#apparently all my symptoms at the same time are all completely unrelated and it’s just all coincidence that they’re at the same time | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

elyvorg · 5 years ago

Text

Kaito Momota: How ADHD Can Be

It’s about time I properly shared a take of mine that I never really talk about in my usual analysis posts, which is my very firm headcanon that Kaito has ADHD. While this is partly thanks to me having ADHD myself, self-indulgence is far from the only thing making me think this. There are so many reasons why this makes every single bit of sense, and this post is going to talk about all of them.

And, see, I don’t want to alienate anyone by having them think I’m about to present an interpretation of Kaito that looks nothing like the Kaito we know, because that’s not it at all. I’m here to talk about how so many of the things that were already abundantly true about him also happen to fit perfectly with ADHD. Really, you could think of it more as me talking about how ADHD actually looks a lot more like Kaito than most people might have realised.

After all, ADHD is a frustratingly misrepresented disorder that’s way more complex and interesting than most people are aware. So not only does it make a huge amount of sense to see Kaito as ADHD, it’s also just genuinely fascinating to think that this could be influencing how his mind works and the way he reacts to things throughout the story. Imagining that Kaito has ADHD could never make him any less Kaito, but I do think it makes him yet another layer of interesting on top of everything else he already has going on.

So even if you don’t have any personal investment in ADHD yourself, I hope you can follow along with me for this. There’s a lot of fun stuff to talk about here.

(Since ADHD is so horribly misrepresented that I can’t expect the average person to know what it really involves, this post is also going to include something of a whirlwind explanation of ADHD itself, in order to help people better appreciate why all these things about Kaito are potentially ADHD things. With that said, obvious disclaimer: I am not remotely a mental health professional, just someone with self-diagnosed ADHD who’s read up a lot about it. Some of this will be from things I’ve read, and some of this will be from my own experiences that I’m now pretty sure are an ADHD thing. My descriptions of these symptoms are likely to be somewhat oversimplified because I’m focusing on explaining this headcanon rather than explaining ADHD itself, so please don’t take this as a definitely-100%-accurate ADHD resource. I’m happy if this can raise awareness of what ADHD is really like, but you should look elsewhere to learn more.)

Hyperfixations

One major thing that ought to be more commonly known about ADHD is that it’s really not a lack of attention; it’s an inability to properly control where our attention goes. It’s been described as an “interest-based nervous system” – we’ll involuntarily focus on whatever seems most interesting to us in any given moment, regardless of its objective importance.

This plus a reduced amount of dopamine receptors means that when we manage to find something that gives us a lot of dopamine, ie, is fun and engaging to think about, we cannot stop thinking about it even if we wanted to. Our entire lives will begin to revolve around this Thing that we enjoy, thinking about it, doing things related to it and consuming more information on it to get as much of that sweet dopamine as possible. This can often be to the detriment of everything else, including more objectively important matters, because who cares about that stuff when Thing is the best thing ever!?

As an example: as you might imagine, I have been hyperfixated on DRV3 and especially on Kaito for over two years now. I have not been able to stop thinking about Kaito even when I’m supposed to be doing other things, and there’s literally nothing that’s more fun for me right now than sharing all these thoughts of mine with other people. We also love to infodump about our hyperfixations to anyone who’ll listen, after all. That’s precisely why this post exists, along with many more like it on both my blogs.

SPACE

So, this is perhaps one of the most easy-to-spot signs that Kaito might be ADHD. Because, man, he really loves space. Sure, any astronaut would have at least some level of interest in it, but Kaito is so obsessed with space that he introduces himself with a grandiose space-themed title, wears a galaxy print on his slippers and the inside of his jacket, and simply couldn’t wait for a college degree and had to make sure he got up there as fast as possible.

Granted, it’s not like Kaito talks about space 100% of the time. He is stuck in a killing game, after all, which is also kind of important to pay attention to. But, still, no matter what more-objectively-important things they can push themselves to focus on when necessary, there’s always a part of an ADHDer’s brain that’s near-constantly thinking about their hyperfixation anyway and will take any opportunity to bring it up and make things about that if they possibly can. And, well, Kaito still talks about space quite a lot considering that he’s in a life-or-death situation that doesn’t have anything to do with space at all (at least, as far as he knows for most of the story).

There’s one delightful bit of white noise I absolutely love in a debate in trial 4 where Gonta is suggesting a vehicle could have crossed the river. Someone responds to this with “Like a rocket?”, despite the fact that, A, there were obviously none of those in the Virtual World, and B, you don’t use those to cross rivers. Kaito, you dork, now is not the time. But of course now’s the time, there is always time to be thinking about space-related things, no matter how impractical and irrelevant it might be. Someone has been murdered, everyone else’s lives are on the line – not to mention his illness and the huge pile of inferiority issues he’s struggling with at this point in the story – yet amongst all that, Kaito’s brain still found time to go, “hey, speaking of vehicles, aren’t rockets the coolest!?” And… yeah, that’s genuinely what hyperfixations are like.

Then there’s the time Kaito asked Maki what her favourite spaceship was, like this is just an obvious go-to conversation starter in his mind, because of course he has a favourite spaceship. He has thought a lot about his favourite spaceship (or spaceships; let’s be real, there’s probably several that he thinks are SO COOL and might call his favourite depending on the circumstances) and could fill ages talking about nothing but that. Even though he knows this conversation ought to be making its way towards helping Maki open up about her past – this is one of his training sessions, after all! – there is still a part of Kaito that really just wants to talk about space, because a part of him always wants to talk about space.

We can see this as well in multiple FTE invitation dialogues (those brief lines describing how they hung out before the actual event starts) in which Kaito apparently spends it talking to Kaede or Shuichi about space, just because he can. There’s also several of his hangouts in the Salmon Team bonus mode where Shuichi’s suggestion of what to do doesn’t really have anything to do with space, but Kaito finds a way to make it about space anyway. ADHD minds are hyper-associative and make connections between concepts very easily – and, naturally, they’re particularly liable to make connections to the thing that the mind is already spending the majority of its time thinking about. So it’s really not so surprising or remarkable at all that Kaito can find ways to make even seemingly-totally-unrelated topics about space somehow, not if he’s ADHD.

(…To be fair, a particular fixation on a certain topic to the point of repeatedly bringing it up when it’s not called for isn’t necessarily that uncommon among Danganronpa characters, what with their talents. But hey, that doesn’t have to make Kaito any less likely to be ADHD. Rather, it would actually make sense for Ultimate students to have a higher than average proportion of ADHDers among them, since an ADHD-fuelled level of intense interest in a thing is more likely to make someone become hugely talented at it out of accumulated knowledge and practice. I’ve been increasingly thinking that Kaede could perhaps be ADHD, too, for example. But that’s not for this post; we’re talking about Kaito here.)

The longevity of space

ADHDers will generally go through many different hyperfixations throughout their life, sometimes one at a time, sometimes somehow managing to juggle more than one. An individual hyperfixation tends to last anywhere between a few weeks to a few years depending on its intensity and the longevity of the topic, but it’s rare for it to be more than that. Usually, sooner or later, the overwhelming passion for the thing will wear itself out.

And admittedly, Kaito’s passion for space has been there since he was a kid and never faded – and never will, of course! – which is far more persistent than most hyperfixations tend to be. But then again, there’s so many different things related to space for him to get excited about! Hyperfixations fade either when something else comes along that’s more exciting because it’s new and fresh, or when you’ve squeezed every last possible drop of dopamine out of it such that it no longer holds quite the same thrill. But with a topic as vast as space, there’s always more to learn to keep the excitement fresh, especially now that Kaito’s an astronaut trainee and is really on the front line of new space knowledge and technologies and is actually going to get there himself one day!

Besides, it’s not like ADHDers’ hyperfixations are completely outside of their control. My own hyperfixation on V3 and Kaito would probably have faded ages ago if I hadn’t kept it going by constantly making more content about it such as this. And similarly, there’s no way Kaito would have wanted to let go of his passion for space, not if he had any say in it himself, so he’d have done whatever he could to keep it burning during the times when the spark maybe wasn’t quite there as much. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable that Kaito could have remained hyperfixated on space for so unusually long and still be showing no signs of stopping. We all know how stubborn he is.

(House plants)

Kaito has probably had a few other, lesser hyperfixations alongside his lifelong passion for space. For example, I like to think that his fondness for house plants, according to his report card, is to such an extent that he was once hyperfixated on them. (This would have been for reasons that totally don’t bear a suspicious resemblance to other things he cares about.) I doubt he’s currently hyperfixating on them at the moment – at no point does he ever try to shift the conversation to being about house plants unprompted – but that wouldn’t stop him from still being generally fond of them and retaining all of the “useless” information he learned about them back when he was obsessed. One very rarely ever stops caring about a hyperfixation topic entirely; rather, the fixation just fades and the topic becomes no longer constantly on someone’s mind. I’m sure Kaito still could and would talk your ear off about house plants just as much as he would about space if you happened to get him started.

People

More importantly, though, I think that another of Kaito’s less obvious and intense hyperfixations – but still a very long-lasting one that’s active right now – could be, simply, people. Just, people in general: their flaws and complexities and differences, all the many ways in which they can communicate and work together, and the amazing potential they have to achieve great things if they do so. Kaito is so passionate about this stuff and has so many fully-formed opinions on things of this nature that make it seem like he’s spent a lot of his free time thinking about this, just because he can. Maybe he began to get interested in it after realising that communication and teamwork is important for an astronaut – but it also reads to me like Kaito is into this kind of stuff not because he needs to be for the sake of getting into space, but simply because he finds it genuinely fascinating and couldn’t stop thinking about it even if he had to. (Which would also help keep him interested in space, because it’s intrinsically linked to this other topic that Kaito finds fascinating!)

And within this, Kaito definitely hyperfixates in particular on his sidekicks. Once he’s made someone into his sidekick, which functionally means that he’s going to devote himself to supporting them through their issues and helping them reach their potential, he really devotes himself. It’s his hyperfixation on people in general, but concentrated on a specific person(s) that he can have a direct and tangible impact on, which means even more to him than just his feelings about how awesome and fascinating humanity is as a whole.

Kaito is really, really good at supporting his sidekicks, after all. He spends so much time, even when he’s not around them, thinking about what their problems are and the best ways he can help them. He was clearly eyeing up both Shuichi and Maki as potential sidekicks at least a day or two before actually acting on it and inviting them to training, as if he was trying to gauge exactly what their struggles were and how best to help before jumping right in. He approaches helping each of them in very different ways, making it clear that he’s specifically thought about who they are and the best tactics to help them individually instead of just carelessly using the same old script each time. On more than one occasion, he drops something on them one morning – the nickname “Maki Roll”, and the “bonus” training that becomes the katana scene – that he hadn’t mentioned at all the previous night, meaning that he’d been thinking further about how to keep helping them while on his own overnight.

So it seems to me like maybe it’s not just his selflessness, or his somewhat unhealthy co-dependency (more on that later, actually) that makes Kaito so good at this. I don’t think he could even stop thinking about helping his sidekicks if he tried. Figuring out how to help another human being grow and change and reach their full potential is so fascinating and engaging and rewarding to him that how could he ever not be compelled to do that as much as he possibly can?

The price of caring

This does, however, come with a downside. Because Kaito is fixating so strongly and uncontrollably on supporting his sidekicks, because doing that matters so much to him, it’s only going to hurt him more when he begins to feel like he’s failing at it. He can’t just brush something like that off as not really a big deal, because of course it’s a big deal. It’s everything to him, and it’s literally not possible for him to make himself feel like it isn’t.

It’s just as bad as if space suddenly twisted and became painful to think about somehow. Which… I guess that actually kind of happens too, when Kaito starts to realise that he’s never going to make it up there. And he can’t deal with that by trying to tell himself it was never that important, either, because space is always important to him. Even if he wanted to switch that part of his brain off or ignore it to help himself cope, he just couldn’t.

Caring so intensely about things feels amazing and makes a person wonderfully passionate, but it can also be a double-edged sword.

(Executive dysfunction?)

One big negative side to ADHD is that it tends to cause executive dysfunction, which, to massively oversimplify it, more or less means the profound inability to get yourself to do things that you know you’re supposed to be perfectly able to do. That interest-based nervous system does not do well with motivating us to do tasks that are objectively important but aren’t interesting or fun to actually carry out, resulting in a mental block that can appear to the outside observer like wilful laziness, even though it really, really isn’t.

This appears to be one part of ADHD that Kaito manages to avoid having to deal with. (He may superficially seem “lazy” during training, but that has nothing to do with his brain and everything to do with his body and the fact that he’s sick and doesn’t want anyone to know.) But I think that’s mostly because none of the reasons that ADHD causes executive dysfunction actually apply in the killing game.

One of the few things other than interest that motivates an ADHD brain is urgency – suddenly they can do that boring essay they’ve been putting off when the deadline is tonight, showing remarkable speed and focus in a fit of nervous anxiety over the potential consequences of turning it in late. And there’s plenty of literal do-or-die urgency to motivate Kaito during the killing game, so there’s no way he’d ever not be motivated to do what he feels he needs to do to help everyone there. Plus, the things he’s trying to do involve helping people, something he inherently finds interesting, so he’d be motivated for those reasons anyway even if it wasn’t quite so life-threateningly vital that he does so.

(Kaito is a bit flakier and liable to miss important details during the investigations and trials, mind you. This might be because, while the urgency of “if we don’t solve the case we die” is looming over him, the actual details of the case aren’t something that instinctively feels urgent or that he inherently finds interesting, so it’s harder for him to pay proper attention and take it all in even when he’s trying to. Kaito has plenty of intelligence in a lot of ways, but his brain is evidently not wired for investigations and deductions like Shuichi’s is – he’s perfectly capable of following Shuichi’s logic and understanding it, but not of figuring any of that stuff out himself in the first place. This could partly be down to Kaito having ADHD and just not being interested enough in these particular kinds of mental exercises to be able to get his brain to focus on them as much as he’d need to in order to solve them.)

I also don’t think executive dysfunction would have got in Kaito’s way much during his regular life before the killing game. (You know, if he’d actually had one, but let’s pretend for now that he did.) Motivation issues can be helped a lot by an externally-imposed structure telling you what you need to do and when, which is why a lot of ADHD people don’t even notice any problems while they’re in a school system and only fall apart once they’re adults and are suddenly expected to structure their own life. Kaito’s astronaut training would definitely give him plenty of structure to work from so that he always knew what he needed to do and never had this issue. It’s also really challenging, which is another thing that helps keep ADHD people interested and motivated. And while the actual end goal of getting to space is far-off enough that it wouldn’t be able to work as a direct motivator to an ADHD brain (we are bad at things with delayed gratification), everything Kaito’s learning would still be related to space and communication and teamwork, so he’d be interested in learning all of it simply for its own sake.

Emotional hyperarousal

Another big defining feature of ADHD that isn’t nearly as well-known as it ought to be is that it amplifies emotions to a far greater intensity than those of neurotypical people. ADHDers’ feelings and reactions are naturally bigger and louder and just more than most people’s – which sounds a lot like Kaito, doesn’t it? He’s always larger than life, energetic and passionate about everything, not just his specific hyperfixations. Look at how excited he gets about just seeing snow! And he has so much enthusiasm for so much else, too – as he puts it: “there’s nothing unnecessary in this world!” When Kaito feels things, he feels them full-throttle, with no half-measures, which is just how Kaito would always want things to be!

…But, whether he likes it or not, that also applies to the painful feelings just as much as the good ones.

Emotional dysregulation

Kaito can often be very reactionary and get unnecessarily riled up over minor things that don’t really warrant such a dramatic response. If you think about it, this isn’t really something he’d want to do, because he’s always trying to stay positive and keep people on his side. So apparently it’s something he simply can’t help, as if his brain is just wired to make him more liable to do that.

If even minor slights can cause an overreaction like that from an ADHD brain, then imagine how much worse it is when the stimulus is something genuinely worth being upset over. That already-painful emotion gets amplified to even greater levels, to the point that it can be almost unbearable. People with ADHD can often have a more difficult time dealing with things, not necessarily because they’re emotionally weaker, but because they simply feel things harder than most other people do.

Kaito goes through a lot of emotional pain throughout the story – and he’s really pretty bad at dealing with it all. He basically has only two not-very-healthy methods for doing so. One is to try to ignore it entirely by focusing on something more positive, which on its own could be put down to his desire to come across as an invincible hero who can inspire people. So this particular unhealthy tactic doesn’t necessarily mean that he wouldn’t be able to properly deal with these emotions if he actually stopped being an idiot and tried to.

However, Kaito’s second unhealthy coping mechanism is to turn the pain into anger – sometimes to the point of lashing out in ways he doesn’t mean to. Punching Shuichi at the end of the first trial is very much caused by Kaito being unable to contain his pain over Kaede’s death rather than any controlled attempt to push Shuichi forward, since he regrets it and apologises for it the next morning. And then the agonising truth that Gonta killed someone is even harder for Kaito to bear, leading to him lashing out at Shuichi again in what was very much desperate pain-fuelled anger with no rational basis for it. Unlike with simply hiding his pain, lashing out like this is not something Kaito would ever want to do; it’s not exactly very heroic of him, after all. So this suggests that there’s more to Kaito’s bad coping mechanisms than just him trying to appear strong and not worry people – that sometimes the pain gets so unbearably intense that ignoring it isn’t possible and he just can’t deal with it and loses control of himself.

Uncontrollable bouts of rage can be a common problem that comes with ADHD because of the amplified emotions and difficulty properly regulating them – and it’s definitely a problem Kaito suffers from, too. That part of Kaito that lets him get so wonderfully passionate in helping everyone around him might well be exactly the same part of him that simply cannot handle it when he realises Gonta murdered someone and leads to him lashing out at his best friend.

Moping (…not a technical term)

…Okay, I just said Kaito has only two unhealthy coping mechanisms for painful emotions, but maybe there’s also kind of a third: unconstructively moping about it. This doesn’t sound like Kaito at all – he frequently gives others advice about not doing exactly that – but he can actually be seen falling into doing so a couple of times if you look closely.

In chapter 2, when Ryoma’s behaviour bothers him for all the wrong reasons and he has no intent of actually doing something about it, Kaito really should be just trying not to think about it at all and focusing on something more constructive like helping Shuichi. However, the places he hangs out in for his chapter 2 FTEs and his invitation dialogues indicate that he spends a whole three FTE slots just brooding unhelpfully about the state Ryoma’s in. This is definitely not something he wants to be doing, since he hastily changes the subject if Shuichi hangs out with him.

And in case 4’s investigation, after Shuichi’s cell phone experiment makes Kaito feel useless and unneeded (he thought Shuichi needed his help! – but, no, turns out he actually really didn’t), the pain of that feeling noticeably lingers with him for most of the rest of the investigation. He’s in enough of a bad mood about it afterwards that Maki notices it through his less-expressive virtual avatar, and he doesn’t even come with her to call Shuichi back from the rooftop and just logs out on his own in a sulk. Then he also ends up explicitly unaware in the trial of some of the information Monotaro shared with the whole group once they’d logged out, meaning he was apparently still too wrapped up in feeling useless to be paying proper attention.

