#it’s not at all the fault of the person who got duped by google translate for this one by German is weird but my fingers were ITCHING for it

[void-and-virtue]

I’ve been down this mental path so many times as I (a German native speaker) try to figure out how they would say the things they say in German, in German

I think what’s really fun in this particular instance is that “Zigarettenanzünder” seems less specific than “dashboard lighter” at first glance bc it doesn’t mention a dashboard and as such doesn’t imply a car. The thing is though that literally any other kind of lighter you’d use for a cigarette that I can think of rn would just be called “Feuerzeug” without using the word cigarette at all bc we’d consider its use implied. Which means the specific part about “Zigarettenanzünder” in German is the cigarette bit (intended use) and not the dashboard (where to find the tool).

Now you can argue that Andrew might know that one because he smokes. Or you can say that he’d understand it just fine bc “Anzünder” is close enough to “anzünden” (to light sth), which is a mundane enough word used for lighting candles and stuff and also in the context of arson so he might have stumbled across that one before. It’s also fair to think that he’d be able to guess from the context of the word for cigarette and the shape of Neil’s wounds (not a cigarette burn itself but something worse). I think you can even argue that he could know Zeugenschutzprogramm on the base of him being a criminal justice major and seeming entirely like the kind of person who (especially while on drugs) would go into boredom-induced thought spirals during class that could very well include him trying to translate everything his teacher is saying to German (and looking up words he doesn’t know every 0.2 seconds, which he ofc then remembers forever). The possibilities are endless and one is funnier than the last

I feel like it’s definitely for the most part a case of Neil knowing a word and knowing how to use a word and Andrew understanding it bc he has enough of an understanding of the language in general to get a lot of stuff from context or partial understanding of a word, but him not necessarily being in a position where he would’ve been able to form that sentence first/ask for it specifically/use the right word for it without indirectly being told what it was first. As for how Neil would know,,,, I bet there’s a bunch of solid headcanons stored in there that range from okay to terribly angsty to hilarious, but I’m honestly just content to suspend my disbelief for this one the same way I do for Andrew’s memory and let the silly little mafia runaway have his silly little languages

[cuteandtwisted]

hi wiss! not a prompt but i just read your birthday fic for Even and I found it so touching how you treat his MI with so much care. i don't mean to intrude but do you have an MI? it sometimes sounds like you speak from experience. Do you or someone close to you have a mental illness? and what did Even teach YOU?

Hmm. That’s an interesting question. Interesting because I don’t really know., because I’m not sure I’m articulate enough to answer it. Also it’s 8am and I still haven’t slept/been stranded in airports after 3 flights. And I’m typing this on my phone. It’s funny how I always leak and ramble about myself when I’m exhausted.

Long story short: I’ve never seen a therapist and my mental state is based on what I think I know/things I read. It’s all in my head pretty much, which I realize is the same as assessing yourself physically without going to an actual Doctor. Mental illness was always so taboo in my culture growing up. It was considered a curse, an impairment, a sign of weakness of character or of bad karma. And it didn’t only speak for you and your deeds. It also spoke for your entire family. Mental illness was something we only heard about but never got to live through. It was that thing that happened to others or to that one obscure/distant family member. It wasn’t exactly real and it wasn’t nuanced either. It was a death sentence so to speak. It was an ending in and of itself.

My first direct exposure to someone with a mental illness was to my uncle. He’s my father’s youngest brother and we’re barely 10 years apart. What’s most vivid about him in my childhood memories are his height, his silky hair, his talent for drawing, although he’s never had any training, and his tendency to smoke too many cigarettes and drink too many cups of black coffee. He also happened to be schizophrenic and delirious. His symptoms started around the time his parents got a divorce and his father (aka my grandpa) got married to one of his students (i know. Wtf). He got misdiagnosed and his meds fucked with his mind a lot. He never got to finish school or pursue his dream to be an artist. I’m always sad when I think of him because he is the perfect example of someone who could have been helped but who was cursed, not by his pained mind, but by society’s stigma. He always kisses my forehead when he sees me and it always breaks my heart when I remember how scared I used to be of him when I was younger. It wasn’t my fault, I later realized. Everyone around me kept telling me that i was to feel afraid. I often hear about him ending up at the police station and at the hospital, and I often heard my grandmother complain about how he ruined her life with his sickness. Terrifying, isn’t it? It doesn’t encourage anyone who might be feeling inadequate to ever speak up.

