#w any kind of psychiatric meds

[soggypotatoes]

anyone wanna tell me about their experiences with antidepressants

I'm gonna have to figure out what to do soon, I went off mine recently bc my depression was very bad when I was on them. but going off them landed me in a suicide attempt. Ive been on various different meds for nearly 9 years now and have found them all to be a little bit helpful until they're not. I'm trying to decide whether I should just try raw dogging it for a while (I'm in intensive therapy so not untreated at all) or if I should keep trying :/

[gothhabiba]

hi i just saw some of ur posts on anti-psychiatry and then kept reading more on ur blog about what it is. for the most part i agree with what you've said about how capitalism uses psychiatry to designate people who are bad/abnormal and how it aligns itself w/ misogyny, racism, and so on. with that said i think i have some similar concerns/questions as another asker about what this means for those who do/would suffer even in a non-capitalist society, even if we didn't ascribe a specific label to X symptoms. if we are opposed to psychiatry, what are the options for people today who are suffering and want help? are you opposed to psychopharmaceuticals and therapy? i dont mean to ask this in a confrontational/accusatory way, i'm just new to this and genuinely curious

There are a few different parts to your question & so there are a few different angles to approach it from—

are you opposed to psychopharmaceuticals and therapy?

If this means "are anti-psych writers and activists opposed to individuals seeking treatment that they personally find helpful," then, no—a couple posts in my psychiatry tag do clarify this.

If it means "are there anti-psych critiques of psychopharmaceuticals and therapy," then, yes. Keep in mind that I'm not a neurobiologist or otherwise an expert on medications marketed as treatments for mental illnesses, but:

The evidence for the effectiveness of SSRIs in particular is sort of non-existent—even many psychiatrists who promote the biomedical model of mental illness doubt their efficacy, and refer to the "chemical imbalance" theory that enforces their usage as "an outmoded way of thinking" or "a kind of urban legend—never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists." But promoting SSRIs (and corresponding "serotonin deficiency" theory of depression, despite the fact that no solid evidence links depression to low serotonin) is very profitable for pharmaceutical companies. Despite the fact that direct-to-consumer advertisements are nominally regulated in the U.S., the FDA doesn't challenge these claims.

Other psychotropic drugs, such as "antipsychotics" or "antianxiety" medication, shouldn't really be called e.g. "antipsychotics" as if they specifically targeted the biological source of psychosis. No biological cause of any specific psychiatric diagnosis has been found (p. 851, section 5.1). In fact, rather than "act[ing] against neurochemical substrates of disorders or symptoms," these medications "produc[e] altered, drug induced states"—but despite the fact that they "produce global alterations in brain functioning," they are marketed as if they had "specific efficacy in reducing psychotic symptoms." Reactions to these medications that don't have to do with psychosis or anxiety (blunted affect, akathisia) are dismissed as "side effects," as though they don't arise from the same global alteration in brain function that produces the "desirable" antianxiety/antipsychotic effect. This doesn't mean "psychiatric medication turns you into a zombie so you shouldn't take it"—it means that these medications should be marketed honestly, as things that alter brain function as a whole, rather than marketed as if they target specific symptoms in a way that they cannot do, in accordance with a biomedical model of mental illness the accuracy of which has never been substantiated.

Psychiatrised people also point out that meds are used as a tool for furthering and maintaining psychiatrists' control: meds that patients are hesitant about or do not want are pushed on them, while patients who desire medication are "drug-seeking" or trying to take on the role of clinician or something and will routinely be denied care. Psychiatrised people who refuse medications are "noncompliant" and prone to psychiatric incarceration, re-incarceration, or continued/lengthened incarceration.

As for therapy: there are critiques of certain therapies (e.g. CBT, DBT) as unhelpful, status-quo-enforcing, forcing compliance, retraumatising &c. There are also critiques of therapy as representing a capitalist outsourcing of emotional closeness and emotional work away from community systems that people largely don't have in place; therapy as existing within a psychiatric system that constrains how therapists, however well-intentioned, are able to behave (e.g. mandatory reporting laws); psychotherapy forced on psychiatrised people as a matter of state control; therapists as being in a dangerous amount of power over psychiatrised people and being hailed as neutral despite the fact that their emotions and politics can and do get in the way of them being helpful. The wealth divide in terms of access to therapy is also commonly talked about; insurance (in the U.S.) or the NHS (in England) may only pay for pre-formulated group workbook types of therapy such as DBT, while more long-form, free-form, relationship-focused talk therapy may only be accessible to those who can pay 100-something an hour for it.