(And these are the two examples of Kaito doing this that are noticeable thanks to subtle clues in his behaviour – but since Kaito would obviously never draw attention to it, maybe he actually does this a lot more than those two times and we just can’t normally see it.)

See, another thing about emotional dysregulation – plus the difficulty in controlling the focus of your attention that comes with ADHD – is that it can be hard to stop yourself from thinking endlessly about painful things, even when you very much don’t want to be thinking about them. I once saw a tumblr post describing ADHD as Chronic Cannot Leave It Alone Disorder, and I can confirm that, yes, this is very frustratingly accurate, for the bad things as well as the good. It’s possible that Kaito’s advice about not moping when you could be doing something to make a difference might have originated for himself, to try and mitigate his brain’s tendency to do this. But while I imagine this helped quite a bit in letting him control his thoughts and stay focused on the positives, it appears that, despite his best efforts, it still doesn’t always work.

Impulsiveness

The Primarily-Hyperactive subtype of ADHD (aka the one that’s definitely the subtype Kaito has, for obvious reasons) is sometimes called Hyperactive-Impulsive type, because impulsiveness tends to be a big part of it, too. I think this is kind of a combination of emotional hyperarousal and inability to control attention – the impulse to Do A Thing gets amplified to the point that it floods the entire brain, and it becomes nigh-impossible to ignore it and consider the potential negative consequences before acting on it. It’s like that Chronic Cannot Leave It Alone Disorder gets concentrated into a single instant of frequently-terrible decision-making.

It’s no secret that Kaito is impulsively reckless – and if you think about it, it’s to an extent that’s honestly kind of pathological. Cheating his way into the astronaut exam early, for example, could very well have permanently ruined his chances of ever being allowed in and making it to space. He should never have considered that a risk worth taking. So apparently he just wasn’t properly considering the risk at all – not even for the most important decision of his life.

A lot of the time, these kinds of bad decisions can be fuelled by those amplified painful emotions that get turned into anger like I talked about before. The stress of the killing game causes Kaito to very nearly get himself killed on two occasions early in chapter 1, almost lashing out in a way that would have broken school regulations. Kaito is perfectly aware of the consequences for doing that – but in the heat of the moment, it just doesn’t matter to him. His overwhelming desire to express his pain-fuelled rage simply blocks out everything else from his mind. A similar thing happens in chapter 5 when Kaito’s attempt to punch Kokichi after the supposed mastermind reveal only results in him getting knocked out and captured by the Exisals that were very obviously there and under Kokichi’s control. It’s summed up pretty well by the fact that Kokichi outright tells Kaito that punching him won’t fix any of the things he’s angry about, and Kaito’s response is, “Even if that is the case… I can’t get over it if I don’t punch you!” To Kaito, in these moments, it’s never about the consequences; it’s about needing to let out his too-strong emotions right now and to hell with everything else, even if that “everything else” literally might include his life.

Then there’s everything that happens with Kaito at the casino. The consequences for him here aren’t exactly dire, since all he loses out on is the chance to buy a prize, but still – that uncontrollable fixation on the anticipated thrill of winning and the inability to consider the really-very-high possibility that he’ll lose is exactly the type of reckless thrill-seeking that people with this type of ADHD often have.

In fact, the bonus scene at the casino is literally titled “Kaito’s Gambling Problem” – and as you might imagine, impulsive-type ADHDers are at a higher risk of developing harmful addictions to things such as gambling. While this isn’t an actual gambling problem here because no real money is involved and it does seem that he never gets tempted by the casino again after the second time, the scene’s title apparently wants us to consider that Kaito has the potential to develop a legitimate gambling problem should he ever get old enough to legally gamble in the real world. Which is a weirdly specific thing for the writers to make a point of when it has no bearing on the plot… so it makes me wonder if they could have actually been trying to tell us something here.

This kind of impulsiveness can also cause people to blurt out their thoughts without thinking about the consequences, potentially resulting in upsetting someone or embarrassing themselves. At first glance, considering that he has a lot of thoughts he’s determined to hide from the surface, Kaito doesn’t seem to have too much of a problem with this kind of impulsiveness. If he did, you’d think he’d find himself muttering stuff like “I feel like crap”, or “I hate this place” all the time and then having to hastily paper over it and insist that no that’s definitely not how he’s really feeling at all. So apparently, he’s fairly good at thinking before he speaks when it matters to him?

Except, when he’s in the Virtual World, Kaito makes multiple unthinking comments to the effect of “I like this avatar body”, which he has to awkwardly brush off when Shuichi questions him, since it rather hints that something’s up with his real body. He’s suddenly really bad at this, even though he was pretty good at it the rest of the time.

So maybe what’s going on is this: in an effort to stay positive at all times because he’s Kaito, Kaito trained himself to have a constant, unshakeable mental filter that prevents himself from impulsively blurting out how he’s feeling if it’s something negative. However, he can’t stop himself from still randomly blurting out whatever positive things are on his mind. This usually isn’t a problem, but it can sometimes include things – it feels so great to not be dying for once! – that he really doesn’t want to be voicing either, if he only gave it a moment more thought.

Rejection sensitive dysphoria

Often shortened to RSD, rejection sensitive dysphoria is a specific and especially nasty kind of emotional hyperarousal / dysregulation that almost all ADHDers suffer from. (At least, I feel like it should probably be classified as a subtype of that, though I’m not sure if that’s the official take, so don’t quote me on this.) The ADHD researcher who coined the term defines it as: “extreme emotional pain triggered by the perception – not necessarily the reality – that a person has been rejected or criticised by important people in their life. It may also be triggered by a sense of falling short and failing to meet their own high standards or others’ expectations.” That second sentence is important and frequently overlooked, because it indicates that, despite the name, this isn’t only about perceived rejection by others; it can also be about an entirely personal sense of failure.

I first read about this concept while I happened to be hyperfixating on Kaito’s mindset specifically in early chapter 5, aka that time he avoids Shuichi out of shame over feeling like he failed him in the previous trial, due to his own unreasonably high standards for being a “hero”. (If you didn’t realise that this is what’s going on with Kaito in early chapter 5, go read this other post of mine and get caught up, because you’re going to need to be for the rest of this section.) And, naturally, though I was supposed to be reading that article about RSD to help me figure out if I had ADHD, my brain made some connections. That was the moment I began to have this headcanon; everything else in this post blossomed from that as I thought about it more and realised a lot of other things about Kaito also fit this incredibly well.

The null hypothesis

So, let’s consider early chapter 5. In fact, let’s assume for a moment that Kaito doesn’t have ADHD and his emotions function like a regular person’s. He would still, of course, feel like he’s utterly failed Shuichi by showing himself to be weaker than him and doing the opposite of supporting him during trial 4. That part’s not specifically based in anything ADHD and is just a product of Kaito’s psychological issues about heroes, which I’ve already talked about plenty in that post I just linked. (I don’t want anyone to think that my ADHD headcanon is getting in the way of or diminishing any of that; this is just another layer on top of it.)

Kaito really wants to make things right and apologise for his mistakes in the trial (and for his really-not-actually-mistakes too, for that matter). He really wants to fix the rift between him and Shuichi and not leave the two of them painfully torn apart like this. He knows the responsibility to do so is on him and not Shuichi. But… he doesn’t do it. Why not?

The only possible reason would be that he’s just being a coward and running away from the guilt and shame he’s feeling rather than facing up to it. Except… Kaito’s not a coward. He may arguably seem like one in some ways given how he refuses to acknowledge his weaknesses to his sidekicks – but that’s not to protect himself and his own emotions; it’s because he’s idiotically convinced that it’s better for them that way. Here, now that he believes he’s already failed Shuichi as badly as he ever could, he should feel like he has nothing more to lose on that front (and Shuichi never even needed him anyway, right?), so there should be no harm in owning up to it and at least apologising for what he’s done wrong.

Granted, Kaito is busy trying to make up for his failure through his totally-great escape plan – but that’s still no reason why he can’t also apologise first and then keep trying to make up for things with the plan anyway. And it’s not at all like it was in the trial itself, when he was too wound-up in the heat of the moment to be thinking clearly. He’s had plenty of time to process what happened and regain control of himself and become consciously aware of what he knows is the right thing to do here.

The guilt and shame Kaito would be feeling from his belief that he’s failed Shuichi would still hurt pretty bad, sure – but I don’t think, if it really is a proportionate emotional response to what he feels like he’s done, that it’d be something he couldn’t face up to. He’s incredibly resilient and knows that sometimes you’ve just gotta face painful things head-on, and he should be more than willing to do so for the sake of making things at least slightly better between him and Shuichi.

So, I argue this: Kaito avoiding Shuichi the way he does in early chapter 5 doesn’t quite make sense unless he has ADHD. (Or perhaps some other neurological disorder that would have a similar effect on his emotions, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to be sure what other possibilities could fit.)

Too much pain

I can confirm from experience: RSD freaking sucks. Any feeling of “I should be able to do this, but I messed it up”, or any seemingly innocuous comment from someone you care about where they either point out a mistake you made or that could possibly be interpreted to mean they don’t really care about you that much – these things can hurt like hell, so much more than they have any right to. It’s as if that insignificant twinge of disappointment that most people would feel just gets multiplied by like a thousand until it practically feels like you’ve been stabbed in the chest. And I should note: the rejection version tends to be triggered by people important to you, but I find it’s especially bad if it’s someone I not only care about but also look up to. You know, like Kaito very definitely does to Shuichi.

Case 4 has plenty of things that would trigger RSD for Kaito before even getting into the worst parts of the trial. That cell phone incident in the investigation I mentioned earlier, where Kaito thought Shuichi needed his help for a second and then ended up feeling like he really never did at all? And all the times Shuichi shoots down one of Kaito’s arguments in the trial and tells him he’s wrong (which happens seven times, by the way)? Every single one of those seemingly-minor moments would have hurt Kaito not just a little, but one hell of a lot. It’s honestly really impressive and a testament to Kaito’s resilience that he managed to keep himself together and show barely any signs of how he was feeling for as long as he did.

It’s also very relevant that RSD is known to potentially trigger an externalised response of instantaneous rage, exactly like the outbursts of anger I mentioned in the previous section. I’ve already talked plenty elsewhere about how a lot of the pain that’s causing Kaito to lash out in trial 4 isn’t just over Gonta’s guilt but is also over how he’s being made to feel like a horribly inferior failure compared to Shuichi – and, yep, that’s still a perfect match to Kaito having ADHD.

By the end of the trial, Kaito’s issues and irrationalities have rendered him convinced that he’s utterly failed to be the hero he’s supposed to be, and that Shuichi obviously doesn’t need him or care about him any more (if he ever even did in the first place). That’s giving Kaito plenty of genuine conscious reason to be hurting pretty damn hard to begin with, before his ADHD brain-wiring even sinks its claws into it. Now try to imagine that pain getting disproportionately multiplied by like a thousand – fucking ouch, and then some. Nobody, not even someone as brave and resilient as Kaito, should ever be expected to be able to face up to that, to actively make it even worse by talking about it and bringing those feelings to the forefront, especially not when doing so would just be showing even more weakness to the person it hurts so much to show weakness to. I don’t believe it’d be fair to call anyone a coward for that.

Kaito’s not a coward; he avoids Shuichi in early chapter 5 because he is genuinely in too much pain to bear. The only way he can deal with it at all (now that he’s not in the heat of trial 4 and is very determined to at least not make things even worse by lashing out in anger again) is by simply trying to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. If he manages to prove himself as a hero, maybe it’ll stop hurting quite as much and he’ll be able to face up to it, but until then, avoiding the pain is all he can do.

(Obligatory Harmonious Heart mention)

Since I relish the opportunity to bring this scene up whenever I can, I might as well add that Kaito’s Harmonious Heart event is another instance in which he’d be feeling some pretty rough RSD – at least, in every outcome except the best one in which Shuichi reassures him that they’re friends and it’s okay to open up to your friend. It’d be especially bad in the worst outcome where Kaito realises Shuichi has seen his “weakness” and feels like he’s failed him. Probably not quite as bad as in canon, but still, ouch.

In fact, an interesting thing about that worst outcome is that Kaito specifically says he feels “so embarrassed”, which, when you think about it, doesn’t really sound like the kind of thing anyone would expect Kaito to ever describe himself as feeling, even at a time like this. However, I know from my own experience that “embarrassment” is in fact something that it’s easy to mistake RSD for when you don’t know what it is – just an embarrassment that’s somehow agonisingly painful, because that’s totally how embarrassment usually works for most people, right. So, A, this fits perfectly yet again, and B, since you’d usually not think to have Kaito ever use that word… it makes me wonder if the writer for this scene knew.

Coping methods (and why Kaito doesn’t have them)

Of course, it’s not like there aren’t methods to try to combat and mitigate the incredible pain that RSD can bring. One that I’ve found works really well (thanks to Kaito himself!) is exercising. It really helps to burn off that excessive emotional energy – and not necessarily just RSD, but any of the disproportionately painful emotions ADHD brings – by translating it into physical energy. “Let your sweat wash away all your sadness, fear, worry and hardships; just start moving your body and your pain will become memories before you know it,” actually sums up how this feels pretty well! It’s quite possible that this advice – heck, maybe his entire exercise-to-help-the-mind thing in general – is something else that Kaito first came up with for himself, after he found that it helped him calm down and feel better whenever he’d get too upset about something.

…So it’s really rather cruel that Kaito’s worsening illness also happens to lock him out of one of his only genuinely-healthy coping mechanisms for what he’s going through emotionally in chapters 4 and 5, isn’t it.

Another thing that’s really helped me in dealing with my own RSD is simply understanding it. When you know that it’s a disproportionate emotional response, you can remind yourself that things aren’t truly as bad as the pain is making them feel like they are, which makes it easier to take steps to stop it hurting, such as talking to the friend who unintentionally triggered it and having them reassure you that of course they care about you. Without that understanding of it, it’s all too easy to think, “if it hurts this much, I must deserve to be hurting this much,” which, yeah, that’s a bad path to go down.

One pretty important part of my headcanon that Kaito has ADHD, then, is that he definitely has no idea he has it. If he’d been diagnosed with it at some point in his life, he’d understand these problems of his better. Even if the doctors never told him all these things I’ve been mentioning here about how ADHD actually works (which is way too disappointingly common, so I gather), Kaito would have researched this stuff himself at some point, in order to better understand himself and know his limits so that he can work around them to be the best person he can be. He wouldn’t want to let anything get in the way of him helping others as much as he can and achieving his dream of going to space, not even the idiosyncrasies of his own brain. And, heck, he’d probably find it interesting if only he had a reason to look into it in the first place! Many ADHDers hyperfixate on ADHD, and Kaito definitely seems like someone who would have if he’d known.

So, if Kaito was aware of his ADHD, he’d be able to recognise what he’s going through in early chapter 5 as RSD and handle it better. He’d know that, no matter how much it hurts, things aren’t actually quite as bad as it feels like, and that apologising to Shuichi sooner rather than later is almost certainly the best way forward even if the prospect of doing so seems terrifying as all hell. For that matter, if Kaito knew about his ADHD and what it really involved, he’d almost certainly have trained himself to be able to deal with a lot of his more troublesome symptoms better than he ever does in canon.

Friendship difficulties

Because of their differently-wired brains, ADHDers can often struggle to connect with the rest of the world that doesn’t think the same way as them. And here’s a fun subtle thing about Kaito that ought to get talked about more: he’s not actually very skilled or experienced at making friends. Having sidekicks that he can inspire and support, and being a general encouraging influence on a wider group of people to keep them working together – sure, that stuff comes naturally to him. But regular, everyday friendship? Not so much.

This isn’t that easy to spot, because most of the time we see Kaito, he’s deliberately focusing on motivating people, which he’s great at. But there are a few instances here and there where Kaito interacts with people in a not-specifically-motivational way: his attempts to befriend Kaede (who doesn’t need his support), his earlier FTEs with Shuichi (which should be happening before training starts), and the conversation with Shuichi and Maki in chapter 4’s second training scene (before Maki begins talking about her past).

In all of these, Kaito turns out to actually be a huge awkward goof who doesn’t seem to have the first clue how to do regular interpersonal interactions. And basically everything about him being this way can potentially be explained by ADHD.

Too many thoughts

It’s never quiet and organised in an ADHD brain; whenever we’re not hyperfocusing on one specific thing, our minds always have like five different thoughts rattling around in them at once. So, consider the conversation with Shuichi and Maki, which Kaito was attempting to treat like a Regular Conversation (rather than the chance to help Maki open up that it definitely actually was in his head). Perhaps, in his efforts to do small talk, not one but several different possible small talk questions popped into his head at once and clamoured for his attention, such that a couple of them – “what blood type are you?” and “what [something] do you like?” – got accidentally merged together when he opened his mouth to speak. That plus his impulsive lack-of-filter meant that out came “What blood type do you like?” and Kaito sounding like a doofus.

(When Maki points out that this is a strange question, Kaito awkwardly laughs it off. It almost seems like he’s used to accidentally saying things people consider weird during his attempts at normal conversation and has learned to try and act like it’s nothing so he doesn’t push anyone away.)

This disorganisation in ADHD minds also tends to make them get too caught up on unnecessary details they find interesting and wander off down random mental tangents rather than whatever they’re supposed to be talking or thinking about. I once saw a tumblr post that said ADHDers are likely to tell “stories that start sooner than they need to and end somewhere other than the point” – and this happens to be a literally perfect description of the story Kaito tells Shuichi in his second and third FTEs. He was supposed to be telling Shuichi how he became interested in space. He began by talking about finding a treasure map and conquering the seas, and he finished with how he was busy conquering the land when his summer vacation ended. At no point did he mention space; he’d got so wrapped up in the story itself that he’d completely forgotten that was meant to be the point.

Kaito also has a bit of a tendency to make strange statements that appear to make perfect sense to him even though they kind of don’t to anybody else. He wants to learn to play the piano for when he goes to space? Well, of course; he might meet an alien! You can’t ever know how malicious other people’s secrets are? Sure, but that’s why you just gotta believe in… yourself! These really do make perfect sense in Kaito’s head (the first is about communication; the second is about people-reading skills). But it seems, perhaps, that his overly-active mind made connections too fast and jumped several tracks at once, to the point that he didn’t realise he was skipping a few steps of his explanation and that it wouldn’t make so much sense to the people listening. Which is also a thing that ADHD people are liable to do.

Too loud and excitable

A less immediately obvious thing that’s strange about Kaito’s behaviour in the chapter 4 training chat is that, when Shuichi essentially just straight-up asks Maki to start talking about her issues, Kaito admonishes him for being too direct and claims he can’t just do that. This seems odd coming from Kaito, who’s usually nothing but direct in his approaches to encouraging people, and who definitely also intended to prompt Maki into talking about her issues here.

But, apparently because he’s trying to present this as a Regular Normal Friend Conversation, Kaito didn’t think he was meant to be so direct in this context. Which suggests he’s learned through experience that his usual kind of directness that works great for encouragement apparently just kind of puts people off when it’s used in a regular conversation. So instead, he was trying to work his way towards hopefully maybe getting Maki to open up through awkward small talk that he must know he’s terrible at – no wonder he was miffed when Shuichi casually went and committed the exact social “faux-pas” he’d been trying to avoid, with complete confidence that it’d actually be fine, and it turned out it was. (Whoops, there goes Shuichi effortlessly being better than him at everything Kaito finds difficult, like always.)

