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Everyone thinks that Robby is getting better. After getting out of Cobra Kai, finally having a decent relationship with his dad, forming a friendship with Miguel, and returning to the healthy friendships that he had before the school fight and everything that came after it, he should be getting better. His depression should have gone away. And everyone thought that he was better.
And he was better, just not as much better as everyone seemed to think that he was.
But Robby didn’t want them to know that. They were so proud of him for standing up for himself and getting out of a bad situation. Robby didn’t want to disappoint them by telling them that he really wasn’t as healed as they seemed to think that he was.
So, there are things that Robby doesn’t tell his friends.
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1.Sometimes, it’s hard for him to eat. Especially when he is by himself. He always hears Silver’s voice in his head telling his students that if they ate too much and became overweight they wouldn’t be able to fight as well. Robby knows that he isn’t fat. He knows that he’s not overweight, but sometimes he feels like he is. He hears that voice in his head telling him not to eat too much or he’ll gain weight and he listens. It’s hard to ignore when he is alone. If he didn’t have a family looking out for him and making sure that he ate, Robby honestly would not. There are times when Robby would go days without eating, entirely because that voice is too loud. Except he doesn’t go days without eating, even though the voice makes him want to because he knows that the voice is wrong. He knows that he needs to eat to stay strong, no matter what the voice in his head tells him.
It was easier to ignore the voice when there were people around him. When his family had dinners together, or when he and Miguel went out to eat with their friends it was easier. The presence of other people reminds him that he is not alone, even when he thinks that he is sometimes. They can distract him from the voice and he can actually eat a decent meal.
But he doesn’t tell anyone about this, not about the voice or how hard it is to eat sometimes. He doesn’t tell anyone that he doesn’t hate the feeling of hunger because if he’s hungry, at least he’s not gaining any weight.
Robby manages to eat enough to keep his weight consistent enough that no one notices his struggle, but that doesn’t mean that the struggle isn’t there.
But he doesn’t want anyone to know anyway, because then he would just be a burden to them and Robby can take care of himself anyway.
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2. Robby also doesn’t tell his friends just how hard it is for him to get a decent amount of sleep. Most of Robby’s friends know that he has difficulty sleeping because of his anxiety, but they don’t understand just how intense this difficulty sleeping is. They don’t understand that Robby’s lucky if he gets 4 hours of sleep in a night. They don’t know how often he wakes up in the middle of the night because he has a nightmare. They all think that he sleeps until 10 o’clock in the morning when, in reality, he’s been awake since 7:30. He just doesn’t have the energy to move.
Robby knows that he needs to sleep more in order to be healthy, but it’s not really his fault that he can’t sleep. It’s not his fault that he’ll wake up having a panic attack at 3 in the morning and be unable to fall back asleep. It’s not his fault that his brain won’t shut up.
Robby’s tried so many things to get to sleep and stay asleep, but nothing works. Not milk, or warm tea, or calming noises, or even melatonin help Robby to sleep. Nothing helps.
But Robby doesn’t tell his friends about this because there’s nothing that they can do about it anyway. He might as well struggle alone and avoid worrying them.
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3. The last thing that Robby doesn’t tell his friends is about the intrusive thoughts. The self-harming ones. They don’t come a lot, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist or that he can ignore them. It’s so goddamn hard to ignore them.
Robby’s friends know that he had a rough time when he was just getting out of Cobra Kai. They knew that he was suicidal at the time. Or, if they didn’t know, they could all at least guess based on the kinds of jokes that he makes. The kinds of jokes that only someone who has felt that way makes.
They all think that Robby is better, and he is, somewhat.
What they don’t know is that sometimes the suicidal thoughts come back. Sometimes he still wants to die, and he’s not really sure why because his life isn’t all that bad, especially right now. But not knowing why they are there doesn’t stop them from being there.
But Robby would never tell anyone about this. After all, it’s not like he’s going to act on it.
Instead, Robby sits down with his laptop whenever these thoughts crop up and writes angsty Stranger Things fanfic. He projects his own emotions onto the characters so that he doesn’t have to deal with his own pain. These fictional characters can fucking deal with it, especially when he doesn’t know where it’s coming from.
But, just for clarification, not all of Robby’s fanfiction is angsty because he is feeling especially bad at that time. Robby’s just an angsty person in general. So, most of what he writes is angst anyway.
And even when his writing is angsty because he is feeling bad, he doesn’t project the situations, just emotions. The situations that the characters experience are pure fabrication, for the most part. But the feelings, those are all real, even if they are not things that Robby is thinking or feeling right now, they are things that he has thought or felt before.
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But right now, Robby just really wants to tell someone about all of the things that he can’t tell his friends.
So, he sits down at his computer and starts writing.