Chapter Text
He was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Trying to get closure for events that should’ve never happened. Which wasn’t new or special, but was certainly difficult, and figuring it out was harder than he ever expected. It seemed to come from his lack of childhood, which, fair, was certainly a prominent factor in the fact he had trouble with lots of emotions, but---well, you do what you can with what you got. And right now, he had a second chance, and he was gonna fuckin’ use it, damnit!
Wasn’t that ironic? The boy who never lived, learning to love day by day. The boy who was all alone, learning to trust others. The boy with no real family, learning how to be one.
It all started when he had found a book in the back of Puffy’s office. How to Unfuck Yourself: A Guide for Maturing, Growing, and Learning. The cover had depicted a sad face with scribbled-on angry eyebrows. He had picked it up for the swear, interested in how a book with such a comically cynical title had made it into print. (At the time, his thoughts were more along the line of “hey, that’s the f-word! I also say the f-word sometimes!”) and he had actually been intrigued by the blurb. “Learn to forgive and forget others, and most importantly, yourself. Become someone new by learning to embrace the old.”
Tommy had waved to Puffy where she was stacking papers, paying no attention to the boy she was supposed to be therapising, or whatever. “Yo, can I take this? I promise I’ll return it.”
Puffy looked up, face un-creasing from a frown into a neutral expression. “What is it? Oh, sure. I haven’t read that one in ages. You can keep it, if you like. Now, how’s the writing been going?”
"Have you heard of the marshmallow test?
Known as one of the most renowned experiments on "delayed gratification" in children, the premise is this: give a child a marshmallow. Tell them 'wait 20 minutes, and I'll give you another. If you eat it now, you don't get the other reward.' Simple enough, of course. It makes sense to a lot of us; who wouldn't rather have two marshmallows than one? But! In many cases, the children with worse home lives (who didn't understand the ideas that others were taught) are the ones who eat the marshmallow immediately. After all, why wait for something that *might* happen, when you could have something that will happen *now?*
Interestingly, a followup test that was supposed to measure the success of children based on early experiences revealed that sometimes, the promises children are given impact their ability to make decisions. A broken promise before the experiment meant that the child would likely not wait for the reward. A kept promise, on the other hand, helped the children trust more and wait for the end result. This is seen in other areas of many lives today. Kept promises are sometimes the most important factors in a decision."
Tommy shut the book. "I feel exposed," he muttered.
So Tommy had read. Enveloped, one might say. Like osmosis. And so far, the book had been helping him; he was learning to forgive people on the basis of (as the book put it), “screwing the idiots who want to keep you down” and he thought someday soon he might just randomly march up to people and ask them questions to understand their backstory.
No one knew better than him that some things were just out of your control, and some people just responded to their circumstances, like an “if, then” command. If you are happy, then smile. If you are threatened, then lash out. Like that.
But the issue with that is that it was something animals did, whereas humans could look at a situation and react according to their ideas, not feelings. And once he realized that he was acting more animal than human (If faced with big problem, then make lots of little ones was an excellent example) he reacted by trying to change that. Which was kind of animalistic in itself, but whatever.
Anyway, he had started smaller. Fix the small things, then the big ones.