Nonetheless, Kaito probably has good reason to be worried about coming across as too direct (outside of sidekick contexts, where that’s just the best way to get through to someone and help). Because, when he’s not actively trying to avoid it, he does have a tendency to get a bit carried away with things and put people off as a result. Remember the time he asked Kaede for a hug? There’s absolutely no reason to assume this was romantic or sexual in nature, because it already makes more than enough sense to think that Kaito was just so excited at meeting someone so similar to him and thought she was Super Cool and just really wanted to be her friend!!! So he impulsively expressed that sentiment in a rather-too-forward way that he was too caught up in his excitement to realise was going to come across as rather inappropriate.

Not that being too overly excitable and direct about things necessarily has to lead to behaviour that’s outright inappropriate in order to cause problems. (Though please never forget that Kaito asked for the hug and respected Kaede’s boundaries when she said no.) Even if he’s not doing anything wrong, Kaito being his usual larger-than-life self all the time might just come across as a bit Much and be kind of weird and off-putting for a lot of people. It’s that emotional hyperarousal again, which I mostly talked about the negative side of in the earlier section – but the positive side of it, amplifying the good emotions to make someone more enthusiastic and passionate, can still (completely undeservedly) be a negative thing in a social context with others who just aren’t wired the same way.

In Kaito’s second FTE, wrapped up among his ridiculous overblown childish fiction, he appears to potentially be talking about an actual playmate he had at the time who joined in his game of pretending to be a sea captain. Then they had a fight and Kaito never saw him again – and he presents that like it was just part of his game, too, but this can likely be taken to mean that they had a falling out that never got resolved and stopped being friends. If so, I can’t help but assume that this was probably because tiny Kaito was a little bit too boisterous and excessive in his playing – while still not necessarily doing anything wrong – that it overwhelmed this other kid to the point that he didn’t really want to join in any more.

There’s also one bit of FTE invitation dialogue where Kaito claims he’s about to teach Kaede how to have peace of mind… and then he tells stories that make her question his definition of that. Which makes a lot of sense considering that ADHD minds, particularly hyperactive-type ones, are never relaxed for even a moment. Kaito doesn’t know how not to be energetic and over-the-top even when the people he’s with just want to wind down and relax, which also wouldn’t really do him any favours in terms of making friends.

But none of that is Kaito’s fault; he’s not trying to be selfish or drive these people away. It’s simply the way his mind is, always going full-throttle when most other people’s usually aren’t. He just gets so excited about so many things and has a hard time toning that down. Besides, why would Kaito even want to tone it down and be boringly down-to-earth when his mind could be up in space instead!? That’s much better! …except that most other people don’t see it that way.

Too much infodumping

In the training chat, after embarrassing himself with a bungled small talk question and being shown up by Shuichi making it look like it’s actually somehow not a problem to be too direct after all, Kaito attempts to bring things back around to small talk with the, uh, “safe” option of asking Maki what her favourite spaceship is. Which isn’t really small talk at all, of course – but then, actual small talk is hard for ADHD people, because it’s not interesting enough to care about paying proper attention to. They’d much rather be acting on that constant desire to talk about something they’re interested in, such as one of their hyperfixations, which is not always the best way to connect with others who don’t happen to be interested in the same thing.

(Fortunately, since another of his hyperfixations is Maki and her issues, Kaito is perfectly happy to listen once she starts talking about her past, and the conversation shifts back to a comfortable hero-and-sidekick situation again rather than an awkward and confusing how-do-I-friends???)

There’s another of those FTE invitation dialogues in chapter 1 where Kaito tells Kaede he’s a good listener… and then apparently Kaede spends the entire time listening to him instead. Except, obviously Kaito really is a good listener when it’s in his hero-and-sidekick context and he’s helping someone with their problems, because he’s invested in supporting them and so it’d be easy for him to pay attention. But perhaps, when it’s in a regular friendship context and the person he’s talking to doesn’t need his help (like Kaede doesn’t), Kaito’s not quite so good at listening because he’s not necessarily as interested in what they have to say. So he might be liable to just impulsively act on the desire to talk about the things he wants to (such as SPACE; there is always time for space) and then get so focused on it that he overlooks the other person’s feelings and genuinely doesn’t realise he’s coming across as kind of brash and self-absorbed.

Kaito’s second and third FTEs with Shuichi are an even better illustration of this. Upon Shuichi choosing to hang out with him for a second time, Kaito apparently realises Shuichi is interested enough in him to possibly want to be his friend. So he responds to this by… launching into a huge ridiculous story about his (completely make-believe) heroic adventures as a kid. This kind of one-sided conversation and bizarre topic choice is not, in fact, a great way to make friends with someone, but Kaito doesn’t seem to realise this. He finds his story so cool and exciting that he impulsively assumes Shuichi would too and jumps into it without actually confirming whether Shuichi wants to hear it or not. And, honestly, it seems like Shuichi doesn’t, at least not particularly, and is only listening out of politeness and an inability to get a word in edgeways. His less-than-enthusiastic response to Kaito’s story suggests that these FTEs are canonically meant to happen before training begins and Shuichi comes to properly consider Kaito a friend – and therefore that Kaito’s not really doing the best job here of making Shuichi begin to consider him a friend.

Still himself despite it all!

All of these potentially-ADHD-fuelled idiosyncrasies of Kaito’s make it a lot harder for him to make friends in the normal way – and he seems to be somewhat aware of this. Some of the things from the chapter 4 chat hint that he’s slightly insecure and afraid he’s going to put Shuichi and Maki off by being so dorkily himself. There’s also a little more of this in the Salmon Team bonus mode, in which friendship is the entire point, and yet a few lines when he’s inviting Shuichi to hang out hint that Kaito isn’t completely convinced that Shuichi would want to hang out with him as a friend rather than as a sidekick who needs his advice and support. If he was more used to having friends, he probably wouldn’t still be so insecure about this – so this honestly kind of suggests that Shuichi and Maki could be the first real friends Kaito’s ever managed to make.

Because of these kinds of issues in connecting with people, a lot of ADHD kids grow up unconsciously learning to suppress their true selves, hiding their boundless enthusiasm and unusual interests to seem more “normal” so that they can fit in. I know this because I was one such kid, and I’m still struggling to unlearn this as an adult. So I have huge admiration for Kaito having managed to not do this, refusing to let anything stop him from being himself at all times. His convictions about staying true to himself are even more impressive when you realise that he would have felt so pressured to break them and pretend to be someone he’s not in order to more easily make friends.

As strong-willed as Kaito is, I doubt he’d have been able to do this as a kid without help. His parents and grandparents must have been really, really good in validating his passion and energy and never making him feel ashamed for being the way he is, assuring him that if other kids can’t see how great he is then that’s their problem and not because he’s doing anything wrong. He wants to go to space more than anything else in the world? Awesome; he should chase that dream with everything he has and not care how ridiculous and childish and impossible everyone else seems to think it is! Not all parents would do that.

After all, there are a lot of occasions in which Kaito does just brazenly present his larger-than-life self to someone in a clumsily overbearing attempt to make friends, without showing even the subtlest sign of being worried it might put them off. For that matter, Kaito is generally very willing to just throw himself into things he’s unfamiliar with and possibly end up failing spectacularly and making a fool of himself – something that’s likely to be pretty painful for him, given how RSD is. While some of this is probably down to his impulsiveness and not even considering that he might fail, I’m sure sometimes he’s got to be aware of it, and if so, that’s some impressive resilience and determination. People with ADHD can become unconsciously inclined to never try at anything out of a fear of that painful failure, but of course Kaito would refuse to let that happen to him – which is really quite admirable.

Interestingly, all of the times Kaito is subtly insecure about his social skills – the chapter 4 scene, the Salmon Team bits, and maybe that time with the former friend in his FTE if you assume that him wrapping it up in a fiction means he’s still uncomfortable about what happened – involve someone he’s already friends with. After all, it’s probably easier for him to fearlessly dive in with someone new, because it’s less of a blow if he messes up in that context – not everyone’s going to click with him and that’s just how things go. But once Kaito’s already built a strong connection with someone, he becomes more afraid of messing up, because being rejected by someone important to him would be agonising. You might think that he ought to feel more comfortable around people he’s already friends with because he should trust them and know they’re not going anywhere no matter how much of a dork he is – but when RSD is a factor, it makes perfect sense for it to be the opposite.

Sidekicks can be friends, too!

Perhaps part of why Kaito is able to remain so confident in himself most of the time is because he nonetheless hasn’t grown up alone and lacking meaningful connections to other people. Despite his difficulty in making regular friends, he’s compensated for this by having sidekicks, which are a very different matter that his eccentricities conversely make him very good with. Being enthusiastic and energetic and over-the-top like Kaito can never not be is helpful when he’s being an inspiring hero, not weird or off-putting at all!

Still, while Kaito has a far easier time forging that initial connection with someone through the sidekick approach rather than the friend approach, that doesn’t make him worse at actually being someone’s friend (and not just their “hero”) once he’s got his foot in the door. If Kaito had told the story from his FTEs to Shuichi after they’d started training and properly bonded, Shuichi’s reaction would have been completely different: still probably exasperated, but in an affectionate kind of way, because he knows that’s just part of what makes Kaito who he is, and it’s actually pretty fun to be around. He has a lot of this sort of response to Kaito once they’re friends, and it’s adorable. It’s the same in the chapter 4 training chat – neither Maki nor Shuichi are at all put off by Kaito’s awkwardness, partly because they’re not exactly great at social skills themselves, but also because they know how much Kaito cares about them, and no amount of arbitrary social missteps could ever change that.

When someone becomes Kaito’s sidekick, meaning they’ve accepted his support and understand how much he wants to help them, they can see everything else about him that they might have found weird before in a new light. They learn that his eccentric behaviour isn’t him being deliberately rude or self-absorbed at all. It’s just genuinely how he is, and it’s part of how he can support them so well like he does, but that’s not all it’s good for. They come to appreciate Kaito not just for his incredible supportiveness, but for everything else about him, too. He’s not just their hero, but also their friend.

However… Kaito apparently can’t see that. Since he’s never been that good at forming regular friendships with people who don’t explicitly need him, he’s all too liable to assume that the people who do need him are only sticking around because of that, and no other reason. That co-dependency of Kaito’s I mentioned earlier, aka his rather unhealthy need to be needed? While the stressful context of the killing game definitely made it way worse throughout the story, it seems it was already slightly a thing in the first place – and if so, Kaito having ADHD could very well be the root cause.

Kaito is Good

Being realistic about how sadly uncommon well-represented neurodivergency is in fiction (and how misunderstood ADHD tends to be), I don’t know if I should try to assert that Kaito being ADHD was definitely the writers’ intent. However, almost every major facet of his character and personality fits with it so damn well that I want to think it’s at least possible that someone on the writing team could have had it in mind. Especially with the couple of bits I mentioned that seem like they could have been deliberately included by someone who Knows.

Still, even if it wasn’t intended, it’s amazing how good of a fit this is. Maybe it’s just that, in creating a character as intensely passionate as Kaito, the writers naturally wrote into him all the downsides of being that way as well, without even realising they were near-perfectly modelling the highs and lows of ADHD. After all, the human mind’s ability to simulate other human minds even when they’re not real is freaking magical. Kaito is such an incredibly well-written character with so much thought put into him whether or not he was meant to be as extremely ADHD-coded as he is.

I’ve always believed that Kaito is a fantastic example of how the best way to write realistic and interesting flaws into a character is to have them organically draw from traits that, in other situations, can be that character’s greatest strengths. And in my opinion, this is also kind of true about ADHD. When I figured out I had it and what it really meant, it was hugely validating for me, because I learned that almost everything I’d been struggling with was basically just the logically-inevitable downside of some of the things I’d always liked about myself, such as my ability to get so ridiculously analytical about stories I love like this. I wouldn’t trade those parts of myself away for anything – and I can’t imagine Kaito would, either.

I’ve seen a few posts and articles focusing on the bright side of having ADHD by listing some of the positive traits ADHDers often have because of it, and, delightfully, so many of them – fun to be around! compassionate! persistent! to name just a few – are things that Kaito has in spades. So, well, if ADHD can look so much like Kaito… then surely it can’t be all bad.

-----

(P.S.: High-five to anyone who headcanons Kaito as autistic! There’s a lot of overlap between that and ADHD. Many of the symptoms I’ve talked about here can also be symptoms of autism, and even with the non-overlapping bits, a lot of Kaito’s idiosyncrasies that I linked to ADHD could be interpreted slightly differently to link them to autism instead. I believe ADHD fits him somewhat better than autism does, but then I’m more knowledgeable about ADHD so my data is skewed, plus I’m pretty obviously biased since I’m personally invested in the idea of Kaito being like me. Taking a step back from my more specific headcanon here, though, there’s still every reason to assume that Kaito is at least some flavour of neurodivergent, and I think that’s pretty awesome.)

#danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers #kaito momota #character analysis #kaito's hero issues #ramble #adhd #adhd headcanons #creating that tag because i can already tell kaito won't be the only adhd headcanon i make #oh my god this ended up *longer* than the hero ramble how did this happen #and yes i will link to the hero ramble in every single other kaito ramble because it is always important #i also talked about myself in this more than i ever usually do on here so uh #personal?

108 notes · View notes

benbantz · 5 years ago

Text

Week 17 with long term Covid

Hello to anyone reading this, those I know and those I don’t.

Had Covid 19 now for 17 weeks (or suffering after effects of covid, how ever you want to word it.) Point is had/have Corona and it’s still kicking my arse.

So since my recent facebook update (after being pretty quiet on social media for a while) a couple of peeps have messaged me asking about my symptoms and stuff as (apart from the first 2-3 weeks) I haven't really gone into any detail I just sort of say 'having rough week' or 'things flared up again' etc etc. Without going into too much detail about anything specific. So for anyone interested, and because people have been curious and asking - and as you’ll see is far to detailed to explain person to person (and want to spread the word about long haulers as a lot of people struggling) So it’s just easier for me to have it in one place. For myself more then anything. And if you get anything out of it then that’s great.

Things are just starting to come out about long haulers in the media and on the news and I know people are interested to learn a bit more about it all. So while I’m having a not too bad a time last couple of days I’d thought it’s a good a time as any to go thru all my symptoms. Get them typed out for first time.

And maybe it will be helpful to someone who randomly comes across this post - (thou please don’t use as a guide), every case is different, a lot of similarities and cross overs , but ultimately different Just because someone you know might be having a rough couple of days or experiencing a couple of these symptoms it could be something completely unrelated to covid. (Make sure you check with your GP or call 111 if you think you have covid symptoms long term or otherwise.) I am not a Dr.

Here's a list of everything been going on with me over last 17 weeks. Some experiences have been completely new to me so very hard to explain , some descriptions may sound a little odd , but hopefully you get idea of what I mean! (Also sorry for any grammar mistakes....I dropped out of English A level)

Those who come across this and don’t know me personally know that while this is a (mostly) serious (but hopefully uplifting) post I’m very sarcastic and use dumb humour to deflect from how shit life is at the moment! :-)

So first thing of the bat I'll explain is I've realised in recent weeks it's been easier to think of it as good and bad days/weeks rather then getting better/worse (as in first 10 or so weeks when I thought of it as 'it's getting better' and got in that positive mindset, the kickbacks have obviously beaten the piss out of me mentally as well as physically, as I've had about four big relapses now where I thought I'm on the right track, having a good couple of weeks then bam, I seem to go back to square one for no real apparent reason. So when I say bad day I'm describing when everything amps/flares up again, A few more symptoms go up and the volumes up on high,and likewise a good day is when things seem to be moving in right direction again and I get a bit of a break.(So now I just appreciate them when they come and try make most out of them.) A good day isn’t a symptom free day by any means, it’s just better then the bad ones.

OK so on to my symptoms.

Specific Areas

Chest - Since the first evening it kicked of early March my chest has felt like a giant has had his hand around it - that’s non stop, constant (told you my explanations were weird.)

On the better days it's a very light grip I can get on and do things to a point, but I am always aware it's there. On a bad day it's grip tightens and he squeezes (or his fingers press into a couple of key areas - been pressing on my back a lot last few weeks.) - That’s been non stop and has not gone away since beginning. Thou I do believe its starting to ease a little.

- Chest pain - A shooting pain in my chest (slightly different from description above, feels more like its needles on inside of body. Thankfully these are uncommon, they pop up if I push myself a bit too far one day or if I’m having rougher week.(And it’s not heart related)

Lungs/Breathing - Haven't felt like I've taken in a full lungful of air since beginning, I take a deep breath but only feels like I'm taking in 80- 85% ish (on a good day) 65- 75% ish (on a bad day) - This is week 17 numbers btw, take maybe 10-15% off when it was at worst. I think the best way I can describe it is it feels like there’s a filter or a sieve/strainer at top of lungs, on a good day there’s more spaces available to breathe thru (but still there’s a filter) and on a bad day more spaces close and I'm breathing thru less.

*Thankfully bar the first week where I had to get paramedic out, I haven't been gasping for air, I've certainly had to just lay and just concentrate on only breathing a few times because the filters have closed up a lot more (in the night mostly) especially where my bodies relaxed and I've woken and panicked short of air. Yes that’s as terrifying as it sounds.

- The air I do take in doesn't feel clean or fresh (best way I can describe it is when you go to a zoo and they have a indoor Rain Forrest/safari area .... very that lol) That was constant the first 12 or so weeks (even when getting fresh air outside) thankfully that’s eased a little and not so prominent, still doesn't feel like I’m breathing in fresh air but its not so hot and stuffy and noticing the difference when I go outside now.

Throat/Mouth - Burning/inflamed mouth - This is by far been the most uncomfortable/hardest for me to ignore and just get on with day to day stuff, from maybe week 6 to week 14 it was pretty much non stop burning mouth and throat (Call my mum Khaleesi because I was spitting fire.)

Whole inside of my mouth and down my throat was just inflamed/swollen (felt like I had a golf ball stuck down there) and burning hot. The last couple of weeks its eased I don’t wake up with it (unless i’m having a flare up/bad day) It's still very on/ off but thankfully not constant like it was. And have since learned that high histamine foods make it worse - same with my chest and few other things, (so choc, dairy, alcohol, fizzy drinks ...my diet essentially ) So have cut most of them down/out. Ice lollies have been my savior on hot throat days. - Marble in throat - Another hard one to explain, it feels like there’s a marble sort of sized ball of phlegm that I constantly need to clear. (OK maybe not that hard to explain - also sorry for the gross imagery.) But not enough mucus coming up to warrant the feeling, it’s irritating more then anything - but a few weeks ago was probs golf ball sized, so again improvement! - This sort of ties in with with the inflamed mouth, but the first thing to flare up on bad day is my tongue, feels tingly most of the time anyway but more so on a flare up/bad day. - Same with my teeth / gums and the tingly sensation, (my teeth constantly feel like that sensation when you have some orange juice after brushing your teeth.) Sensitive/fuzzy I guess. Not particularly bothersome or concerning...just weird.