I personally started to feel /weird/ when I reached the age of 13/14. My parents said I read books I wasn’t supposed to have read when I was younger and that it messed with my thoughts and my mind. I loved philosophy, still do. Questioning my own existence became a thing I practiced religiously. At one point I was convinced I had superpowers and that I could escape reality whenever I wished to. Sometimes, it was pleasant but not really. Like being tickled. It makes you laugh but you don’t necessarily enjoy the loss of control. I thought I could control it, but then I realized that it was controlling me. Sometimes it was terrifying because I didn’t know what was wrong with me and Google wasn’t extremely helpful either. Later I realized that I was experiencing depersonalization/derealization and that I wasn’t that special. Recoiling into one’s mind to the point of no longer being able to perceive reality was something many others experienced. I was almost disappointed to learn that I wasn’t special.

I went through some terrible experiences around that time and my moods started fluctuating. I would go from elated to extremely down, never leaving my room. My parents were constantly traveling so they didn’t really notice. It didn’t help that I was an extremely proud, reserved, contrary, and cunning teenager. My mind was my best asset and I used to my advantage. Another thing that duped most was my ability to pretend that I was fine all the time. I could be crippled with sorrow and still have a smile plastered across my face. I could entertain groups of 10 for hours then go home and cry until sleep found me. I was proud, stubborn, ‘strong’. And strong people didn’t admit to feeling weak and needing to just sleep it off sometimes.

At one point, I convinced myself that I was bipolar. I even wrote it in my diary and my anonymous blogs back then. I didn’t know much about it. I just knew that my mood swings and my depersonalization episodes had to be attributed to something. Again, i never saw a therapist, so it was all BS. I also never splurged to the point of mania. (However, I do spend money recklessly sometimes. I do jump on flights at the last moment, buy the most stupid shit just for the heck of it, shove my tongue down strangers’ throats just to feel something, drink until I’m blind and throwing up against walls. I do feel larger than life sometimes, slightly invincible, convinced I’m special and have some insight into human nature, convinced i can see right through people and read their minds. I have my moments. But don’t we all?

I also do feel down sometimes to the point of not leaving my bed for days, ignoring everyone’s calls and messages, and just curling around myself in the dark. I do. I do. But don’t we all?

Control and pride are all I have, however. So you won’t find me whining about my feelings or my mood swings in real life.)

I kept entertaining my self-diagnosis and remained convinced I was bipolar until I first met a diagnosed bipolar person at the age of 17. I didn’t know he was bipolar back then, just that people called him ‘crazy’ and a ‘fucking liar’. I knew him as my boyfriend’s best friend/neighbor. I thought he hated me for the longest time. I even imagined that he was secretly gay and in love with my boyfriend. But he wasn’t. I asked him point blank why he hated me one day and he replied with “i don’t. I’m actually in love with you.” I still remember that day so vividly. My boyfriend and I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.

My bf and I eventually broke up, after which he got shipped to another city, but I maintained my weird friendship with his best friend/neighbor. He transferred to my school when we were juniors and I took it upon myself to introduce him to people and show him around. He walked me home on Friday afternoons and made me playlists which we listened to on his iPod. We shared his earphones as we walked to my house. He started writing me poems and posting them on facebook. He called me his 'colombe’ which translates to 'his dove’ and he became fixated on me to the point of following me in the streets when I was out with friends. I remember the night he stood outside of a McDonalds with a cigarette between his lips staring at me through the window. I started feeling scared. I rejected his advances and his poems were dark and accusatory now.

He came to school with a bandaged wrist once and i was afraid of asking him what happened. My english teacher pulled me aside at the end of class that day and asked me if it was true that I had pushed him down the stairs and caused his wrist injury. I denied it because it wasn’t and i started feeling slightly terrified. The guy left a note in my bag that day and stopped me during recess to ask me to not open it until i got home.