None of these critiques make it unethical or something for someone to get treatment that they find helpful. It's also worth noting that some of these critiques may be coming from "anti-psych" people who criticise the sources of psychiatric power, and some of them may come from people who think of themselves as advocating for reform of some of the most egregious effects of psychiatric power.

if we are opposed to psychiatry, what are the options for people today who are suffering and want help?

This looks like a few different things at a few different levels. At its most narrow and individual, it involves opting out of and resisting calls for psychiatrisation and involuntary institutionalisation of individuals—not calling the cops on people who are acting strange in public, breaking mandatory reporting laws and guidelines where we think them likely to cause harm. It involves sharing information—information about antipsychiatry critiques of psychiatric institutions, advice about how to manage therapists' and psychiatrists' egos, advice about which psychiatrists to avoid—so that people do not blame themselves if they find their encounters with psychiatry unhelpful or traumatising.

At the most broad, it's the same question as the question of how to build dual power and resist the power of capitalism writ large—building communal structures that present meaningful alternatives to psychiatry as an institution. I think there's much to be learned here from prison abolitionists and from popular movements that seek to protect people from deportation. You might also look into R. D. Laing's Kingsley Hall experiment.

what does this mean for those who would suffer even in a non-capitalist society, even if we didn't ascribe a specific label to X symptoms?

It means that people need access to honest, reliable information about what psychotropic medications do, and the right to chuse whether or not to take these medications without the threat of a psychiatrist pulling a lever that immediately restricts or removes their autonomy. It means that people need to be connected to each other in communities with planned, free resources that ensure that everyone, including severely disabled people whom no one particularly likes as individuals, has access to basic resources. It means that people need to be free to make their own choices regarding their minds and their health, even if other people may view those decisions as disastrous. There is simply no defensible way to revoke people's basic autonomy on the basis of "mental illness" (here I'm not talking about e.g. prison abolitionist rehabilitative justice types of things, which must restrict autonomy to be effective).

Also, I've mostly left the idea of who this would actually be untouched, since my central argument ("psychiatry as it currently exists is part of the biomedical arm of capitalism and the state, and the epistemologies it produces and employs and the power it exerts are thus in the service of capitalism and the state") doesn't really rest on delineating who would and wouldn't suffer from whatever mental differences they have regardless of what society they're in. But it's worth mentioning that the category of "people who are going to suffer (to whatever degree) no matter what" may be narrower than some would think—psychosis, for instance, is sometimes experienced very differently by people in societies that don't stigmatise it. I see people objecting to (their interpretations of) antipsych arguments with things along the lines of "well maybe depression and anxiety are caused by capitalism, but I'm schizophrenic so this doesn't apply to me"—as though hallucinations are perforce more physically "real," more "biological," more "extra-cultural" in nature than something like depression. But the point is that positing a specific neurobiological etiology for any psychiatric diagnosis is unsubstantiated, and that capitalist society affects how every "mental illness" is read and experienced (though no one is arguing that e.g. hallucinations wouldn't always exist in some form).

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

actually I’m moving this to a new post because fuck it

okay so I finally looked at the reply, and

Even though there is no good way to prepare for a  neuropsychological evaluation, other than to get a good night sleep and  avoid feeling hungry, it is not unusual to feel as though you could have  done something more. In regards to the self-assessment tests you took  on-line, research has demonstrated that some of them result in high  false positive rates, which decreases the validity of the results (Sara  Jones, Maria Johnson, et al Autism Research and Treatment; Bram Sizoo,  EH Horowitz, et al Autism journal).  Other psychiatric diagnoses besides  autism can result in elevated scores on these self-tests.  Neurocognitive discrepancies and deficiencies frequently associated with  autism were not part of your pattern of test results. As I mentioned in  the report  you have symptoms consistent with autism but there isnt enough to reach  the severity of an autism diagnosis. The results in my opinion are more  accurately described by social anxiety, ADHD, and a persistent anxious  mood disturbance. I appreciate your desire to better understand yourself  and the test results and hope you are also able to discuss these  questions with your therapist as well.