Nose

- This is probably one of newest ones, nose has felt hot(on and off)/bunged up for last few weeks. (But I know its not if that makes sense) I guess you could say same as lungs - not breathing in a full nose-full of air either. ��- sorry again for gross TMI but any mucus or boogers are clear (like almost see thru clear/never been cleaner clear) - Phantom smells - A really odd one, I smell smoke and gas a lot, not just smell it, it feels like its in my nose and my mouth - especially smoke, almost like I’ve eaten it sometimes (non smoker in smoke free flat btw). Was a lot more prominent in first few weeks ,so much so that before I realised it was a symptom I had my carbon monoxide alarms checked because it was making me paranoid I could smell smoke/gas. A bizarre one for sure. Pops up randomly now and again.

Eyes - Last couple of weeks have been getting bit of blurry vision and sore or dry eye , I'm already blind as shit so hard to tell in terms of blurriness how bad this one is, but def finding it harder to concentrate on one thing for too long (but that sort of ties in with brain fog - which i'll get to) but pretty sure once this is done with and I go to opticians will likely need a stronger prescription (some other long haulers who never had eye problems before are now having to wear glasses) No idea if that’s a permanent one but hopefully i’m at peak of it.

Ears - My left ear has felt blocked pretty much since start (or like it needs to pop some days) Most the time I can ignore it but can be quite distracting if it kicks up a couple of dials.Which is likely why I get ear ache in same ear often as well.

*Also for most the things listed above it has always been worse on my left side of body, lung, eyes, ear, headaches.

- Tinnitus (correct word for ringing in ears right?) Usually kicks in early afternoon or on bad day. Varies on strength depending on the day I’m having.

Head/Brain - Brain Fog - So the sort of very basic science behind this is because my lungs aren't producing enough oxygen my brain knows this, so is lending them some to help out...but because of this it means I’m experiencing what is known as brain fog (I don’t know what its actually called, likely has a better more official sounding name) - my concentration is very low, i’m finding it hard to retain things and concentrate more then usual. (not been up to reading or watching something new for month or so as I just cant focus on it) Also been getting odd words muddled or confused (but the bar wasn't the highest with me on that front ha ha)

Been dropping things when I think I have them in my hand. I do however think this is improving (The fact that I have typed this out with just a couple short breaks so far is much better then two weeks ago when I couldn't even focus on a computer game for more then half a hour) so as my lungs improve so does this or vice versa on flare up. *Edit - This whole post has taken a couple of days to draft and type up, so not too bad in terms of needing breaks etc.

-I'm also constantly aware of my brain... like I can feel it all the time (I literally cant explain that any other way lol, I guess its just heavier at moment so I can feel it against my skull) best explanation I think you'll get from that one. - Have a headache most the time (so much so that I sort of forget it’s there.) Thankfully most the time there mild/low and I can forget or distract myself but like everything else if I'm having a bad few days it goes up a notch. Likely connected to the brain fog.

Stomach and Lower abdomen - Period pains - only way I can explain it, generally thought after nearly 10 years without them it was messing my body about so much I was getting phantom periods. (I’m a transgender man, 4+ years on testosterone, for anyone I don’t know who comes across this) been there done that, brought the t-shirt.. then sent it back because it wasn’t for me! Very strong and painful on and off for first eight weeks, get the odd twinge now and again but think that ones done with, thank the gods. - Stomach Pains - Few aches and pains on /off, and recently experienced what felt like needle/stabbing pain for short while in short bursts - and I only really mention stomach because I haven't had the widely publicised 'covid shits' (yet, touch wood... or cloth) So yay!

Heart - Palpitations - First 8 weeks was on and off most days to the point if I was sat still my heart would be palpitating. (I couldn't even sit and listen to music I enjoyed as it would make my heart go mad.) - When I do get the palpitations it sets most things off, so if palpitations do start I generally know I'm about to have rough couple of hours or days and can’t do much, for obvious safety reasons. Thankfully these have subsided a lot last 6 or so weeks. Still get them every few days but generally know whats setting me off and how to lower them down and they don’t last as long.

Hands and Feet - Skin been very dry last couple of months, cracking and peeling on hands and feet (ew) - Pins and needles/ numb fingers and toes - Get this a lot, obviously very normal stuff but just find them coming on a lot more (especially if i’m holding something like my ipad, phone or xbox controller for a while) Fingers feel numb/puffy a lot too. (Likely also why I keep dropping things) - Also to tie in with skin, have had a on /off spots on chest, face and shoulders for few weeks, they all came up at same time, not irritant or itchy or anything, just there.

General/Other weird things - Voice - So this is one that frustrates me the most, I have had next to no voice for last maybe 10 weeks. I just cant chat to people at moment. For first 4 weeks wasn't to bad (I even started a youtube channel to keep me occupied and distracted) but slowly week by week it went a little bit more each time. I can talk for short periods of time if I have to/choose to ,like its not gone completely, but it kicks up all the things I mentioned in my throat and mouth directly after. If the phone rings I have to decide if it’s worth answering, in doing so knowing i’m going to have a rough day or so after. Someday’s I feel it's better then others like couple of weeks ago, chatted to my brothers online on xbox for half an hour or so for the first time in weeks, and caught up with a friend on phone for 10 minutes...but a couple of days later everything flared up again. So it's still trial and error and just being patient with my voice. (I'm quite confident no long term damage is being done now as few people in group i’m in reported there voice just eventually got better over time.) Definitely the symptom I’m having to be most patient with. - Fatigue and tiredness - My days now are normally diddily done by 4-5, (except if its a bad day then most of the day is a write off) No matter how little or much I've done, by 5-6 my body and mind are exhausted. As someone who has insomnia, pre covid I would maybe have 1-2 all nighters every ten or so days sprinkled in with 5-6 days of at most 3-4 hours sleep. In the last 17 weeks I have had just 3 all nighters, and maybe just under ten 3-4 hour sleeps. Otherwise i’m getting at least 5+ hours a night. This is the one covid thing I'd like to keep please lol. I think it's easing a little (most the bad night sleeps have been in last month) and on good days tiredness is kicking in a little later, or it's taking me a little longer to drift off. But generally am cream crackerd a lot of time, especially if I push myself too far on a bad day. - Loss/Increased appetite - This sort of ties in with what I mentioned earlier about different foods causing set backs, the first 6 weeks I had no appetite and lost a bit of weight (I do put a lot of this down to extreme worry and stress thou) Then I went thru a phase of being very hungry for a few weeks and put most of the weight I had lost back on. I'm somewhere in the middle now, probably because I know most of anything I eat will set me back a little (because as mentioned fussy git = high histamine diet) so i’m cutting portions (otherwise known as the amount of cheese I add to everything!) and cutting out all most junk food (you’ll never part me from my crisps!) and non healthy drinks.

- Bloated and dehydration - This one I sort of put in pencil because it could be covid related but I also think it could be side effects from the brown asthma inhaler I was prescribed to help with breathing. I’m still undecided as it pops up especially when I was using inhaler more but it does happen days after I’ve last used it. At it’s worse I was getting up to pee a lot! because I was thirsty all the time. So of course was just very bloated around the belly.

*Also talking of peeing, (Great segway Ben) number 1′s and 2′s have been very different then normal, urine thicker and bubbly,and smells/is coloured different, (same with 2′s) Also have a completely different body odour at the moment,(pungent) having to use deodorant twice as much as normal. - Admit it your life’s a little bit better now you know that information.

- THE HEAT! - I touched on this with my mouth and nose being on fire, but for the first 10-12 weeks I did not go a day where at least a couple of things were not burning hot ,like hot to the touch as well, not just inside...(very different experience then having a temperature). Extreme heat in one very specific part of body. Ears, forehead, cheeks, chest, back, nose, mouth,throat to name a few of prominent ones. Over time they have faded (if something does feel hot now its generally not hot to the touch anymore.) Maybe on a bad day a couple of things will burn up. (But in saying that, been calling today a good day but nose is quite hot) but point is its better. - Mood swings/Anxiety - While i’m fairly confident anything emotional has stemmed from experiencing...well everything you've just read. Rather then it being its own symptom (thou I have had days of uncontrollable crying, days of anger..that perhaps outside of covid I would still of had one of those days but just not to such a extreme, I think with everything going on its just amped that emotion and anxiety up.) it's obviously been very stressful and anxiety inducing. That’s only calmed down in last week since finding the facebook group of other people going thru the same thing. I'm now seeing that people are slowly improving, i'm seeing I've not been going mad and it's all very real and not just happening to me. So the bad days are easier to deal with now and not hitting me emotionally like a ton of bricks anymore. I honestly couldn't see the end of the tunnel two weeks ago but can see it now (even if I take a step forward one day but then 2-3 back another...I see it still.)

*Mushy moment Alert - A good a place as any to include while I'm talking about emotion - Even thou she probs wont see this,but want to mention my mum. She’s been my rock thru all this, she messages me at least twice everyday without fail, since day 1. Even thou I know she's been worried sick about me herself, she's reassured and calmed me down on the harder more stressful days. I dread the mornings when things have gone downhill a bit and having to tell her ,because I know she'll worry, but after a few texts we both end up sort of reassuring and calming the other down. (especially in the earlier days when it was really bad, scary, new and unknown.) When it was really getting me down for a while and I wanted nothing to do with anything covid related and just stay in bed and pretend this wasn't happening to me, she dug out the articles and tips and things to help or give me a boost. (Not to mention all the coming and going she and my step dad have done for me last 4 months and taking care of my shopping for first 9 or so weeks...because I was a useless mess of a human) I know it’s basic mum stuff but this would be 10x harder and lonelier without her. Random detour I know but can’t talk about my covid experience and recovery without mentioning her.

Almost looking forward to sending her the first 'Everything normal today' text as much as I look forward to experiencing it....almost. ;-)

Amount of Symptoms On A Typical Day

On a good day - (when I think virus was at it's worse in the first 10-14 weeks) - 4-6 symptoms ( 2 or 3 cranked up to a medium or high otherwise on mild)

On a bad day - At peak/worse - 6-10 symptoms (throat, chest and no voice on high volume, maybe a couple of things like palpitations and brain fog, heat on medium/high, other weird stuff on mild/low)

Good day - Now 17 weeks in (excluding my voice which is still a medium to high issue most days) - 3-4 Symptoms on low to mild - usually there’s something still simmering on a medium always ready to turn up to a high if I push it too much in terms of walking or talking. (often my chest) Bad Day (Now) - 4-7 Symptoms - 1 to 3 on medium (maybe a couple will kick up to high on first day of a flare up, but generally now for shorter periods of time.)Everything else on mild or low.

So there has def been improvement in last 6 weeks, i’m sure it wont all be plain sailing and I know/prepare to expect another 'flare up' and then a bad few days. But recently instead of the bad days being 2-3 weeks of it constantly, the duration is getting shorter each time (last bad few days was just under a week) So things are slowly improving, and i’m sure in time so will the amount of symptoms and the strength of each symptom.

I've probably missed a couple of silly/odd little things that have gone on (likely because they were so early on or very brief (or I’ve forgotten) - fever and nausea to name a couple. When I got my notes together these were the main ones that came to mind. Quite a lot actually sitting back reading them, and I think the scary (but good) thing is, x-ray came back fine, bloods came back fine. People have had MRI's, camera’s down there throat, most coming back fine. Covid just not showing up on any tests(unless someones suffered further complications with something) - hence why a lot of people struggling to be taken seriously by there GP's or even loved ones who think there just 'exaggerating’ or its just ‘anxiety and stress'...no living with all what you just read causes anxiety and stress Mary!

But yeah could waffle on, once its definitely gone and I breathe and look back I can perhaps get a better overview of everything and give you better analysis of all that’s gone on. I get asked 'so when do you think it will be gone?' almost as much as 'are you better now?' To the first question, meh I don't know, I'm now into month 4/week 17 (well month 5 if I include last couple of days of Feb when I believe I caught it and had the very mild cold early March) still a lot of things going on with my body, some new things could still pop up, so instead of saying 'I think it will be gone by..' ,like I did in the first weeks. I'm just taking it week by week (or day by day if it kicks up a notch) not making any big demands of myself or my body, doing what I can each day....but not pushing it. Instead of the sad, anxiety inducing thought 'when will it go' or the one all us long haulers worry about a lot ‘Will it ever go?’ I now try to think instead 'it will go!.'

To any fellow long haulers I say hang in there, keep fighting, trust your body and that it will get better. Take it day by day. Stay as positive as you can when everything 'flares up again' after a couple of weeks of good progress (easier said then done I know) but know it wont be forever as much as it feels like it is. Don’t be afraid to ask for help (I hate going to Drs would much rather just 'get on with it' , but from pestering a little I got a blue inhaler which has helped me a lot day to day,and had x-ray and blood tests which also put my mind at ease when they came back clear. So don’t be afraid to ask to get these things checked if you’re worried. I've been lucky with my GP's thou who I think have generally believed me and taken me seriously and I know not everyone is getting that help or respect. I think it’s really not helped us that in the early days people were stubbing their toes and thinking they had caught covid and calling their Dr’s (I’m exaggerating but hopefully you get my point lol), so if you do get a not so helpful interaction, be patient,explain yourself or try again with another Dr, remember a GP will only advise you symptom by symptom and not as a whole. Anyway I’m repeating stuff you already know by now lol.

Stay positive. Stay hopeful and stay safe.

To anyone else, believe us, know this is very real, and that it absolutely sucks. Its not just anxiety or in our head. We're not exaggerating - in fact most of us are probably playing it down or just not elaborating on things for an easy life and because when someone asks 'are you better now?' it's easier to just smile and nod and answer 'getting there slowly' because the truth is...well what you just read lol. (And I'm a particularly mild case...next to no coughing, no spells in A and E, a breeze for a lot of other people with long term) Keep yourselves safe (most long haulers have no previous medical /problems/conditions. Some ,myself included, have weakened immune systems due to a long term health condition. A unlucky few are fighting another long term medical illness as well as covid. I'm lucky in that I have no dependants (except 4 easy to please gecko's) and was not working prior to catching it - some are having to deal with all this and be full time parents, or have been to and fro with their jobs (thinking there better then relapsing after going back). There’s mums messaging on behalf of there young kids who have it, lots of young people (one of the lads that co runs the group is 22 I believe), there's athletes/health fanatics used to running miles every day been completely knocked of there game unable to even walk to end of road some days. People of all age ranges. Point is anyone can catch it, it might not just be 'a couple of rough weeks' It might take over half a year for you to recover from. This myth that it's short and sweet, or a walk in the park if your young and healthy needs to be squashed because its just not accurate.

If not for my mum and our family and the facebook group I found, (Positive path of wellness - Covid UK Long Haulers) I'd be struggling, really struggling. It's scary, brutal and lonely. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. The virus is still out there it has not gone. Keep sanitising hands and wear a mask in busy places!. - Tell the guy who's life this has been for 17 weeks, why wearing a mask in public places, to keep yourself and others safe from catching this nightmare, is a inconvenience for you Karen...go on, I'll wait...

Maybe you can help prevent yours or someone else's next few months from being even worse. x

Was going to just make this a one time post on tumblr account but if it’s a help to anyone (especially fellow long haulers) I’ll post some other bits and bobs when i’m up to it. (thinking of doing a post about things/products etc that I think have been helping me. If that’s useful to anyone) Or just some positive/ funny things to keep spirits up. Keeping it all positive and upbeat as possible.

So I’ll see if anyone reads this first and go from there

So I guess in conclusion ...lol I’m just joking, this post is really done now, go back to your lives, this garbled mess of self woe (worlds smallest violin is back in its case now), sarcasm and naff humour has taken up far too much of all of our days already. Go peacefully amongst the things. :-)

Stay safe everyone x

#covid-19 #covid19longhaul #longtermcovid #coronavirus #coronalonghaul #covid 19 symptoms #corona symptoms #long haul covid #covid long haulers #covid recovery #covid uk #corona uk #corona long haulers uk

8 notes · View notes

i-will-physically-fight-you · 6 years ago

Text

If Only In My Dreams Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Please Come Home for Christmas (I'm Feeling Blue Without You Here)

Chapter Summary: Patton is struggling through a season of loneliness after being the only one of his friends to stay in their hometown after high school graduation. He can’t wait to reconnect with his best friend Virgil, who is coming down to Florida for Christmas break. Except, it grows increasingly apparent that might not be the case anymore.

Pairings: platonic prinixety & platonic moxiety

Word-count: 3106

Warnings: abusive parents, homesickness, misunderstandings, crying, loneliness, hurt/comfort

Inspiration: this ask right here

AO3 LINK, Chapter 1 , Chapter 3

I can’t believe I forgot to post this on tumblr! Again, this is a part of the winter bang hosted by @sanderssidesbang. Many thanks to them for hosting this and also thank you to the lovely @theeternalspace for beta’ing this for me <3

If you asked Patton Hart whether he preferred either the cold or the heat, his response would be the same if one had asked whether he liked cats or dogs the best.

“Both!” He would cheerfully say, rocking back and forth on his feet before explaining his reasoning, “I like the cold because you get to drink hot chocolate and wear warm sweaters! Back in Minnesota my house was on a hill and my siblings and I sled down the driveway all the time after it snowed. I also like when it’s hot outside also because you get to go to the beach and play in the water and make sandcastles--oh! And eat popsicles! Cherry’s my favorite popsicle flavor! What’s yours?”

Patton was prone to rambling, jumping from topic to topic and making connections that might seem unrelated to an outside perspective. It was one of the many symptoms stemming from Patton’s ADHD.

Patton was a glass half full kind of a guy, and that was applicable when it came to his thoughts concerning ADHD. He liked to think that hypo-focus was his superpower that allowed him to concentrate and get tasks done. Just like all super powers, however, there was weaknesses that came with it. Such as hypo-focusing on cartoons instead of doing his homework.

Imagining himself as a superhero who needed to defeat the evils of Homework to save the city helped direct his energy in a more productive manner. Sure, maybe it was a bit childish, but he still very much felt like a child at heart. It was wild to think in a few months on his birthday it’d be a year since he had become a legal adult on his eighteenth birthday. Shucks, he had a hard time not referring to other older adults with a Mr. or Mrs. in front of their name. It felt wrong!

But that wasn’t the biggest thing he was struggling with in his new-found adulthood. It was the aftermath of high school, where all his friends scattered to the four winds. They all promised to keep in contact, that they’d remain best friends forever. But Patton knew how it went, having gone through something similar when he and his family moved from Minnesota to Florida when he was twelve.

Everyone promised they’d keep in contact, but sooner or later the text messages and emails would stop coming. Patton knew that there wasn’t anything malicious behind it. People, including himself, got busy with their own lives. It was natural for friends to drift apart with diverged interests and increased distances.

So it wasn’t a big surprise when the fall semester started and communication with his old high school friends drastically dropped. As they started university, they all became busy with school and work and new friends--and well, there wasn’t any room for poor Patton who stayed home and attended community college.

There was nothing inherently wrong with attending community college of course. It was a more affordable way of education, with many of the classes on the same level as both the private and state universities. There was just an unfortunate stigma surrounding it. Patton lost track of how times people asked him why wasn’t he attending a real college or telling him he was missing out on the true college experience.

