[ It's bad enough sometimes having things trigger memories or feelings or mental images. But while there are awful, terrible days, it's still gotten better over time. It's been hard, because getting better takes work, and he is so so tired sometimes. Sometimes he just avoids it and denies any problems, but inevitably he'll hit some kind of wall privately and have to acknowledge it. But he has to deal with it alone. His friends don't deserve the burden and he doesn't trust therapists, not after the doctors in the Thunderbolts program, not after Moonstone and the doctors in the asylum, not after being kept miserable and amnesiac in the Initiative.
[He knows he should probably reach out, see if Doc Samson is a) alive and b) available but the squirming anxiety around talking to someone makes it hard to reach out even to him, the one mental health professional that genuinely helped him.]
[Still, he's gotten at least a little better...but this wasn't just some kind of trigger in his environment, this was being dragged back and dunked into a sea of hate and guilt and self-loathing, during a time he struggled to feel like he deserved anything else.]
[His brain, like many people with PTSD, has irregular pathways and chemistry. His response to outright re-experiencing the memories is to dissociate a little to protect itself, something he fortunately rarely faces anymore. Jason can likely feel the slight withdraw, the distance, the floating sensation.]
[It's even harder by virtue of the fact they're both locked in some weird memory-space with only their own self-concepts of their physical bodies. There's no outside stimuli to focus on. But he feels the touch on his shoulder. It's something external, a nudge they're both contextualizing as physical. He turns his head to look at Jason's hand, surprised to see it there.]
Hmm?
[He says it like someone trying to pretend they're following a conversation with someone else.]
[He pulls his thoughts together just a little, looks at him with wide eyes.]
You don't have to be nice to me. You shouldn't be nice to me. Not over this.
[Why is a crime lord being nice to him? The thought is loud enough for Jason to hear. That makes even less sense than some other people being nice because some people he can chalk it up to them being too nice for their own good.]
no subject
[He knows he should probably reach out, see if Doc Samson is a) alive and b) available but the squirming anxiety around talking to someone makes it hard to reach out even to him, the one mental health professional that genuinely helped him.]
[Still, he's gotten at least a little better...but this wasn't just some kind of trigger in his environment, this was being dragged back and dunked into a sea of hate and guilt and self-loathing, during a time he struggled to feel like he deserved anything else.]
[His brain, like many people with PTSD, has irregular pathways and chemistry. His response to outright re-experiencing the memories is to dissociate a little to protect itself, something he fortunately rarely faces anymore. Jason can likely feel the slight withdraw, the distance, the floating sensation.]
[It's even harder by virtue of the fact they're both locked in some weird memory-space with only their own self-concepts of their physical bodies. There's no outside stimuli to focus on. But he feels the touch on his shoulder. It's something external, a nudge they're both contextualizing as physical. He turns his head to look at Jason's hand, surprised to see it there.]
Hmm?
[He says it like someone trying to pretend they're following a conversation with someone else.]
[He pulls his thoughts together just a little, looks at him with wide eyes.]
You don't have to be nice to me. You shouldn't be nice to me. Not over this.
[Why is a crime lord being nice to him? The thought is loud enough for Jason to hear. That makes even less sense than some other people being nice because some people he can chalk it up to them being too nice for their own good.]