a) maybe I’m overly sensitive (...fine, I’m almost certain I’m overly sensitive) but this feels patronizing b) part of my entire point in sending self-test results and discussing additional things that didn’t come up in the interview was to point out, hey, I have potentially new information that didn’t come up in the interview so maybe the evaluation should be reconsidered, at least a little bit, in light of that new information? and this basically sounds like “no, I’ve already decided your social difficulties are based on anxiety and new information doesn’t affect that because the cognitive tests don’t indicate autism.”

in some ways, I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t find this upsetting because it’s not like they came back saying I’m neurotypical, they did confirm the ADHD so that’s something, especially because it's been pretty destabilizing the way my prescriber has always been kind of half-hearted about it (”yeah you fit the criteria but also it’s not a severe case, everybody forgets things sometimes, hmm wait you’re not responding to stimulant meds so maybe it’s not ADHD after all and I should change my diagnosis, idk”). and since there’s so much symptom overlap between ADHD, anxiety, and autism, maybe it shouldn’t matter that I only have a diagnosis for two of the three.

but it feels like--if it’s social anxiety, it’s on me to fix it. I have to work on it, and expose myself more, and put myself out there, and do exhausting shit that kind of makes me want to cry just thinking about it, and maybe if I work hard enough and burn myself out learning every social cue ever, I’ll eventually stop fucking up and manage to be normal, and maybe friends will stop ghosting me. I’m sure the healthier way to look at that is that it’s fixable and I should feel empowered to do something about it, but I don’t, I just feel exhausted and overwhelmed because I’m being asked to do something I don’t have the energy to do.

if I’m autistic, I’m...never going to be normal. I have to mask in certain settings, but the healthiest thing is to not mask as much as possible, to try to be authentic, whatever that ends up meaning. That’s...not necessarily good, because as I understand it a lot of people only like the mask, but at least that might mean it’s not my fault that people keep ghosting me, you know?

I don’t know, I’m probably looking at this all wrong because I just do that, because at this point my brain is so fucking rewired by depression I don’t know how to fix that either, but it feels like if it’s all social anxiety, any problems I have are my fault unless I put in the effort to fake everything, using energy I don’t have...whereas if I’m autistic, at least then maybe it’s not my fault, maybe I’m not already automatically wrong because it’s just how I am.

oh. and I did cancel my appointment with my prescriber. but I for sure do need to reschedule that one, because unlike my therapist I have her assistant actually calling back to arrange rescheduling something, plus you know I need to keep having appointments to keep refilling my prescriptions. only I still don’t want to. and I don’t really want to reschedule with my therapist either. probably I need to find a new therapist but just the thought of starting that process also makes me want to cry, so that’s not super great either

[brittlefcrged]

WELP. thanks to a meme that ruby just sent in, i can add hospitals to the list of things that freak reese out. it should've been obvious i guess given the amount of time that she's spent forced into various -less than stellar - psychiatric hospitals and the kinds of abuse that she's endured there but even a hospital for emergency care is apparently a big nope for her. she's been in er's before for various drug interactions or ods, and it always ends up being a horrible experience for her. the judgment and often lack of general compassion or humanity that she's been treated with by staff has long soured her on trying to go to a regular hospital or doctor for care of any kind. she's probably more likely to just super glue herself back together or wait til things heal on their own or just take extra meds to help her deal with the pain of an injury etc. than to agree to actually get looked at. there might be some verses where she has a private doctor or someone who works in an off the books kind of clinic that she might trust bc they'll pretty much deal with anything and patch her up and give her what meds she needs etc. w/out judgment bc they have seen everything and they are more than happy to take the cash to deal with whatever?

in verses where she knows she's got magic / magic exists, magical healers are a different story and i'm sure in her star wars verses she's either got some force healing or knows a black market doctor that can patch her up - but absolutely would refuse to be submerged in a bacta tank under any circumstances (see major phobia of drowning etc) - but yeah. we can add emergent care / general doctor's visits of any kind to her 'no thank you' list.

if she's bad enough that she's actually delirious or unconscious and someone takes her in for treatment, she will be angry at them especially if it turns into some kind of involuntary psych hold but she'd probably get over it eventually... probably.