He was lonely, he hated to admit it, but he was. Virgil once asked him if he ever understood the feeling of being lonely in a sea of people. He hadn’t, at the time. But now, he understood. Patton went from his early morning classes to work at the mall back to home and slept until he started his routine all over the next day. All the while he was surrounded by people, but people are different than friends.

Patton tried making new friends among his work and school, but he wasn’t stupid. He could read the atmosphere enough to know what they thought of him. He was too loud, too flighty, too childish . Sometimes they actually verbally expressed this.

It caused Patton to spiral further into his hyper-fixations as a coping method. But even his favorite shows wasn’t enough compared to actual human interaction.

That was why he was ecstatic when Virgil told him he was going to be in Florida for the break. Out of all his friends, he’d kept in contact with Virgil the most. It made sense--they’d been best friends for years. Sending memes and cute animal videos had become their primary method of communication. The latter was mainly Patton, but Virgil sent the occasional one. He always seemed to know just when Patton needed them, too. Their schedules didn’t mesh well, but they tried to face-time one another whenever they could. If he was being honest, those snippets of contact with Virgil was the only things that kept him sane through a stressful semester and drama at his workplace.

He hadn’t admitted to Virgil that he was lonely. He couldn’t do that, when Virgil was over a thousand miles away from home in an unfamiliar setting. Patton knew how that felt--he’d at least had his family, Virgil had no one. He was completely surrounded by strangers. Patton didn’t feel like it was fair for him to complain when he at least had stayed in the same town of the high school they’d graduated from and there was still familiar faces around.

So he kept it to himself, slipping back into old habits by keeping a smile on and skirting around the topic. Some part of him wanted Virgil to be suspicious, to demand the truth. But he knew it was unfair of him to think that way when he’d deceived Virgil in the first place. No matter how many justifications Patton tried to tack on, at the end of the day it was just that.

Virgil and him planned to spend what felt like practically Virgil’s entire stay together, starting directly after Christmas. Patton was bouncing in excitement at the thought of it. He was finally going to see his best friend again, after going months unable to meet face to face. He was going to be able to actually hug Virgil instead of sending text messages with GIFs as a poor substitute to the real thing.

Except it was December 27th, and there was no hide nor hair of Virgil Raine in the town of Loving, Florida.

He stared at the last text sent to him by Virgil, trying not to sniffle. It was from December 19th, a couple days before Virgil’s flight was scheduled to leave. It wasn’t anything meaningful, really. Just a mundane text about the weather.

🌩️ Virgil 🌩️: I saw some snow flurries on my way home from work today.

Patton sighed, scrolling down a bit through his own replies.

Patton Hart💙: Ooo exciting! Florida still hasn’t gotten the memo that summer is over--it was almost in the eighties today!

Patton Hart💙: [Image Attached: It was a photo of Patton grinning as he held up a potato chip]

Patton Hart💙: I value our friend-chip

Patton Hart💙: Hey Virge, I heard about the nasty winter storms up north--did your flight get canceled? I hope you’re somewhere safe! <3

Patton Hart💙: Merry Christmas! 🎅🎄🎁

Patton Hart 💙: ...Virgil are you okay? Are we still on for Mel’s today?

There was a half page more of his own messages, but still none from Virgil himself. It was normal for communication to go silent for a few days due to the busyness of life. But he started having an uneasy feeling when Virgil didn’t respond after the first few messages he sent. That feeling only worsened when he tried calling Virgil yesterday and it went right to voicemail.

Patton always tried seeing the positives in life. Virgil was rather the opposite. He often saw only the negativities in life. Their friendship was one of an immovable object meets an unstoppable force. No one expected the social butterfly to make friends with the antisocial emo. Especially the latter. But Patton never let others’ expectations dictate how he acted, or rather who he was.

Patton was just Patton--he didn’t try to be what others wanted him to be. He felt it was unfair to both others and himself if he tried pretending to be something he wasn’t. So when the kids at his lunch table started snickering about the “creep all alone in the corner,” Patton didn’t join in. He stood up with his lunch tray and marched over there. The creep in question was a seventh grader just like Patton. He didn’t look scary like the others said. If anything, he looked scared with the way his shoulders were hunched in and he avoided eye contact. His figure was swallowed up by a hoodie two sizes too large for him.

“Hi!” Patton grinned, “My name’s Patton, mind if I join you?”

The other only grunted, avoiding direct eye contact with Patton.

It wasn’t a no, so Patton sat down and began talking. The other preteen only made the occasional grunt to let him know he was listening to Patton. It was like that for the whole week. Patton would ask to sit with him, and hold one-way conversations--never pushing for the other to talk.

Patton never minded. He talked enough for two whole people, after all. He sat with the kid to keep him company, to let him know he wasn’t alone.

On Friday of that week, the bell rang signaling the end of lunchtime and Patton stood up from the table.

“Well, see you later, kiddo!” Patton said. He walked a few paces when he heard the kid murmur something. He stopped abruptly, turning around to face the other kid.

“What’d you say?” He asked, unable to contain his excitement.

“M-my name. It’s Virgil.” The kid in the hoodie stammered, taking Patton’s excitement to mean something else.

Patton’s eyes widened. He hadn’t known his name until this moment. He tried asking him once, but let it drop after it clearly made him uncomfortable.

He’d referred to the other as just “kiddo”. It was a strange habit leftover from his toddler years when he was still learning how to speak. His father had so often used the word in reference to Patton and his siblings, that baby Patton had started calling everyone young and old kiddo.

This continued in elementary school where he’d often play the Dad when the girls his age played House. He liked pretending to be a Dad, because it meant he got impersonate his father--who was a hero in his eyes. He wasn’t fond of the more violent make-believe games that the other little boys liked to play. The girls were much nicer and considerate, even when they played games like Warriors Cats.

Sometimes, other kids had made fun of Patton calling others “kiddo.” Patton tried his best to ignore their taunts.

He had tried imagining what the boy in the hoodie’s real name was in the span of the few short days they’d known each other. Virgil wasn’t one of the names he’d guessed, it was different...but he liked different. It fit the boy in the ways Patton’s imagined names hadn’t.

“Virgil. I like it.” Patton grinned, “see you later, Virgil.”

They’d continued hanging out during lunch, and eventually outside of lunch and even school. Their friendship stayed strong into high school. Patton was there for Virgil during what happened in high school the same way Virgil was there for Patton during his break-up senior year. The two had been together through thick and thin.

Only...things were different since the two had separated. Patton knew it would happen, but it didn’t change how much it hurt. He spent almost six years as Virgil’s best friend, seeing him on a daily basis. He hadn’t seen Virgil since before he left in late July for school.

If there was one thing the two had in common, it was that they both didn’t like change.

Virgil told him things were fine over there. But what if he was lying just as much as Patton was? What if things weren’t fine?

Patton generally kept his chin up even in the most difficult circumstances. But he couldn’t help but feel dread and concern about what had happened to Virgil. He wasn’t responding to any of Patton’s texts or calls.

His mind kept going back to the terrible winter storm and wondered if it held any implications about Virgil’s whereabouts. Patton grew up in Minnesota. He knew how dangerous storms could be. This was Virgil’s first winter in a northern state--what if he was caught unaware by the storm and something bad happened?

It might not be that , a small voice in the back of his head said, he might’ve broke his phone or something.

But if he broke his phone, he would’ve tried contacting you some other way . Another voice argued.

He’d at last gathered enough courage to call Virgil’s mom and ask about him.

Patton tapped his fingers nervously against his desk while the phone dialed.

“Hello?”

“Hi Mrs. Raine!” Patton said, mustering as much warmth into his voice as possible, “It’s Patton here. I was wondering if Virgil’s home? We were planning to get together over the break but he hasn’t been responding to any--”

“I’m sorry,” Virgil’s mother briskly interrupted, “but Virgil isn’t here. He’s still up in Massachusetts.”

“W--what?” Patton asked. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise. So why did it feel like he was getting slapped in the face with a fish? Not a dead fish, mind you, but a wiggling very much alive fish that didn’t want to collide with your face anymore than you did.

“I said, he’s still in Massachusetts, honey.” She repeated her words, Southern gush in full force.

Patton liked the friendliness of Florida, but he wasn’t a fan of the “Bless your heart” Southerners that inhabited parts of Florida. He hated when people pretended to be nice when they were really being passive-aggressive. Patton preferred out-right honesty above all.

He’d never gotten good vibes off of either of Virgil’s parents. Even though they always acted like the model parents to Virgil in front of Patton. Virgil had a hard time sharing things even after Patton gained his trust. But the things he did share, made Patton question if they were truly good people or not.

“Can I ask why he’s still in Massachusetts? Did something bad happen?” Patton asked, once he regained his voice.

“Oh heavens no!” She laughed, “His flight was canceled by bad weather and all the next available flights were booked up. Virgil and us agreed it’d better if he just stayed there and saved his money--with last minute flights being expensive and all.”

That...didn’t sound right to Patton. Who didn’t want to see their child for the holidays--even if they happened to miss Christmas? The holidays was a time of fellowship with friends and family. Wouldn’t anyone move heaven and earth so that their child could be with them? It wasn’t like Virgil’s family was hurting for money, either. They had more than enough money to fund Virgil’s college education as well as go on a few cruise trips a year.

Later on, he’d wished he would have given her a piece of his mind. But in the moment he’d been too shocked to say anything of the sort.

“Oh, I see. I guess I was just really worried since he hasn’t responded to any of my texts in like a week. Do you know if he broke his phone or something?” Patton laughed awkwardly. Virgil’s mother didn’t join in.

“No, I don’t think so. I bet he’s been hanging out with his friends all week that he’s been too busy to respond to your text.”

Patton’s breath hitched. That could be a possibility, couldn’t it? It wasn’t like Virgil wasn’t allowed to have friends other than Patton. But would he really do that to Patton? Ignore him completely to go hang out with his new friends? That wasn’t like Virgil at all.

People changed a lot in five months. But they didn’t change that much, did they?

Admittedly those words had been uttered by Virgil’s mother, out of all people. Who knew if that was the truth. But whether knowingly or unknowingly, those words had pierced his heart. Patton was too emotional to think logically about it.

Quickly he thanked Virgil’s mother before ending the call. Which what led him to now, staring at his and Virgil’s text conversation. Tears blurred his vision. Should he send another text? He didn’t want Virgil to be annoyed by him being too clingy. He didn’t want to lose what little remained of their friendship.

Yet at the same time, he couldn’t handle the fading friendships where both pretended everything was fine, that their friendship wasn’t dying. He’d done enough of those during this year. He couldn’t do it with Virgil, his bestest friend.

Patton Hart 💙: Hey kiddo...are we still friends?

Patton Hart 💙: It’s okay if we aren’t!! I know how you are, Virge, you don’t have to feel obligated to remain friends. Seasons come and go, y’know? Not everything lasts...and that’s okay. I still cherish every memory we spent together. But if you want me to stop meownoying you with texts, I’ll understand.

Except, despite those words he sent to Virgil, he was a huge freaking hypocrite. He sat there, flitting with the pop socket on his phone, sobbing. Loud, ugly sobs. He was thankful he was alone in his family’s house so he could suffer in solitude.

He didn’t want to lose Virgil even more than he hadn’t wanted to lose any of his other friends. Virgil was his best friend, after all. They’d done everything together. Patton knew sooner or later he’d be able to make new friends. This season of loneliness wouldn’t last forever. But knowing something didn’t mean his feelings ceased from existence.

People always placed romance having more importance over friendships. But Patton, having gone through a breakup, couldn’t understand that view. Relationships and friendships were equated in his mind. Friends were important. Often the best romantic relationships start off as friendships. He’d prefer friends, even if it meant never loving in that way again.

Once he finished crying for the most part, he went downstairs, clutching a blanket over his shoulders. It dragged behind him on the floor, a sad excuse for a cape.

He opened the refrigerator, reaching for the ice cream, when his phone went off. He fished it out of his pocket, hands trembling. It was a skype call. From Virgil.

#thomas sanders #sander sides #patton sanders #virgil sanders #moxiety #kat writes #haha #can you imagine this chapter was only supposed to be a 500 word scene?

104 notes · View notes

janekfan · 5 years ago

Text

Allocation

Trudging through ankle deep snow towards the small town’s only bus stop, Serizawa spared a sympathetic look for the man next to him when he coughed harshly into his elbow.

“Ah...tol’ Mob I would quit.” The esper didn’t have the heart to tell him it probably wasn’t the smoking; Reigen had been hacking painfully all day, the color so high in his face he wasn’t willing to attribute it completely to the chill and snow in the air. He tugged up his boss’ collar, risking a pat on his shoulder in commiseration, and spared him the struggle it would be to check the schedule as they finally approached.

Just their luck.

They’d missed the last bus by a wide margin, apparently this routine exorcism had taken far longer than either of them had anticipated and now they were stranded here in the middle of nowhere. Another cough startled him out of his pondering and he turned to see Reigen sinking to the lone bench, skin grey and panting. This cold wasn’t doing him any good and he looked back down the street, snow already filling their footsteps. They’d passed an inn--

“How long ‘till the next one?” Raspy, no hint of his usual spark, just tired resignation.

“Tomorrow.” Serizawa looked up into the sky, brushing large, fluffy flakes of the stuff from his curls. “Maybe.” Another cough. “There was a place back a ways. They might have a room.” Nodding, breathless, Reigen climbed shakily to his feet, would have fallen had Serizawa not caught him by the elbow as he slipped on the ice and he kept up his firm grip as he stumbled again, all but leaning on him while they staggered to the inn. Being so near to him, Serizawa had to fight his own blush, pulse racing faster each time Reigen slumped closer, the heat of him exhilarating even through their coats.

The room was reasonably priced though sparsely furnished and Serizawa hung their sopping coats, helped Reigen shrug out of his damp suit jacket and toe off his soaked shoes before settling him in a low chair to tug off his dripping socks and glance out the window. It was really coming down now, piling up in the panes. The innkeeper had been right. No one would be coming in or out of town probably for the next day at least.

“Sorry…” That barking cough again, deep and wet this time and Serizawa pushed the spike of worry away before it could set anything in the room to floating. It was probably from transitioning out of the cold, that’s all. “Can get it…” Tugging pathetically at his collar, fingers clumsy with cold tried to loosen his tie with a frustrated huff. Serizawa chuckled just a bit at Reigen’s attempts, chest pounding as he cupped his jaw gently with one palm and pressed his struggling hand down with the other.

“I got it, just relax.” Softly, bold in the face of his disorientation and content to believe he wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow. It felt a bit like he was taking advantage of the man while he was in this state.

“Mmf…” Barely awake, Reigen leaned his hot cheek into the cool touch as Serizawa slipped the tie from around his neck.

“You’re really hot.” The gust of air passing through his teeth at the comment was more an exhale than a laugh, but the half smirk on his lips was contagious even as Serizawa felt the blood rush to his face. “Wait here, I’m going to check if the desk has anything for it.”

In the end they hadn’t had anything more than Tylenol but Serizawa roused him from where he’d fallen asleep, head tipped against the chair back, and got him to take it with a full glass of water before turning his attention to their ruined trousers, drenched almost to their knees with snowmelt. He couldn’t sleep in those, he’d get worse.

“You’ve got to get out of these wet things and into bed.”

“Getting fresh with me now, Serizawa?” Reigen fixed him with an amused, if exhausted, eye, voice fading in and out.

“N’n’no!” Ramrod straight, arms at his sides, the full body bristle made the conman laugh for a moment before a wheezing fit made him lurch forward. Serizawa forgot all about his embarrassment in favor of soothing him through it, filling another glass and encouraging him to sip slow.

“Might be right.” A tired, shivery sigh and he fumbled with his belt, all thumbs, and Serizawa laid his palm over them, mouth pressed in a tight line as he shifted them aside and unclasped the buckle, pulling him forward so he could kick them off and catching him against his chest as he toppled over. They hung there, suspended in the moment, and Serizawa’s mouth went dry as he swallowed thickly, Reigen’s head leaning on his shoulder and breath beating quickly against his neck. “Sorry...los’ my balance.” The esper nodded, paralyzed with Reigen overwarm and flush against him.

“Yeah,” the word caught in his throat, he cleared it nervously, “yeah, you should sleep.”

And therein lay the rub. There was only the one. Bed that is.

A small futon and no other linens. The innkeeper had apologized and explained that the unexpected storm had trapped quite a few travelers unawares. But the room was warm enough and the chair would suit him for a night. He’d dealt with worse. Reigen was limp under the quilt, melting into its softness and blinking slow as the chill seeped out of him. Serizawa pulled off his own damp clothes, hanging them all up with the coats and jackets before checking on Reigen one last time, surprised when his hand snuck out from under the blankets and grasped his shirt.

“S’cold.” He shivered hard to prove it.

“Rei--”

“Don’t be foolish, there’s only one bed...and s’cold.” Speech slurred from fatigue with eyes half-lidded and hazy, he held his gaze and tugged insistently. “S’okay…” And between one moment and the next Serizawa found himself tucked closely next to Reigen’s warmth, wrapped up in that softness with him and far too near his face to trust himself. His heart was thumping so hard against his ribs he worried that Reigen would hear it. “L’call Mob tomorrow...tell him.” He shuddered, burrowing even closer, burrowing into Serizawa’s chest and sighing deeply, relaxing by degrees until the esper was sure he’d fallen asleep. It was only then he dared to run tentative fingers through hair damp from sweat and snow. Allowed himself this one touch. As many times as Reigen had cut his hair, run his hands over short curls to admire his handiwork, he’d hadn’t ever had the chance to do the same and oh how he’d wondered. Reigen hummed low and Serizawa froze, eyes wide in the dark of the room and suffocating beneath the silence of snow being laid thick and fast outside. “Nice…” Serizawa stroked his head again, running his hand down his nape, over his shoulder blades, feeling the unrelenting heat through the creased material of his shirt.

“Just try and sleep.” Another pass and Reigen drew back to examine Serizawa for long seconds, something achingly familiar in those brown depths, before he shifted forward, pausing in his attempt with an expression akin to frustration and settling for cupping his ear instead, stopping him with a gentle nudge.

“You’ll get sick.”

His lips were soft against his, slightly chapped from wind or fever, and the kiss was too clumsy to be anything romantic but at the same time nothing less than perfect. They broke apart, Reigen’s nose brushing against Serizawa’s cheek as the esper moved to pepper the column of his throat with featherlight kisses. He could feel more than hear the hum of pleasure as it reverberated through him and he forced himself to stop, smiling into salt skin at the noise of discontent the younger man made.

“You need to sleep.” One more chaste press to his forehead and Serizawa knew it was true when minutes later Reigen was well and truly under, settled there by the hand moving over his back. Warm and so, so content, he followed soon after.

The busses weren’t running that morning because of the weather and Reigen made do on his promise to call Mob and tell him not to come in that day, unsure of when they’d make it back. He groused, Serizawa felt it was mostly for show, about having to pay for another stay but didn’t seem keen on moving far from bed, still not feeling well and happy to spend the day sipping tea for his cough and dozing, limbs akimbo. He convinced Serizawa to sit with him on the futon, leaning against him and talking about everything and nothing, cup warm in his hands and so sleepy the esper had to lift it away as he nodded off. By the time the busses were running again, their clothes were dry and Reigen’s newest dose of Tylenol took care of most of the lingering discomfort. They parted on the train at Serizawa’s stop, suddenly shy and just barely brushing fingers as they exchanged pleasantries regarding work tomorrow.

