#for all the feral qualities that remain - she *sounds* more sophisticated these days at least

[miqojak]

23. What emotion is the hardest for your OC to process? How about express?

Edgy OC Asks

This has been tough because... so many emotions are hard for her to process and express. Spending your youth in a concentration camp doesn't really help you realize your social potential, or explore many complex emotions, now how to express them appropriately. She retreated into survival mode, and has greeted life with that sort of expression for as long as she's known: everyone is a threat, no one can be trusted, look out for yourself. There aren't a lot of emotions involved in that kind of lifestyle besides fear, hate, loneliness, and paranoia.

In more than one of her old writings, I know I've expressly had her talk about how hard of a time she's having with... just caring about other people again - how to do it (without hurting them in the process). She's been in this hermit shell, still operating from a place of fear and paranoia and hate, and that does not a good partner or friend make. She was a shit girlfriend to a few people, though it really did help make in-roads to helping her understand what's an appropriate response... and what very much isn't (though that's not to say she won't still burn your whole wardrobe, if you're her partner, and you dress like a homeless clown >_>). She also got severely hurt, herself, in learning what it's like to be close to people as an adult - and although she was expecting it all along, it just sort of made it hurt that much more. How could she have let someone hurt her? Every emotion around that abusive relationship confused her, frankly. She doesn't understand affection - she feels it, most assuredly. But she was trying to be 'normal' for someone, despite always saying she never wanted to compromise who she is for anyone else. Then he hurt her. Why would she compromise who she is? Why didn't she hurt him back? Why did she care about people at all, after learning what it's like to lose literally everyone she'd ever known?

Why can she go about her life thinking of people as lesser than her, as mere 'sheep' - and then the instant she sees someone in a situation like she came from (living on the streets/being a refugee/immigrant/etc)... she gives too many fucks. She sees herself, there, and no one to help her. She sees her family, her people, her nation hungry and in rags - and she can't help but want to help.

She's made a lot of progress! But I don't know, to be honest, how far that progress extends. It's a bit like contemplating how you'd explain the concept of love to your pet cat, or how you might have it respond with its perceptions of as much - it knows it wants to be around you, and mark things you touch! It wants to sleep on you, and hear your heartbeat. It craves the touch of your hand, the gentle scritch in its favorite place; it's excited when you come in the room, and sad when you're gone from it - but what is 'love'? Could it truly articulate a concept that even varies from person to person? Does it matter that it can't - do you love it any less because it can't understand the concept of love the way you do, and express it the same way you do?

One of the hardest things she's ever done was recently, really - in trusting Ketsuchi enough to openly discuss what scares her, and why. To talk about fear is to give it form - to acknowledge that you can be afraid of something, and give that power to another (though he had long known about her issue with Garleans). She spoke about, really, not knowing if what she was doing was... okay to do? And it's scary for her to admit she doesn't have all the answers, but even scarier to admit out loud that she doesn't understand or process emotions like everyone else, and knows that what she's thinking of doing is probably something she should get input on because of how hard it is for her to appropriately process things. And having someone else turn the situation around and frame it differently helped! (To some degree.) So... she knows she's got lots of issues with processing her emotions, and she's working on it where she can... and where she wants to - the concept of love was one she was happy to continue not believing in, but she's begun to ask herself what 'love' really is, in the last couple years, and if she might in fact have already fallen prey to it.