities #on the run he tries to become someone else. when shit really goes bad he goes back to nathaniel to deal w it. nathaniel to lock up the panic #sorry for rambling this is nonsense until my reread where i can actually analyze neil #i honestly think jean is more traumatized by what was done to neil than neil was (via @limonjarritos)

you are so fucking correct!!!

that boy dissociates so fucking much—i just have to think about that scene where Abby bandages up his arms after Baltimore and how Neil mentally checks out the second Andrew gets him out of his panic attack upon seeing his arms, like, it's just his first defense against anything traumatic happening to him or seeing the aftermath—he shoves it down, doesn't think about it (or tries to) and blacks it out

like, he comes back from Evermore and barely remembers anything, he is genuinely shocked when he sees what happened to his appearance because he forgot that it got changed, and it even takes him some time to unearth the memory of him not signing the contract because he dissociated so hard during that time that nothing really stuck, which is so fucking interesting!

and yeah, his body would still remember which makes the lack of (trauma) reactions in the books a little weird, but here i'm just gonna say that Nora probably either didn't think about it too hard or it just wasn't relevant to the narration (just think about how Neil during the championships game does not mention the wounds on his arms once as far as i remember, lmao)

i fear we moved on from jean revealing that neil had been waterboarded at evermore far too quickly