Work Text:
Dear Remus,
My bedroom smells like wine—I've never drunk any, so I guess this is just what happens when you leave a box of half drunk kiwi-strawberry juice on your bedside table for a week. It’s not a smell I enjoy, but people who leave half drunk juice boxes laying around for longer than a few hours typically don’t have the willpower to do something such as get rid of a bad smell. I certainly don’t.
My therapist says ‘willpower’ is a bad word. Actually, she says it’s an ‘unhelpful’ word, because bad is also bad.
‘Willpower’ is bad, though, because it is superficial. It is a filler word, a filler excuse, a filler insult, when a person doesn’t want to dig deeper. A lack of willpower is not a thing because willpower is not a thing, or at least not a thing so readily accessible, or which should be readily accessed, as one might suggest.
That’s what my therapist thinks, but a therapist is not a parasite, so I can believe whatever I want. And I believe….I don’t know.
It’s hard to put my thoughts and opinions into words, it’s hard to have thoughts and opinions. Outside of the random burst of emotion I can never seem to predict, I rarely feel strongly about anything.
I hate feeling things, my dial is broken. Most people have a dial from one to ten, the amount of emotion shown and felt depending on the situation. Mine has two numbers, zero and one hundred.
I am blank or erratic. Calm or hysterical. Mellow or balmy.
There is no in-between.
I am diagnosed with Intermittent Explosive Disorder—the fancy psychology way of saying anger issues—but I don’t think that’s fully accurate. I have all of the symptoms, all of the traits, that is true. But, all of my emotions act that way.
I will admit to sudden bouts of impulsive, aggressive, violent behavior or angry verbal outbursts. But there are also sudden bouts of despair. Sudden bouts of euphoria. Sudden bouts of agitation. Sudden bouts of discontent. Sudden bouts of revulsion.
I do not have a specific diagnosis for any of those, just anger. How does that make any sense?
My therapist says all that other stuff is caused by autism and Bipolar II and a conglomeration of all the other shit fucking me up.
When I asked why the anger wasn’t, she said because I meet diagnostic criteria for IED and respond to treatment for it. I think she probably just makes more money with every diagnosis I get.
Treatment is just anger management therapy, which is when I spend four hours a month being explained that telling someone to kill themself and then throwing a table at them is not the proper response to someone not wanting to be my partner during class.
I have, approximately, twenty-four hours of therapy a month, six a week. Only February really has four weeks in it, though, so it’s not perfect. I can perfectly calculate therapy hours in a year, though—three-hundred-twelve. Pretty impressive considering most people don’t even hit one hundred a year.
Each hour of therapy a week is something different, and they're not all with my therapist. Well, the person I’m talking about when I say ‘my therapist’, they’re not strangers.
Monday: Anger management therapy with my therapist, Dr. Liza Baker
Tuesday: Food exposure therapy(worst thing ever invented)with my food therapist and nutritionist/dietician Dr. Miley Stewart
Wednesday: Group therapy led by some guy named Dr. Ralph Leonard and attended by me and five other teenagers unlucky enough to be mentally fucked up and live close-ish to Green Gable Behavioral Health Clinic(two of the other teens and I are outpatients, the other three live there)
Thursday: Group art therapy led by a woman named Dr. Sadie Burrow
Friday: Drug abuse recovery support group led by Dr. Mitch Donner(I don’t know, nor want to know, anything about him)and attended by me and whoever else shows up
Saturday: Normal talk therapy with my therapist, Dr. Liza Baker
Sunday: Freedom!
I think six hours of therapy a week, and six types of therapy in general, is pretty dramatic, but it’s the only way I can stay outpatient and I hate being on the ward 24/7.
I can’t say they didn’t give me a chance, though. I was outpatient three times before this—the first time seeing Liza once a week, the second three times a week, and last time every day. It didn’t matter, though, I always broke, had some sort of mental collapse.