I opened it as soon as I finished an exam early and went outside waiting for everyone else to come out. It was dark and chilly. It was November. The note he wrote me was another poem and it was written in ?blood? I was shocked and I questioned it as much as I could. It could have been red nail polish. It could have been anything. But why do this to me? Why? I didn’t understand. He came out of the school and i snapped and it was just the two of us in the dark. He had followed me outside but i was so angry and confused that i failed to see that it was just us two now. I asked him what the hell was going on and he said that he cut himself because of me and of how i treated him and that he wrote me a poem with his blood. I think i might have called him crazy. I don’t remember. I was experiencing shock in its purest form so I don’t remember everything I said.

And then he hit me. He shoved me hard against the wall and he hit me across the face, then he said that he loved me and that I didn’t understand. I still remember how the blow felt like nothing. The worst had already happened. I internalized that hit so much, and perhaps I still do. I was tiny compared to him. I can fight people, but I was shocked by how utterly powerless I was at that moment. My limbs had just stopped functioning. And to this day I still find it hard to let my guards down around men or anyone physically capable of overpowering me. Biology, and all. My best friend came out of nowhere and a fight broke because he had me pressed against a wall. Then we all went home. I never told anyone that he hit me that night. I was too proud. I still can’t believe that it’s something that happened to me.

I cut my bangs to the side that night to hide my bruise, and thankfully I have brown complexion so it wasn’t that bad. I avoided him like the plague after that, even when he crawled back to me begging for forgiveness. He later sent me long messages explaining his diagnosis and his bipolar and how he had developed an ‘obsession’ with me, how it wasn’t really him doing those things. But I couldn’t find it in me to forgive him. Being mentally ill doesn’t condone shitty behavior, it doesn’t condone physically assaulting someone. I don’t know. He traumatized me.

I developed some sort of stigma after that. I was kind of like S3 Isak (which is why i think the show changed me so fucking much) I 'chose’ to stay away from 'mentally ill people’ to 'protect myself’.

The guy in question did continue being a shitty person until everyone around town knew to avoid him. He played girls and called them sluts and lied about everything and everyone and he was just pretty horrible. And it took me some time to understand that it wasn’t because he was bipolar. It was simply because he was an asshole.

I did develop empathy for him later on when I stopped being so angry and blaming myself for everything all the time. I guess I realized that some have it harder than others? Maybe his shitty behavior was a byproduct of how he had been treated so far? Maybe it was his only outlet, his only way of lashing out against the world for 'inconveniencing’ him with an imbalanced brain? I don’t know. But i forgive him now. Because I’m sure he wasn’t always terrible. I’m sure he has lived through his fair share of horrible things. I’m sure those weeks he spent in bed were daunting. I’m sure people weren’t always gentle with him. I forgive him but i will never forget. Because some people go through hell and still choose to be kind. Because what he did, using his bipolar to justify his awful actions, is selfish and only perpetuates the stigma around bipolar.

I guess this is why SKAM changed my life so drastically? The only depiction of bipolar i had been exposed to was from this guy who traumatized me and all the crap on TV that either romanticized it or simply turned it into a trope and showed people who suffer from it as helpless and completely delirious with no chance of ever leading a normal life. I’m grateful for SKAM because not only did it erase my previous biased and erroneous views which were influenced by a rather unfortunate event, but it also made me do research and read about it and learn more. I fell in love with Even and his mind and his kindness and all the love he has in him. Life can throw crap at you, but you can still choose to be kind. And that’s what Even and his story taught me. Mental illness is not a death sentence and you can still be loved and happy

Back to your question, I guess, I still haven’t paid a visit to a therapist lol. I’m scared i might find out something about myself that i won’t like. I’m scared of being called out on my bullshit. I’m scared of leaking like a broken faucet. I get dizzy thinking about some of the crap I went through and I sometimes think it’s better left in pandora’s box, that it’s better to keep the lid on. I don’t know. Sometimes my life feels like some really badly written CW show. But I’m still happy with where I am today. Always. One day i’ll organize my thoughts and write something meaningful about the storms in my mind. But until then, i’ll borrow the voice of fictional characters to work through some of my personal experiences.

Sorry about the rambling. I’m SO angry at Delta airlines right now. I had to channel that anger into something else haha.