A knock on the door made Serizawa groan. He knew he shouldn’t rely on his powers but he didn’t think he could make it to the door aching like he was and decided that this one time would be okay.

“Serizawa?” Reigen stepped into his small apartment, pharmacy bag in hand, slipping out of his shoes to come stand before the couch, no doubt taking in his rough appearance. “Ah, told you.” A conciliatory pat and he dropped a kiss to the top of his head, brushing a hand through his curly hair and it was so good to have someone care like this. “I’ll make you tea and you can take some medicine.” Rolls reversed, Serizawa curled up against Reigen on the small couch, the worst of the symptoms now kept at bay as he drifted, eyes slipping to the window and the flakes of snow fluttering down before the hand at his back whisked him gently away.

#serirei #serizawa katsuya #reigen arataka #one bed at the inn #snowed in #sickfic #janekfan writes

3 notes · View notes

juupajaa · 5 years ago

Text

🥀Suffering phase:

Ah man this is gonna suck. I hate this. Just feck everything about this stage. This is where it just turns so dark and brutal that there’s nothing that can make it work. I hope it’s at least informative and reaffirming. This might get heavy so read when you feel you’re ready.

So one day you wake up and go to engage in your disordered behaviour, but for some reason it didn’t really make you feel any special way. You don’t think too much of it yet. You try again later, but still you don’t get that good feeling from it. You do it again, and again, but it’s just not doing it for you anymore. I’m sorry to say this, but honeymoon is over.

Ok so here’s where eds and de split. I’m gonna go through de route first, since this is pretty much where de stops.

Some with disordered eating might recover right now. If your quality of life has improved, seeing your coping mechanism not work anymore can turn you back and make you run back to real life. For example, let’s say you started to use de to cope with pressure from school/work/hobbies. The pressure has now eased up and you don’t need to deal with it anymore. Your disordered eating isn’t needed and you can phase out of it in a short period of time and best case scenario, you never go back.

For other’s the situation hasn’t improved, they’re still at a bad place and can’t deal with the shit that’s going on in their life, so the disordered eating stays, despite it not helping anymore. Some might wallow in a state of not really getting worse or better, which can be extremely distressing since there is never any improvement or relief. Other’s might get into a cycle where their disordered eating perks up every now and then when they feel negative emotions, and sometimes is backs off and leaves when things get a bit easier for a while.

The thing about disordered eating is that it doesn’t solve your problem, so there might be pressure to try harder to engage in disordered behaviour, which can lead to your de turning into an ed. I’d like to point out that de is getting more and more common in western/modern society. Some things that probably have contributed to this are sugar addiction, high accessibility of already prepared food, and snacking instead of eating regular meals, but I didn’t check any of that so don’t take that as anything but my own ramblings. Here are some examples of what disordered eating is like and how to differentiate it from a full blown ed:

experiencing anxiety about food/nutrition/your body on the daily basis (eds have this too)

disordered behaviour, for example, restricting, purging, binging, obsessing over nutrition, other abnormal eating habits (eds have this too)

being able to take part in meals with others and act out normal behaviour most of the time, despite the extreme discomfort from the disordered thoughts (in eds, this ability is fading or completely removed)

being able to do things that go against your disordered thoughts most of the time, despite feeling extremely terrible about it (in eds, going against the disorder becomes near impossible)

being able to “switch it off” when needed, for example in order to keep it secret or to “take it easier for a bit” (in eds, there is no off switch, the disordered thoughts are constant and there’s no way around them)

being able to go on for long periods of time without really having that many disordered thoughts or without letting them bother you and hinder whatever you’re doing at the time (in eds, the disordered thoughts are intrusive, overwhelming, and they prevent you from doing unrelated things constantly)

I know this can be hard to hear for some, since the need and desire to get a full blown ed can be extremely strong. There’s no shame in that and I’ll tell you why. Your de isn’t helping you cope anymore and your life is overwhelming. Thanks to that bitch honeymoon phase, you know for a fact that this can help you feel better. The problem is however that it won’t help you, but you don’t have a lot of options, since you don’t know how to cope with your situation. The assumption is that you need to get even “better” at your thing in order to cope better again. It makes perfect sense, so don’t feel stupid for wanting for it to get even worse. For some it does, for other’s it don’t and we don’t know what exactly is that thing that makes the difference, but we all need help and new, better coping mechanisms, no matter if it’s de or a full blown ed we deal with. Disordered eating can be dangerous too and the discomfort alone is enough to start affecting you negatively. Further down I have written a list of stuff that you might experience from having disordered thoughts and engaging in disordered behaviour and a lot of what I will write about eds can ring familiar to you too. I’m not gonna talk more about disordered eating, but if you feel like you have it, I recommend looking more into it in order to understand it better.

So now let’s talk about eds. Ok so let’s say one day you get up to do something you were planning on doing, but suddenly you realize, you can’t do it. Your de prohibits you from doing something you wanted to do. And then it happens again. And again.

And AgAiN anD aGaiN.

You’re out of the honeymoon and your ed has fully formed. The difference between an ed and de is the frequency and intensity of your obsession with food/your body. It’s starting to take up hours upon hours of your day to do everything that your ed asks you to do and the pain, sacrifices, shame and guilt, are just barely worth the tiny bit of relief you get when you perform your disordered behaviour.

So by now some of you are getting malnourished. Now, being malnourished doesn’t mean you’re underweight, nor does it mean you haven’t eaten in two days. Being malnourished means you haven’t been getting proper nutrition in months. This can be because you don’t get enough calories in, you purge too much of your intake, or you are eating foods that don’t provide you with enough nutrition, such as eating only one or few things or not eating enough of something specific. You can be malnourished at any weight and you can be malnourished even if you eat multiple times a day or have some “good days” in between. Here’s what being malnourished might feel like:

You’re in a whole another world. It feels like other people aren’t even in the same universe as you

It can feel like everything’s a bit slow, even if days go by quickly, colours aren’t quite as bright as they used to be and sounds seem muted

Your work memory is so minimal that you’re having trouble getting through basic tasks without stopping to think about what you’re doing

You feel exhausted all the time, there’s no point in talking or doing anything, you just want to go lie down and even then you don’t feel like you’re resting

You’re either irritable or apathetic, rarely anything else

Even something as small as reaching for something feels like a task

You’re having trouble communicating your point to others and your point seems lost on yourself too

You’re having trouble following conversations and sometimes it feels like people are speaking gibberish and not real words at all.

Being malnourished is not fun, that I can tell you. It can sound similar to depression and those two usually go hand in hand. A lot of people with eds also have anxiety or depression and as we have already established earlier, other mental disorders play a part in your ed as well and equally, your ed might be making your other disorders worse.

Getting malnourished isn’t a requirement for an ed (or de) by no means and even if you aren’t malnourished, there are several physical symptoms you might get from the mere strain of having an ed (or de). Eds (and de) cause a lot of physical instability in your body, since your eating is disordered and you experience anxiety and stress over food/your body. Here are some physical symptoms you might experience from the continued stress alone (but trust me you probably are also malnourished):

digestive problems (constipation, diarrhea, bloating)

headaches, clenched teeth/tight jaw, neck and shoulder pains

hair loss, brittle nails, dry or irritated skin, dry mouth, bad breath despite dental hygiene

heart palpitations, a sudden sinking feeling in your chest

numbness in your limbs/shoulders, pain or weakness in your joints

excessive sweating, cold sweats, shaking/shivering for no apparent reason

irritability, fatigue, exhaustion, difficult to focus

insomnia or other sleep problems (too much, too little, not waking up feeling rested despite getting a good amount of hours in)

weakened immune system

So let’s talk about this stage itself, since we’ve been rambling about pretty much everything else. Suffering phase is pretty much what it sounds like. You’re just suffering. You’re not getting worse and worse and everything just kind of rots around you. You might be losing friends or hobbies, since your ed is making you avoid a lot of situations. You’re becoming isolated and you can’t really talk to anyone out of the fear they might intervene with your behaviour. Most of your day, if not every minute of it, is consumed by your ed and you have to keep on doing what you do, just to feel little less horrible. Here are some thoughts and feelings you might experience:

apathy over the loss of your other hobbies/interests/friends

increasing loneliness and isolation, yet you don’t want anyone to get close either

feelings of worthlessness, shame and guilt about yourself

disinterest in others, such as your friends, family, significant other

overwhelming and all-consuming disordered thoughts that get mixed into every situation, no matter if food is involved or not, making it impossible to focus on anything else most of the time

difficulty do handle anything unexpected or just mildly inconvenient without having to resort to your disordered behaviour for comfort

increasing fear, anxiety and discomfort

Suffering phase doesn’t have a time limit. It can go on forever. Some people die here, some keep coming back over and over again on endless repeat. Those with chronic eds stay here for years upon years. This is such a dark and miserable stage and while you’re in it, you might be so lost you don’t even realize to feel sadness for it. It can feel like there is no way out, there’s no way for you to ever recover, you don’t even want to recover, let alone try. I know it can feel like this is what you deserve and this is just how things are, but trust me, there is more stages to eds. It doesn’t have to end here.

The next stage is just around the corner, you just gotta start eyeing it. It is so hard to shake anyone out of this phase and we all know by now that the will to recover has to come from the inside. You’ve got to start hoping for something better. I know for a fact that you can still get a new start and there’s a reset button a little further down the road. Just please, start thinking about things you’d like to do. Places you’d like to go. People you’d like to meet and the person you want to be. Whatever these things are, think about them and try to get that spark of hope going.

5 notes · View notes

life-with-my-three · 6 years ago

Text

22+2

This pregnancy is aging me. I swear.

So as not to go into detail, I’ve explained pretty much what has been happening up until a fortnight ago.

Last Monday (10ish days ago) I went to my GP for something completely unrelated, she did a blood pressure check, it was borderline high and I got sent up to the hospital’s pregnancy assessment service. Everything was stable so they took bloods and because of prior history had me come back in 48 hours for another bp check.

I had a routine midwife appointment that Wednesday anyway, so just went there instead. They did a couple of hours of serial blood pressure checks and they were on the threshold of high, even with meds. I had a therapy appointment so I went to that, went and had more blood tests done, then had to go back to antenatal to have bp checked and see the OB.

I was diagnosed with Pregnancy Induced Hypertension, which really came at no surprise. But then the following conversation confused me.

We discussed what happened with Fletcher’s birth. I had severe neurological symptoms signalling I was going to either have an imminent stroke or seizure, so he was born. BUT after he was born all my lab results weren’t “off” enough to have been preeclampsia. So after discussing what that would mean for this time, they stated they most likely wouldn’t deliver again like they did with Fletcher, but just attempt IV antihypertensives.

I had so much anxiety over this. From my research the official guidelines had changed in recent years as to not having to have abnormal labs, but the severe neurological symptoms made needing to deliver imminently needed, because of the stroke/seizure risk. Obviously I want to do EVERYTHING to avoid another prem Bub, but I had this weird feeling that is hard to describe, and was terrified that if they left me without delivering I could have a major stroke leaving Riley and Fletcher without a mum.

A second opinion was too hard to source, so I’ve spent the week telling myself they’d do the right thing, whatever that is, if it was needed and to just trust the team.

Then this morning I had another routine midwife appointment. Because of everything that has been happening I am already having weekly appointments. We do the usual checks, and then she said she had to talk to me about something.

Apparently, they have now spoken to a consultant OB in Melbourne (I’m technically in a regional area of the state, although a major regional town). After this discussion they had been told that going off the severe neurological symptoms with Fletcher, I most definitely had SEVERE pre eclampsia despite normal labs. In recent years they have changed the guidelines as to not needing the abnormal labs, because although my presentation is rare, it does happen, and delaying treatment until labs are abnormal causes mother and baby death.

On that though, the protein in my urine is still under the pre eclampsia threshold currently, but it is rising. So who knows. Two more weeks until viability, and every week past that is a huge bonus!

Then on the way home from antenatal this morning I was celebrating for a quick in and out appointment, when another lady and I reversed our cars into one another (it’s pelting rain, and we must of reversed at the exact same time). So now after texting my midwife I’m just about I head back into clinic for an ultrasound to check on bub.

15 more weeks! 🤞

4 notes · View notes

jaybirbmoved · 6 years ago

Text

Do Not Reblog

So after a lot of consideration, I’ve decided that Jason suffering from a Traumatic Brain Injury is going to become part of my blog canon. This is only going to apply to my main verse, and other verses where he died after being beaten by the Joker via use of a crowbar. There’s some canon evidence to support this decision, as evidenced at the end of Under The Hood and in Red Hood: The Lost Days by Judd Winnick.

More under the cut, so I’m not clogging up the dash.

In Under The Hood, Jason was said to have been dead for roughly six months before “fate” (aka Superboy-Prime punching reality) decided to set things right, as he was “never supposed to die.” He woke up, panicked because he was in a coffin and dug his way out, then apparently walked for 12.5 miles in the rain and dark with all of his injuries - as he wasn’t ‘healed’ upon waking up, so he had whatever he was suffering from before he died in the explosion, which according to the panel below included a cracked skull causing bleeding into the brain, a shattered sternum, flash burns and at least forty other fractures.

Although severely wounded the cops indicate he was awake and talking to them only to “go under” and presumably they didn’t think he was going to wake up after surgery because of the extent of his injuries. After slipping into a coma Jason was moved to a facility that cared for patients with minimal brain function. It states that he was now in a chronic vegetative state. So, not comatose, not healed, still unconscious and unresponsive, but not brain dead either. They go on to explain that it was his survival instincts that caused him to wake up even though his body shouldn’t have allowed him to.

Now, since you can’t be in a PVS (Persistent Vegetative State) and conscious at the same time, and they made sure to specify that a year had passed by the time he woke up (it takes only a few months to be declared PVS without brain trauma and at least 1 year with trauma), it seems likely that he went from being comatose, to vegetative, to finally a minimally conscious state.

According to multiple sources, people in a MCS, while not completely functional/aware, do retain some understanding of their conscious surroundings. There is enough to prove that this is distinctly different than people who are comatose or in PVS, as they are not conscious or aware of anything at all, even with stimulation. Jason woke up from a vegetative state and walked out of the hospital, surviving for more than a year on the streets while relying on his old instincts and what Batman taught him. He knew when he was cold, hungry, etc., and he also knew what to do to fix these problems.

Yet, despite his survival skills, he doesn’t attempt to seek out Bruce, and he doesn’t speak even once (that we’re shown) between the time he slipped into a coma and when Talia pushes him into the Lazarus Pit. Either he doesn’t have enough awareness to remember his death/what happened to him, or he does but doesn’t have the ability to make decisions beyond survival reflexes. I have a theory, due to the two above panels and the term jog a memory, that Jason didn’t try to find Bruce despite being in Gotham because he didn’t remember him until he was put in danger. Think about it. He woke up in an unfamiliar place, in no physical pain, wandered outside…

What was Jason doing before he met Bruce at age 12? He was living on the streets! Stealing to survive! So he went back to doing that. Whether he was aware something was wrong with him during this time is debatable, but it seems doubtful.

It’s more likely that the familiar environment of the alley and being subjected to pain (especially since that would have been the last thing he remembered before his death) just provoked a similar response that he would have had while being attacked as Robin.

Don’t ask me why an alcoholic, homeless former criminal knew someone that was friends with Talia Al Ghul. They never explain.

Back to the point; aside from his survival skills Jason seemed unable to actually function in his condition. Talia knew it, as did Ra’s, and so did the doctors they hired. In the following final panels from Under The Hood, Ra’s admits that Jason could be useful one day but decides that after a year of trying to get Jason to respond enough to tell them how he came back to life, he’s unlikely to ever speak or…emote, ever again.

Despite multiple people insisting that Jason will never recover mentally, despite physically being at peak health and having the conditioning of an Olympic athlete, they all claim that his brain damage is too severe and that naturally he could never regain any form of awareness again. Talia disputes this, and she seems correct, to a degree.

Though he lashes out when provoked through pain, he never fights back when it’s her, something she’s quick to point out. This indicates he has enough awareness that he realizes this is a person trying to help him. Someone that cares.

Supposedly, people in a minimally conscious state can exhibit emotional reactions to specific stimuli, such as smiling or crying. When Talia begins talking to Jason about Bruce, about how he misses Jason and has been grieving and suffering since his death, Jason doesn’t verbally respond in anyway, but he cries. Talia seems to understand that he does hear her, even though he can’t respond, which means he does remember Bruce, and he misses him too.

After being exposed to a Lazarus Pit, Jason regains all of his memories, his ability to speak, and consciousness of his surroundings as well as the other abilities he had before his death. However, due to the fact that his brain had several years time to heal before his exposure, and it was still developing at the time to boot (meaning he’s arguably mentally younger than he’s supposed to be, thinking like a 15 year old as opposed to a 19-20 year old), I find it likely that aside from “waking” him up, so to speak, it did little else. Although he has recovered enough to live the “normal” life of your typical gun-totting vigilante, Jason does still suffer from the side effects of the severe brain damage that Joker inflicted on him.

This includes cognitive problems that give him learning disorder like symptoms, such as Dyslexia, and difficulty reading fine print/fancy script especially. Early on he had a lot of trouble with some of his fine and gross motor skills, having to relearn many of them. There’s also neurobehavioral problems, which are described as behavioral problems attributed to specific aspects of a brain injury. Individuals may develop difficulty with self-control, impulse control, frustration, anger and aggression issues, and behaving with inappropriate ways socially. Physical therapy/training, something Jason participates in frequently because of his lifestyle, can help repair muscle and neuromotor skills. While he is frustrated frequently due to the limitations he suffers from, it’s not enough that it actually prevents him from doing most things.

It’s mostly mental deficits that impede his day to day life. TBIs can cause emotional, social, or behavioral problems and changes in personality. Jason in particular is emotionally unstable and suffers from depression (occasionally to the point of being self destructive and at times suicidal) and anxiety that are linked to his trauma, social withdrawal, inability to control his anger… he has insomnia and goes through bipolar-like mania not unrelated to his PTSD, and his psychosis can be triggered by unexpected things (such as the video will Bruce left him after he supposedly died, an example of by far one of his worst mental breakdowns).