[figula]

ben just DMed me (he is at work lol) like ‘we should probably have more conversations about this kind of thing’ (referring to antipsychiatry, which was the topic of the day in the #serious channel of my discord server lol 

so i took the opportunity to tell him ive been secretly off my meds (prozac) for months :| there has been no drop in mood or really any deleterious effects at all 

i feel like a real idiot for keeping this secret tho!! idk why my first reaction is still to just close ranks with myself and not share things that are important to me. like literally i have no idea. ben has never ever made me feel bad about anything ive ever done as long as ive fully explained myself beforehand (i mean - not in the sense that he tests me, but in the sense that he would prefer his partner of 8y to be doing things logically and rationally) 

i think i was so afraid to hear him say ‘no’ to something that was important to me that i just elected not to tell him, and he was like ‘but cham why would i even say no, im not your nurse??’ which like... fair :| i was also afraid to tell him bc i didn’t want to expose a potential gulf in ideology, which is also like - WAY preemptive! my reasoning for this is bc he sometimes asks ‘cham are you still on your meds?’ and i interpreted this as like - ‘hi im ben and im super pro meds! :)’ whereas what he actually meant (it transpires) was ‘did you go cold turkey on your meds again bc that does seem have a bad effect on you sometimes’ lol ffs. genuinely annoyed w/ myself for just not conversing at all. wtf!  just quickly ETA: i do think as someone in and out of psych systems for 10+ years, you do get very used to giving up your bodily autonomy - you forget that you do have a choice wrt treatment, you can actually say no, and i think i internalised the ‘my body belongs to doctors’ message a bit too hard

cham:

i am sorry i didnt tell you i am wondering why my first reaction is just to be very duplicitous im a snake in the grass 😔

ben:

yeah sneky and you dont think im your cruel psychiatric jailer? ok im coming home now to whoop your ass

[mysticandskepticmuses]

        -- Arthur & education & intelligence; pre-movie & after.

While we see signs of a lack of formal education in Arthur’s history - his handwriting is very scrawled and childlike, his sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, capitalization and spelling are all over the place etc. I don’t think this automatically equates to a lack of intelligence; many of the drugs prescribed for psychiatric treatment have side effects of foggy brain, incoherent and scattered thoughts, being unable to concentrate on anything for long periods of time and that’s not even touching on the kinds of neurological trauma and damage that Arthur suffered in his childhood and or in previous visits to Arkham (when we see a flashback to him banging his head repeatedly into the door of his cell etc).  

With his childhood that had years that he can’t remember at all, and ending up in foster care for periods of time, and then being back in his mother’s care (whom we have seen may have good intentions but not a solid carry through and or stability and or financial resources etc. etc.) he would have missed chunks of school, moved around a lot when changing foster homes and it was likely that his mother had to relocate frequently w/in Gotham bc of rent, being evicted, or other issues w/ boyfriends and roommates etc. and as a whole education would not have been a forefront concern of hers - she probably worked several shitty jobs to keep a roof over their head, keep herself on whatever meds (when she cared to), second hand clothes and what food she could on the table.  I suspect he worked part time jobs during and or after school hours early on to early pocket money, groceries, leftover food, handyman jobs around apartment buildings / rentals, any and all jobs that would bring in pocket change (predominantly legal ones as he shows a penchant for abiding by rules / laws / manners the majority of the time). 

All in all, education was a secondary / tertiary concern to making money to get by, and finding a way to make ends meet on a day to day basis. Time, also, being a factor, meaning he didn’t have much to spare, much less to spend reading or studying - what free time he did have as he got older he spent focused on comedians, attending comedy clubs and trying to perfect his own act.

