#as someone dealing with a fuckload if mental health issues and little support

[symbioticsimplicity]

So @stranger-rants got me thinking.

I know Dacre looked into a few different mental illnesses (DID, anxiety) for Billy, and it really does come through.

I personally feel like his symptoms seem most like BPD, pre-possession at least.

He doesn't quite have enough of a split to argue for DID, or at least they don't focus on him enough to get a definitive idea that he's got alters. I think the possession is as close as we get to that.

He's definitely got anxiety issues, though I think they're a part of a larger condition. While BPD usually develops in young adulthood, and Billy has clearly been having problems for quite a while, I don't think that's enough to rule it out entirely.

These are some of the symptoms of BPD taken from the mayo clinic's website. I don't know about you but I see a lot of similarities there.

It very much lines up with how Billy is shown to behave in canon. And given that back in 1980 the conversation around mental health was still riddled with stigma, if it was brought up at all? I'd be surprised if he had any idea what was up with him. Taken with his home life, the kid would have been basically drowning all the time. The adults in his life didn’t help him, since they saw him as both mature (since he looks much older than he is) and troublesome. Most of them took advantage of him even more, which is all too common for people with mental illnesses to experience.

Doesn't justify him hurting people, sure, but it sure does explain it.