My brain and nervous system can, begrudgingly, handle being inpatient, and it can handle being outpatient with ten thousand therapies, but too little therapy or too little variety, and I crack.
I was outpatient for two weeks before being sent back the first time because I refused anything with calories, and then eventually even water. The second time I was out for a month until I had a psychotic break and tried to cut my abdomen open to ‘release the developed botflies inside’. Last time I was out I made it six weeks and one day, then had a major depressive episode and tried to drink bleach.
It’s been three months and four days now, though, so maybe this time I’ll actually stay out. I want to stay out. I went in the first time at twelve, now I’m sixteen—this has to end.
That’s the real reason I switched to this school, and the reason I can’t do extracurriculars or hang out when the bell rings. The reason I don’t like sleepovers and hide in the bathroom for a little while whenever I do(I don’t want people seeing me take my meds).
I hope that if anyone understands this, you will. You’ve understood my adoption and my queerness. You’ve understood my passions and my quirks. But, then, this is much more serious than any of that.
You’re sick too, so maybe you’ll get it. Is that wrong of me to say? I know your illnesses are physical instead of mental, but at the end of the day we’re both at the mercy of our cruel organs and nervous systems.
I guess you’re probably wondering why I’m writing this letter at all. It has nothing to do with old juice or therapy or school. But, those things are easier to write about, though it is excruciating to do so, than why I am truly here.
I’m sorry for wasting your time when this letter could have been no more than a short paragraph long note. I’m sorry I’m continuing to waste your time because I’m still doing my best to avoid getting to the point.
The point is….
We met on my first day of school, which was actually three weeks in. We sit next to each other in first period because the chemistry teacher thinks the world will fall into anarchy then end if teenagers choose their own chair.
You were disappointed, you tried to hide it, but I could tell. Not disappointed to sit next to me specifically, but to be separated from all of your friends—not just not any of their partner, but on the whole opposite side of the room. My aptitude for science quickly made up for it though, and now I do believe you look forward to the time we spend together in class, I guess no longer being partner-less is nice too.
I look forward to the time we spend together in class.
We’re friends now, and so aren’t limited to an hour a day of interaction, but I like the fact we’re forced to have it anyway. I like not competing with your other friends. I like the fact that you don’t have to compete with my other friends.
I don’t know if a letter is the proper way to do this, but I’ve already used so much time, paper, and effort, so I will go through with it. Besides, I really don’t think I could manage this conversation if it happened verbally or in real life.
A letter is certainly better than a text, at least, right? It’s more formal, it’s classic, it….I don’t know why I’m making excuses.
I hope you don’t believe this is happening in letter form because you don’t deserve a real conversation. You absolutely do. You deserve the world, the moon and stars, the universe encompassing it all.
I often like I’m nothing more than a common mite—small, annoying, and unnoticed. I don’t feel like that around you. I feel like a supernova, which I guess is sort of grim because a supernova is a star dying, but I don’t see it that way.
When around you I feel big, but in a way where my largeness is not just acceptable but wanted. I feel beautiful. I feel like I’m dying, blood full of adrenaline, as if I’m skydiving—the feeling of an impending death with the intoxicating knowledge that it isn’t going to occur.
I know I’m a lot. I know six hours of therapy a week and the ever present knowledge that I may become inpatient again is a lot. I know the idea of a recovering drug addict with little emotional control is a lot.
I can’t control these things about myself, I can’t change the first sixteen, almost seventeen, years of my life. But, I can affect them, I can grow from the things I’ve experienced. I’m not a beast, I’m rarely dangerous and when I am it is never to anyone else, I can’t even watch horror movies involving animals because the thought of one being hurt makes me so sick to my stomach.
I’m still dodging the point, but this could have never been four sentences. I am too complicated, my life is too complicated, the way we would, do, fit together is complicated. So the past thousand or so words have been a forewarning, an explanation, a preamble.
The point is: Remus, will you be my boyfriend?
Sincerely, Severus