#Character Study {Meta}#Spilled Ink {Headcanon}#Traumatic Brain Injury //#Brain Damage //

7 notes · View notes

lesbeet · 6 years ago

Text

long post ahead

ive been thinking nonstop about the possibility of me having adhd since my sister and her boyfriend brought it up to me last week (i’m FINALLY seeing my therapist today so we can talk about it) and i’ve been doing a lot of research and i found the howtoadhd channel on youtube

and literally the number of times in the past 2 hours alone that i’ve teared up or started legitimately crying because of how much i relate to things that these videos are saying is ridiculous, like some of them are word-for-word things i’ve said that i had NO inkling of an idea could be related to adhd

like this one video of this guy who was diagnosed at 43 and said that prior to his diagnosis he had just accepted that he would feel dissatisfied for his whole life, that he would never feel content, i’ve been saying that for YEARS and just was resigned to it and chalked it up solely to my depression

and just like. having been able to do well in school as a kid but constantly being told that i’m “not living up to [my] potential” and now that i’m in my early 20s and my intelligence can’t compensate for like....not being able to regulate my emotions and not being able to organize my life and not being able to motivate myself to do things, which is supposedly why a number of people get diagnosed around this time, because metrics for success are different in adulthood (you can’t just take a test and rely on being smart to compensate for all the other problems), and i was always just. thinking that i fucked up and wasted my life through laziness or whatever the case may be

i’ve always considered myself to be “crafty” and “resourceful” in the sense that i may not go about doing things in the typical way but i can almost always find a way to accomplish what i need accomplished, even if it’s unconventional -- apparently that’s common with adhd too! like i’ll say “oh i couldn’t figure out how to do [x] so i did [y and z]” and someone will be like “why didn’t you just do [thing everyone else does]” and usually i either couldn’t figure out how, or it didn’t occur to me, and my way was weird and unconventional, but it worked for me!

and then of course i’m just recognizing all these signs that have always been there that i either didn’t notice or attributed to other things -- i’ve been trying to observe the way my attention functions this week and literally i space out and miss things SO much more often than i ever realized, like i miss so much information because i’ve drifted off. or i get really stuck on things in conversations and even after everyone else has moved on i have this urge to bring it back so i can say that last thing i’ve been rehearsing over and over for the past 5 minutes so i didn’t forget it, and now it’s in my head and everyone is talking about something else and it’s SO inconsequential but i have to forcibly drag myself away from whatever the thing is (yesterday my sister and her friend and i were talking about early 2000′s fashion and i wanted to make a comment about wearing ugly scarves as belts and they saw a dog and moved on to talking about cute things our dogs have done and i just couldn’t stop thinking about the scarves as belts thing for like 10 minutes until i just had to sigh and be like...well i can’t bring that up again now)

when i was younger i would rush through tests so i could go back to whatever book i was reading and i just thought it was a silly quirk like “oh i just like to read lol” but i realized i still do similar things -- if i’m reading a book or watching a show or working on something, THAT is what i’m doing. anything else, whether it’s work or sleep or eating or hanging out with a friend or fulfilling any sort of responsibility? that’s a break from the thing i’m doing. if i’m reading a book, even if it’s the 3rd time i’m rereading harry potter for the year, for example, then in my head, i’m reading harry potter. i have to go to work all day but then i can read harry potter. all i’m doing is thinking about reading harry potter. i rush through my responsibilities so i can go BACK to reading harry potter, because that’s what i’m doing and anything else is just taking a break from reading harry potter. (you see how this can negatively affect the accomplishment/fulfillment of important tasks and responsibilities)

and my sister has pointed out things that i didn’t really notice, like she said it’s really difficult to hold a conversation with me when i’m excited about something because i can’t calm down enough to let the other person talk. and i’ve always known that i tend to finish peoples’ sentences for them during conversations, which i always thought was a way of showing that i’m listening! but ive realized it’s actually that, if i already know what you’re going to say, and you’re saying it too slowly, i get impatient and i need to blurt out the rest for you so we can move on and i can say my next thing before i forget it

and like obviously all people experience some symptoms some of the time, daydreaming isn’t exclusive to adhd, neither is walking into a room and forgetting what you’re doing there. but this week as i’ve been paying attention, i notice i do it CONSTANTLY. the other night i opened up my phone before bed because i remembered i hadn’t set my alarm, so i picked it up from where i place it for the night (i was about to go to sleep). 15 minutes later i put my phone back down and decided to turn in for the night again, and then realized i still had never turned the alarm on because i got distracted and did other stuff. and things like that happen with almost comical regularity, now that i know to look for it.

i’ve known i have executive dysfunction issues for a long time so i won’t go into those, but like we’ve known i have problems with directions and organization and spatial processing and knowing how to complete tasks for a long time

the rejection-sensitive dysphoria is something i didn’t really realize was part of adhd, but it makes SO much sense. i think it’s part of why i thought i had bpd for a while, because a lot of the symptoms were similar and i knew i was dealing with something more than just depression and anxiety but didn’t know what, and a lot of the symptoms i experienced also seemed to fit the bpd diagnosis even if my actual behavior and personality didn’t seem to

there are so many more things i’ve noticed this week and thought about differently but i literally can’t remember what they are lmao i think i’m gonna try to write stuff down so i don’t forget to tell my therapist today but like.

so many of these things i didn’t realize had anything to do with adhd, like emotional dysregulation, i’ve always known i have horrible mood swings and trouble regulating my emotions, i’ve always noticed a lot of these different symptoms but it never occurred to me that they could all be part of the same thing??

like i haven’t been tested or diagnosed yet and i’m worried i’m getting carried away but the only time i’ve ever felt this sort of relief was a few months ago when realizing my dad is a narcissist. like the feeling of “oh my god, i knew this was something i experienced but i didn’t think i could attribute it to anything” and “oh my god, this is word for word something i say all the time, i didn’t realize it was part of a pattern”

and it genuinely made me cry! hearing people talk about things that describe me that i never would have guessed might have to do with adhd, finding something that seems to encompass a very broad range of symptoms that i previously thought were unrelated or results of a myriad of things (and obviously they all play off of one another but that’s a whole separate issue)

but it would explain so much of my behavior and challenges -- why i struggle with finishing up a task or project once the big, complicated part is done; why i get super obsessed with something and then once it wears off i never mention or think about it again; why i’ve always needed my mom’s help to clean my closet or pack for a trip, even though i felt like i was way too old to need help with that; why people constantly are like “i know you heard me say this because you said ‘ok’” about things i genuinely have no recollection of

but i just can’t stop thinking about that guy talking about how he was just resigned to thinking he would never been satisfied or content with his life because that is something i have been feeling and saying FOREVER, for years ive just been like “everything is so hard, the idea of spending the rest of my life struggling to get up in the morning and going to work every day, dealing with all my responsibilities, i feel like i’m exhausted and underwater just thinking about it, i’m never going to feel fulfilled or satisfied, it’s always just going to be slogging through my responsibilities and it’s never going to end” and apparently that’s....a normal thing, and i just thought it was depression and maybe part of it is, but maybe the reason i struggle so much with those every day things is because my brain is wired differently?

and maybe i’ve fucked up because at this point i think i’ll be really disappointed if i don’t get the diagnosis because i’m not really sure what else could explain these issues, it certainly makes sense and i feel like it fits and i feel relieved just thinking about having that answer, and it certainly negatively impacts almost every aspect (if not every aspect) of my life. so like if i don’t get diagnosed idk what i’m gonna do and i probably fucked up by spending the last week obsessing over it lol

but like....the relief i feel every time i read or hear or see someone with adhd say “i experience [x]” and i’m like holy shit??? me too???? and it just. feels like maybe there’s an explanation for all this horrible dissatisfaction and unhappiness i thought i was going to be stuck with for the rest of my life, and there are other people who experience these things and there are things that can be done, medication and therapy and strategies and...my whole life doesn’t NEED to feel like a challenge, maybe it’s not an indisputable fact that i’m just going to have to live with forever.

if you read this far and you have adhd (especially if you were diagnosed after childhood) i would love to hear your thoughts on this, obviously i didn’t list every single symptom and experience and i know there are more but these are all i could think of at the moment, if i seem like i’m way off base obviously please let me know

#me.txt #adhd #long post //#honestly if you read this whole thing....thank you #also don't rb obviously #adhd tag

80 notes · View notes

thebrokenrobina-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Do Not Reblog

More under the cut, so I’m not clogging up the dash.

Don’t ask me why an alcoholic, homeless former criminal knew someone that was friends with Talia Al Ghul. They never explain.

#Character Study {Meta}#Spilled Ink {Headcanon}#Bamqueuezled {Queue}#brain damage //#traumatic brain injury //

4 notes · View notes

booksquirm · 7 years ago

Text

Thoughts from the soph-box.

Last week, Kate Spade (a US fashion designer) and Anthony Bourdain (a French Chef) lost their lives to suicide.

Since then people from all over the world have expressed their sadness, offering tributes and including links and phone numbers to call centre support services, urging friends and family to seek help if they were suffering.

Yesterday I was trawling the internet as I stumbled upon a twitter post which read:

“Kate Spade committed suicide, now people are advocates for suicide prevention and mental health.

Meanwhile your best friend is struggling, depressed, suicidal and you haven’t checked in on them in weeks.

You guys are so fake concerned about mental health it is actually hilarious.”

I feel this is cynical and unfair. Just as many people do not understand the complexity of physical health issues and how to assist those suffering, the same goes for mental health issues. People offer the help they can, when they can. There is a distinct lack of understanding surrounding the symptoms of mental health disorders and often in today’s society, words such as depressed, anorexic, traumatised, psychotic are used as critical adjectives rather than factual diagnoses and thus the respect for such conditions and the extent to which individuals take these illnesses seriously is impacted.

Irrespective, it is exceedingly difficult to care for a person with a mental health issue and at no point should those close to an individual suffering ever be held accountable for the expression of their illness, especially self harm and suicide.

(Please note here that I am acknowledging individuals who have not been involved in abuse of a person suffering mental illness, I am addressing people caring about and for individuals with mental illnesses completely unrelated to potential causal factors).

Kate Spade's husband has released a statement in which he notes her participation in therapy. She was doing her best in her recovery, though unfortunately still lost her fight.

A large number of symptoms of mental health disorders go unnoticed because some of these symptoms can, at times, be observable in completely normal individuals - everyone has times where they experience depressed mood, everyone has days where they feel overwhelmed or completely apathetic ... but the difference is how long these difficulties persist, and the extent to which they impede on ones ability to function.

The diagnostic criteria in DSM-V (current diagnostic statistics manual) include:

A. Five (or more) of the following symptoms have been present during the same 2-week period and represent a change from previous functioning; at least one of the symptoms is either (1) depressed mood or (2) loss of interest or pleasure. Note: Do not include symptoms that are clearly attributable to another medical condition.

1. Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by either subjective report (e.g., feels sad, empty, hopeless) or observation made by others (e.g., appears tearful). (Note: In children and adolescents, can be irritable mood.)

2. Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly every day (as indicated by either subjective account or observation).

3. Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain (e.g., a change of more than 5% of body weight in a month), or decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day. (Note: In children, consider failure to make expected weight gain.)

4. Insomnia or hypersomnia nearly every day.

5. Psychomotor agitation or retardation nearly every day (observable by others, not merely subjective feelings of restlessness or being slowed down).

6. Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day.

7. Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt (which may be delusional) nearly every day (not merely self-reproach or guilt about being sick).

8. Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness, nearly every day (either by subjective account or as observed by others).

9. Recurrent thoughts of death (not just fear of dying), recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide.

Many of these symptoms can only be perceived upon speaking to a person, if that person is not masking their illness. Many a depressed individual, due to low self esteem and an engrained sense of defectiveness overcompensate and thus present incredibly well when necessary in a bid to divert attention. In some cases they may believe they do not deserve help, that they are a burden, or the stigma surrounding mental health may suppress their willingness to speak out. For me personally, low self esteem and perfectionism lead me to believe that I was in fact lazy, not ill.

Depression can act in a cyclical way. It’s important to understand that depression doesn’t just mean ‘sad’ it means, a loss of activity, the inability to do. Psychomotor activity refers to the genesis of conscious mental activity, and a key symptom of depression is a loss or extreme increase in psychomotor activity.

Loss in conscious mental activity can of course lead to fatigue, which leads to low feelings of self worth as an individual cannot achieve much in this state and inevitably begins to feel incredibly despondent.

In the same breath, psychomotor agitation makes it near impossible for an individual to concentrate, is incredibly fatiguing, distressing and deleterious to their cognitive functioning. Anxiety and rumination are often co-morbid with MDD and make an individual reluctant or unable to execute daily tasks including asking for help.

One of the treatments for major depressive disorder is cognitive behavioural therapy, whereby the individual addresses their thoughts and reframes the way in which they interpret them, helping them to act in ways promoting healthier choices. Communication is one of the areas many people suffering MDD need help with.

Communication is critical in all walks of life. The level of emotion conveyed by people who do not suffer mental illness in wake of public figures’ passing from suicide should be seen as a communication of a wish to be of help, despite not always knowing how. We would be cruel to read this as an indication that the world only cares about the deaths of the famous. People are shocked by their passing, in light of their apparent ‘successful’ and ‘perfect’ lives. Perhaps these people’s succumbing to their illness in fact sheds light on the prevalence of mental illness in the world. The issue is not the adoration of the famous or the garnering of attention after their death (if you could call it that). The issue is the lack of knowledge surrounding warnings signs and possible interventions.

At many points during my own struggle I felt desolate and alone. Social isolation resulted from my illness. If you had asked me how many friends I had I would have told you that I was not a good enough person to have friends and when suggested by therapists that I reach out to friends, they were met with refusal for I felt I was a burden. This is common for people with depression. This is commonly why friends and family, despite their best efforts, are met with silence or retorts upon trying to communicate their desire to help to those close to them.

In 2014 I’d spent the last 12 to 18 months I’d yo-yoed in and out of depression, been hospitalised and was almost entirely manic, effectively in denial (shout out to the 2013 viola phase, you were incredible and hilarious). I hadn’t seen much of my friends and had completely upended my life, my degree, and out of shame annexed myself from my friends. Though on my 21st birthday, to my amazement, I reached out and an abundance of warm-hearted individuals met me with open arms and compassion. On the morning of my birthday 20 or so earth-bound angels met me at some un-godly hour for breakfast (the only meal of the day I happened to be successfully eating) so I could eat roast tomato, fruit, think about smoked salmon and definitely avoid the cake while they simply existed in my presence without judgement.

I can whole heartedly say that I have NEVER felt more cared for in my life.

The willingness for people to simply BE THERE when someone DOES reach out is the way you can support depression. I’ve had similar experiences since, one of which being the support around my graduation recital when I finally returned to university, and the common thread in each is that through small, manageable gestures people communicated their willingness to care, acceptance of who I was and respect of what I had been through.

The thrust of my rebuttal is this:

Carers don’t always know exactly what to do. There is no “how to” manual. If offering a tribute, a mental health or a donation to a charity is how a person can comprehend expressing their concern...we should thank them. In fact, there isn’t a lot that can actively be done, bar being there for a person when they are ready. All that can be done is to continue raising awareness, promoting respect and creating a platform from which we can discuss mental health clearly without stigma or prejudice for both the sufferers and their carers.

#personal #depression #mentalhealth #mental illness #twitter #facebook #instagram #opinion #suicide #help #mine #me #care #carers #survivor #recovery

3 notes · View notes

stompsite · 7 years ago

Text

The One About Dark Souls

This piece was originally slated for another publication about a year ago. It didn’t get published. So here it is.

This time, I’m confident I have him. Father Gascgoine has been plaguing me for weeks, but I’ve got it all worked out. I enter the arena, pumped up and ready to do this. For a few minutes, everything’s fine, but then I feel that telltale twinge in my hand. Before I know it, the pain’s burning up my arm and into my neck. I have to put the controller down. My poor health has betrayed me again. I’ll never be good enough to beat a Souls game.

Dark Souls is hard. That’s what it’s known for. In a world where the biggest and most successful games are built on promises about playing your own way, Dark Souls is brutal and unrelenting. FromSoftware’s magnum opus demands you take it on its own terms, a strategy that has proved wildly popular; few games can lay claim to a fanbase as passionate and loyal as Dark Souls.

A debate has raged for years over whether or not Dark Souls would benefit from an easy mode. Fans will tell you that no, difficulty is an essential element of the Dark Souls experience, that much of the game’s fun is found in its difficulty, and they have a point. Others, people who have wanted to embrace the series, but derive enjoyment in games from anything other than challenge, believe that Dark Souls would be better off with an easy mode.

Dark Souls joins all-time greats like Doom and Donkey Kong in establishing its own formula. Indie and AAA game developers alike have borrowed heavily from the Souls series, with games like Salt and Sanctuary, Lords of the Fallen, and Nioh. Before we ask ourselves whether Souls should have an easy mode, we need to understand how Souls games work.

Souls works like this: you, the player, have to travel through the game’s world, conquering its challenging bosses. Whenever you defeat an enemy, you earn a currency, called ‘souls,’ or ‘blood echoes,’ or something similar, which you use to purchase upgrades. If you die, you drop your collection of souls and respawn at the last save point, usually a physical location like a bonfire. Crucially, you cannot bank souls. This means that as your power grows, so does the need to explore world, putting yourself at risk, until you have enough souls to purchase more powerful upgrades.

The combat requires you to play thoughtfully. You must keep an eye on your stamina bar, which drains based on your attacks and movement. Draining your stamina at an inopportune time could result in an unfortunate death. Your attacks are usually animation-driven, which means that when you press a button to attack, you cannot break out of the attack animation until it has completed. A properly-timed attack means the difference between life and death in a Souls game.

These mechanics are then set in a world designed to accommodate them. Souls mechanics would never work in a game like The Witcher 3, where players could simply observe enemies and circle around them, avoiding the confrontation entirely. Souls maps, on the other hand, are built with explicit encounter design in mind. An early encounter in Dark Souls 3 features a dragon that will easily roast unsuspecting players. You rush up some stairs, get roasted, die, and start back at the bonfire, wiser now than you were before. As you progress, you discover shortcuts that make traversal significantly easier.

Over time, you learn about the game’s world. What seemed like cruelty at first is playful and mischievous. The world becomes more readable. Dark Souls thrives on initial surprise and eventual mastery. “Git gud,” the fanbase’s mantra, isn’t so much a statement of derision as a description of the player’s evolution. The more you play, the better you become.

One of the big appeals of turn-based games like XCOM and Civilization is the way they convince their players to keep going. “Just one more turn,” you tell yourself, and before you know it, it’s 5 in the morning and you’ve been up all night and have nearly liberated Earth from an alien menace. The Souls games are like that too, but they use difficulty to accomplish the same thing. Get instakilled by a cleverly-placed boss? Before you know it, you’re back at the nearest bonfire. “That was a cheap death,” you tell yourself, “I can totally get past it.”

Dark Souls is a game of mastery, expertly crafting an emotional narrative to accompany your growing skill. Overcoming that seemingly-impossible boss is thrilling. Laughing along at the designer’s jokey ambushes is enjoyable. Souls engages you, draws you in, and delivers some of the best emotional highs in gaming.

It’s unfair to say that Souls is just a hard game; there are thousands of challenging games out there. Dead Rising 2 creates challenge through time management. Ikaruga’s difficulty is based on player reflex. Souls is a game that uses its difficulty tuning to help establish its compelling formula. Without the difficulty, so much of what makes Souls such a brilliant series would be lost.

Despite this, I wish the Souls games had an easy mode, because I can’t play it like you. I want to share in the stories and strategies. I want to beat Father Gascoigne with a Donkey Conga controller and put the video up on YouTube. I want to master the game’s systems. I want to be a part of this passionate and vibrant community so much, but I can’t.

I can’t because my body is shutting down.

Twelve years ago, I got sick. At first, it was just mild fatigue. Doctors said it was some bug that would pass. Family thought it was teenage laziness. Then it got worse. Prior to getting sick, I’d been learning to fly planes. I used to climb regularly at the YMCA. I loved boating--whether it was a 50 mile camping trip or whitewater rafting, I was there. Within months, I’d almost completely lost my ability to function. One doctor told me that, after looking at my lab results, she was amazed I had the strength to get out of bed at all.

It took four years to get a diagnosis, but instead of having some name to give my illness, like cancer or lupus or something, I was told that some genes just didn’t work right. It was a lot more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of it. As a result, I suffer from chronic pain and chronic fatigue, and I also have all the symptoms that come with a severe lack of magnesium, because my body doesn’t absorb it properly.

Chronic fatigue is a deeply misunderstood disease. People don’t get it. If you get cancer or multiple sclerosis, there is some degree of understanding there. Chronic fatigue is much harder to explain. Many people don’t believe it’s real. Some countries classify it as a mental disorder, rather than a physical one. Everything I ever wanted to do in life has been ripped away from me by this illness. Without games writing, which I’m fortunate enough to be able to do from home, I don’t know how I would survive.

During her TED talk on chronic fatigue, documentarian Jennifer Brea pauses and simply states “my brain is not what it used to be.” I know what she means, because I’ve been there. I was so much more than this. Chronic fatigue consumes everything. I’m lucky because for me, there is some degree of hope. With regular treatment, I could go back to living something resembling a normal life, but since the illness limits what jobs I can take, my income is limited, which limits my ability to pay for treatment for my illness. Dealing with my illness is as simple as a potential employer taking a chance on me so I can earn enough to pay for treatment. I don’t know how I’ll ever get to a place where I can afford regular treatment, but I hope that one day I will.

In the meantime, I play games, which are an incredible escape from chronic pain and chronic fatigue. A physical therapist once told me that people like me spend 90% of our attention on keeping pain at bay. Playing games helps offload some of that stress. But, as you can imagine, playing Dark Souls style games for me is a lot harder than it is for most folks, which makes escapism challenging. So many of my friends love finding their Dark Souls groove and playing the game for hours. I’d love to experience that too.

Most of you aren’t likely to have your hands seize up after playing for half an hour, much less be drained for an entire weekend after trying and failing to take down Bloodborne’s Father Gascoigne. An easy mode for me would mean that I could enjoy these games at the same level of effort that you do.

But it’s not that simple. Disability isn’t something most of us talk about openly. Discussing it has a tendency to make people uncomfortable; some even resent having to deal with it. It’s hard to leave the house most days, knowing that most people don’t have the compassion or patience to put up with my illness. Worse still, many people go out of their way to make things worse, justifying it with some weird, self-righteous slant I’ve never understood.

I’ve had employers force me to work in conditions that exacerbated my symptoms because they thought they could convince me that my illness was all in my mind, never mind what the doctor’s notes said. Heck, I got kicked off a podcast; two of my fellow podcasters told me they were doing me a favor. Apparently, cutting off all ties would help me magically get over my illness and manage my life better. When it comes to disability, otherwise good people can do terrible things, going to great lengths to justify their abuse as “for your own good.”

Playing games with my friends or chatting about games on forums, twitter, and Skype gives me the ability to socialize with other people without having to worry about my illness getting in the way. As long as I remain untreated, I’ll be a shut-in, but I can still have human contact through the internet.

While I can talk about my own experiences in great detail, I am far from the only person whose health issues limit gameplay options. Many disabilities limit gameplay. I have a friend with severe arthritis that makes gaming on a console impossible. Two of my friends have epilepsy, which can be triggered by playing certain video games. I’ve met people with color-blindness and deafness; all of these things impact their gameplay experience.

How far should a developer go in ensuring their audience can enjoy their work? Generally, I think it’s best to err on the side of accessibility; if a game can support a color-blind mode, it should. If a designer can ensure that hearing impaired players have good subtitles, their game would benefit from its inclusion.

With my chronic pain and fatigue issues, rapidly mashing buttons in games like Bayonetta or God of War can be physically draining; alternate QTE options would go a long way towards making games more accessible. I was delighted to discover that Dragon Age: Inquisition, a huge, open world game, had an auto-run toggle button. Splatoon offers players a wide variety of playstyles, allowing players to contribute, regardless of ability.

At the same time, I recognize that not every solution is a perfect one; shoot-em-ups like Ikaruga are built to be bright and flashy. Projectiles have to be big and bright enough to dodge. These games can trigger symptoms in epilepsy sufferers, and I don’t think there’s a way to avoid that without fundamentally changing the game’s design.

There is no easy answer, but offering multiple difficulty modes, vision modes, and allowing control customization all go a long way towards keeping games accessible.

Some developers and publishers are going the distance to make sure that disabled gamers are cared for. Microsoft has recently introduced copilot mode, which allows two different controllers to control the same game. The Xbox One Elite controller is great for players with disabilities thanks to its extensive customization options. Unfortunately, Sony does not offer similar disability support, but thanks to devices like Cronusmax Plus, you can use the Xbox One Elite controller on the Playstation 4, or even a mouse and keyboard.

As my health has deteriorated over the past few years, so has my gaming ability. Destiny’s Trials of Osiris event is a competitive multiplayer event where players must win nine matches of five rounds each against an opposing team. I went on a flawless run back in 2015, but I haven’t been since. Controllers are awful for me; playing with them often results in hand cramps and muscle spasms. It’s much less painful to aim with a mouse, so I’ve been eyeing a Cronusmax with an intent to use its mouse and keyboard controls to play Trials of Osiris again.

I was deeply concerned to hear that Jeff Kaplan, Vice President of Blizzard, had argued against the use of these devices. If Kaplan’s shortsighted suggestion became a reality, disabled gamers using assistive technologies would have their consoles rendered useless, not just for Overwatch, but for all games. Kaplan also suggested letting all consoles use mouse and keyboard controls natively, which would be fantastic for disabled gamers, but it’s frustrating to hear that he would even consider the first option.

How would an easy mode in Souls work? It’s simple: let players take a lot more damage before dying. It’s a blast to watch my friends take on the dual-boss fight of Ornstein and Smough, but that fight requires some flawless timing that I can’t always pull off. I tense my muscles when I’m trying to time things perfectly; not having to worry about timing would help me avoid triggering severe pain later on.

Obviously, there are better ways to adjust difficulty, but they would require a lot more work on the developer’s part. Tweaking enemy animations to provide longer ‘tells’ prior to attacking would be a great step. Dark Souls’ movements are animation-based, rather than input-based, which means that once you press a button, your character has to follow through with the animation before making another move. Giving player input priority over animation would let players correct mistakes a lot easier.

To a hardcore Dark Souls player, I’m sure this all sounds like heresy. The suggestions are moot, of course--From is done making Souls games, and it’s unlikely that they would ever patch in an easy mode. Souls is just an example, something I hope that future developers can learn from. I would like to enjoy your favorite game as much as you do, but I can’t, not as it is.

Playing video games literally saved my life. On my worst days, games make life bearable. Games give me community and distraction. So, when it comes to the question of whether Dark Souls have an easy mode, I think the obvious answer is yes. For me, an easy mode would let me play the game like it was meant to be played without worrying about crippling muscle spasms the next day. I just want to enjoy life and spend time with friends; games I can play without agony let me do that.

Ultimately, developers are welcome to do whatever they want to do with the games they want to make. My hope is that this piece initiates a conversation about how to open doors to everyone who wants to play or make video games. Living life with disability is hard mode, and there’s no option to change difficulties. If you have the ability to help us, would you?

#dark souls

31 notes · View notes

gaudeixcc · 4 years ago

Text

Peloton News – Chicken & Pork

Sitting in my kitchen about to start the usual factual tour documentation, I look out of my French doors and into the garden.

Literally, as I am about to punch finger to keyboard, a pigeon flies straight into the window.

20 miles to the South (my internal compass still accurate to within a few degrees) and one Captain Mark McEvoy sits cross-legged on his new yoga mat. He is, I suspect, in a deep meditative trance, communicating with the birds…well, one particular bird. He sees through third-sight the motion of digit towards MacBook and he seizes his opportunity.

There is a loud thud as the feathered fox food clumps against the glass.

Undeterred, I press on though. This is an important story to tell.

Munich really is a beautiful city. It has an unhurried feeling about it. Not too much hustle and bustle, but just enough. Clean and tidy everywhere and a sort of low-rise architecture with church spires scattered about the place, London this is not.

Sitting in the city-centre roof garden sipping beers with Macca, overlooking the city was a lovely start to this mini cycling trip.

We chatted about this and that. Furious disagreement on Coronavirus not even in the air, let alone the conversation at this point. (I believe that we need to be careful and manage the infection as the human price is significantly larger than the financial one. Macca believes that we should inject everyone in the eye with the virus and that the strong will survive and the weak will be thinned out nicely).

The drama of the evening was the arrival of Tommy Trusler with an arm in a sling (his own arm I should add). An outrageous rugby manoeuvre had seen him hit the deck and pain arrive with a jolt. Within 2 minutes of the news landing Macca had completely diagnosed both the problem and the rehabilitation period, had put the Truslers’ collective minds at ease and then laid out a spread of complementary peanuts to settle everyone down.

Next morning, the drive to our first port of call was largely uneventful. Deep into Italy and with a further 2 hours still to go to get to the eventual destination of lake Garda, we stopped for the day 1 ride.

The Sella Ronda. 42 miles and nearly 7,000 foot of elevation. This was going to be tough. JT lead the pack out and immediately into the first tunnel. Somehow, I had found myself in second position. With this group, this is not a position which I belong in.

I didn’t know James had an uneasy phobia of tunnels. Why would I? Within 100 yards of setting off we entered an uphill sloping tunnel. There was a faint parping sound from the rear of James bicycle and he was off. For the first 15 seconds I thought it was just me getting used to the normal pace. I started panting. By 30 seconds my legs had started to squeal at the pace of the relentlessly pedalling Trusler. By the time we exited the tunnel my lungs were burning. They took 30 mins to lose that feeling. Seriously. 30 fucking minutes. We were less than 10 minutes into the toughest ride of the trip and we’d effectively started our marathon with a flat-out 400 metre race. I don’t remember Mo Farah ever adopting this tactic in the Flora 26….

Most tours I’m middle-to-lower Peloton. This mini-tour and I knew I was going to be at the back.

JT and Macca were known quantities. I’d also ridden with Neal and knew he was up there in the Macca-sphere somewhere. Andrew was an unknown quantity. JT had described him as ‘liking to get out front early before settling in to a rhythm. Strong rider’.

Over the course of the 3 rides I would describe Andrew a strong rider who likes to get out front early before settling into a rhythm.

What is particularly unusual is that in this instance James displayed some genuine human assessment to his rider categorisation. Normally his brain places people into 3 buckets.

‘Bucket 1, riders who are the same as, or better than I am. Bucket 2. Shit riders. Bucket 3. Riders ability unknown as mentally feeble.’

I know he sees me as firmly having two feet in bucket 3 with aspirations to climb into bucket 2. Macca has me pegged at the pre-bucket stage.

The ride finished with over 40 miles under the belt and nigh on 7,000 foot of climbing. That’s punchy in my book.

Friday’s ride was not much easier either. In fact, with the mileage in the legs from day 1, it felt the toughest of the days by a good measure. The climb after lunch was fairly relentless with a big high-teens ramp toward the end.

Whilst on the climb I came across a stationary JT. A few weeks earlier he had allegedly been severely injured in a freak accident at Center Parcs involving a waterslide and the wrangling of a small child. I didn’t like to probe. This injury however, whilst not apparent at the time (nor visible…. Nor complained about….or even talked about it seems) suddenly re-appeared on the ascent. A grudging acknowledgment of the severity of day 1 along with the unrelenting nature of the back-to-back-ness of day 2 was murmured.

Thrilled to have company at the back, I chatted light-heartedly until we arrived at Andrew, stationary on the steepest part of the climb so far, looking pretty fed up.

The sight of him stopped gave my brain all the excuses it needed to deploy the old executive decision to down-tools and break out the food.

I sat down under a tree.

I quite like sitting down.

The other two then buggered off.

I remained sat down.

The crest was only about 200 yards away as it turned out. When I got there, I felt done. Not since the last time, the fountain at Malaga I think, I had a little lie down. Again, not what you expect your average cyclist to be doing whilst out on a ride. I breathed deeply whilst listening the chitter chatter of the fellas discussing James’ alleged knee injury.

After the ‘CenterParcs vs small child’ explanation, Macca dwelt.

He narrowed his eyes.

There was complete silence.

His semi-sentient neural connection to the world wide web had latched on to a local wi-fi hot-spot and he had deployed a legion of web-spiders all armed with binary details of all of James’ symptoms onto the net.

His eyes lost all focus momentarily.

After a few seconds I think the first of the spiders returned as Macca suddenly arrived back in the present, eyes squeezed into a defined narrow gaze.

‘I think you have a damaged meniscus and in all probability a cyst on the inside of your knee’.

James pondered this for a moment. ‘You’re probably right’.

Behind Macca’s eyes, the fire raged. Fury and bile broiled in the pit of his stomach as adrenalin coursed through his arteries and soaked his brain.

Deep in his mind his basal ganglia fired messages to all parts of his thinking system and from the cold dark recesses of a structure billions of development years in the making, a dark, deep, cold voice uttered a single word……’Probably?’

Macca wanted to grab James by the throat and lift him off the floor and squeeze… his mind’s favoured Darth Vader manoeuvre. He wanted to lean in to him. Nose nearly touching nose. And quietly, in spittle filled words say ‘Probably?’

What he actually did was imperceptibly shrug his shoulders and gentle raise his eyebrows a couple of millimetres and softly said ‘seems likely’. The web spiders had started fighting amongst themselves. Macca calmed them down.

The rest of the ride was smattered with stops for food and some post-lunch ridiculousness in the form of immediate 20% climbs out of the town.

By the time the day had ended, we’d caught 2 cross-lake ferries, ridden a brutal 50 miles on top of the previous days efforts and were back at our lovely apartment for after-ride chitter chatter.

Saturday was nearly with us and general consensus was a rest day was required. All agreed.

The conversation slid to another climb which both Neil and James had done in the local area. Both riders had not managed to conquer this particular beast.

Massive gradient, brutal in a way that Mortirolo was…. but worse.

Brilliant. This was my chance. I’d been dying to put the needle into someone at some point. I was fed up of being the shit rider, now was my chance to lash out at the talent.

‘Wow….. I bet Macca could do it’.

That little bomb-shell deployed, I thought I’d settle back and watch it all unfold.

Whilst there was plenty of chatter about it, the white glove was not picked up off the floor. This was terrible. If Dripping had been here, the moment it was suggested he would have had a foot in a pink Rapha shoe, gels quickly thrust into jersey pocket, car keys in mouth, ready to go.

He would have failed of course, but Jesus H Christ he would have given it everything….!

Macca wouldn’t have failed. He is in phenomenal shape at the moment. Low on weight, big on power and with a ‘I will not be fucking beaten’ mindset, he would have crawled through broken glass to come out on top.

Still, I couldn’t convince him to give it a go. If he would have, I would have gone too. I would have given it a go. I would have failed. My mind, on seeing the ridiculous uncomfortableness of it all would have replayed the fact that Neil and James had failed, therefore there’s no shame in stopping, sitting down and having a bite to eat.

‘You know what today is don’t you?’ I parried in one last attempt to make the great seem mortal.

‘Chicken Saturday’.

It was a cheap shot. It was a final shot.

It didn’t work.

A great rest day followed where we swam in the lake, ate amazing food, sipped Negronis and generally relaxed in the loveliness of it all. Even went on a tour of a vineyard where unbeknownst to us, a small rodent-like creature ate half of James’ under-bonnet Jaguar.

The final day of riding was an early start and a just beautiful ride up and around the lake. Amazing scenery and some really lovely climbs.

What I came to realise during the course of the trip is that the Peloton needs its fair spread of performers. Being slower than the rest meant I rode pretty much every climb alone. Whilst Macca, Neil, Andrew and JT managed to broadly cycle tighter (I am assuming…didn’t actually witness much of this with my own eyes), I was at the back. Pushing against no-one. The other fellas had some competition. One trying to drop the other etc. This meant they all pushed hard, very hard at some point. At the back, a push resulted in the same thing as just grinding it out. Progress up an empty climb. It was not an easy 3 days of cycling by any means. 40 miles and 7,000 feet of climbing never would be. But did I ever empty the tank? No. Did I track someone down, hold their back wheel and then fuck the hell off when I sensed weakness? No.

For that sort of cycling in general, I need to rest of the lower-order Peloton and in particular, Dripping. I fucking hate being beaten by him. He has more capability and more sheer determination to suffer pain than I do. I beat him because the one thing I do focus on with a bit of bloody-mindedness is training. The day he does the longer training efforts, sharpens the weight, then I’m fucked. In the meantime, I keep plugging away and am just about keeping my nose in front…..just.

Cycling is different things to everyone. This trip also underlined the sheer beauty of the world we live in. Whilst cycling up the climbs I contemplated what was around me. I even took the odd photo. Competition and personal performance have their place. But…. and it’s a big but, for us mere mortals who don’t do this for a living, more eyes on the scenery and less on the heart-rate is probably a good thing. Perhaps in time as our performance inevitably wains the balance will shift a little and we won’t mourn the loss too much as we’ll appreciate the gain.

The white Jaguar piloted its way back toward Munich and made its way closer to my absolute tour highlight… ‘Pork Knuckle Sunday’. What a way to follow the disappointment of ‘Chicken Saturday’. Along with gravy, chips and a massive fucking pint of lager (technically not a pint, I know, but you get my drift).

James, not a driver for any of the world’s slow lanes, gave the cat a fair thump away from the service station following the pit stop. Pulling out (at velocity) onto the motorway, he snagged a yellow ‘engine warning’ light and the car went in to limp mode.

Macca’s eyes hazed over.

‘Please tell me the symptoms’ said Macca (whose voice tonality had suddenly gone all Alexa).

After James’ incoherent babble I casually thought for a moment ‘probably an emission thing after you hoofed it’ said I, not really caring as we still seemed to be moving and pork knuckle appeared to be at no particular risk.

There was a very quiet snort from the back-seat. Almost as if Holmes had just heard Watson’s completely amateur explanation of the what had happened to the murder victim in the hours preceding his grisly death.

‘I suspect’ started Sherlock McEvoy, ‘That an air and/or vacuum hose of some variety has become dethatched leading to the engine switching quickly into a self-preservation limp mode. Likely cause? The Bavarian crested marmot. They like to digest rubber in the confines of a warm bonneted car’.

As dusk approached, the web-spiders where shepherded back to their pens and a calm quiet settled into the car.

In what has been an incredibly unstable year, I feel lucky that a flight to Munich booked pre-pandemic for some cycling in Germany ended up in Italy and played out exactly as it had. 2021 seems an awfully long way away. Success would be a full Peloton tour and narrow squinted eyes towards Dripping’s rear wheel.

Get out and ride my little schweinshaxe.

Hoppo

#PelotonNews

0 notes