Now, once he has his ‘big break’ on the Murray show, once he gets put into Arkham after that, things change, predominantly so once he ends up back on the streets (I headcanon that it was one of the many times Gotham didn’t have the funds to keep up with its psychiatric care facilities and the occupants of Arkham were basically just dumped out into halfway houses etc. and Arthur just quietly meandered his way out into the night and found groupies, underlings, and one things leads to another, eventually with him becoming this (unexpectedly to him) infamous and utterly off his rocker crime lord).  At this stage, he’d free of all of his psychiatric meds, he has money, he has time, and he knows he needs power and strategy to keep one step ahead of the ‘bad guys’ (whether that’s actually other bad guys and or police etc).  This leads him to spend late nights poring over books, starting with primaries and working his way up through the elementary, jr. high and high school levels in most subjects, finding a thrill especially when it comes to science, and a macabre fascination with psychology, though more in the way of understanding his enemies rather than finding a way to cure anyone, especially himself. 

While a great deal of his strategies and tactics come from straight out trial and error and not giving one hoot about who gets hurt (including himself) if it all goes awry, as the years progress he definitely becomes more eloquent and more educated, possessing more ‘pizazz’ and even charm, when he chooses to care or try.  There are still moments when he hesitates, or stammers, or laughs -- though as years go by people just expect that from him and he doesn’t have to explain it at all, to anyone, which is a relief in and of itself - and he’s always going to veer towards violence and drama for the sake of violence and drama  - and laughs, always the laughs - but there’s a distinct difference in operational thinking in two, five, ten years after his television debut.

[terresdebrumestories]

Kechibi

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: Digimon Adventure 01/02/Tri RATING: General Audiences. WORDCOUNT: 5 758 words PAIRING(S): Pre-Taiyama CHARACTER(S): Taichi Kamiya & Yamato Ishida, with cameos from Sora Takenouchi, Takeru Takashi and Michel Takashi. GENRE: Will you just stop it? TRIGGER WARNING(S): Some l light references to depression and Yamato staying in a psychiatric hospital for a while. SUMMARY:  From: Yamato To: Sora ’got 2nd degree burns from a head in a fire ball last night’ Or: Yamato didn't really think spirits from his childhood stories were real, but if he had he certainly wouldn't have expected to meet one in the French countryside. NOTE: I would have gone further into the comedic potential of kechibi spirits, but I figured this story was already long enough as it was, and I didn’t want to fall into disrespect (since I only did realy cursory research) so here we go.

DIGIOTPWEEK 2017: [Day 1: Coffeeshop AU] [Day 2: Fantasy AU] [Day 3: Profession AU] [Read on AO3]

Yamato swears so hard, once he finally figures out what the problem with his bike is, that a rabbit jumps right out of its hiding spot and into the grazing field on the other side of the road. It can’t really be blamed for it: it’s midnight on a chilly, damp August night, and the poor creature probably thought it was safe from stupid humans who don’t have anything better to do than break down in the middle of the night.

Clearly, it never anticipated Michel Takashi’s ancient relic of a motorbike, or the absolute absence of patience Yamato suffers from at the moment.

 He swears for an unreasonably long time, mixing the few Russian curse words he remembers from high school with the full extent of his French vocabulary, until realizes he’s up for at least two hours’ walk, pushing a bike uphill and, most likely, in the rain. Honestly, at times like these, he almost wonders what’s the point of having enough strength to leave the house if he’s going to end up in these situations.

He knows the answer, of course, and wouldn’t trade the propensity to spiral down into irrational anger or despair for the gaping nothing that were the past few months, but that doesn’t make his present situation any more enjoyable.

 At least he didn’t break down on a dirt trail.

 He’s been at it for about half an hour, earphones blasting a long string of insults vaguely put to music at an unreasonable volume, when he notices a flame in the wheat field to his right. The weather as been awful since he got to France, so it’s unlikely to set the crop on fire, but where there’s a fire there’s a person and, in this case, they’re probably trampling around in the wheat.

Yamato, who needs something to throw his annoyance at, decides to be a proper farmer’s grandson and go kick an idiot’s ass.

 “Oi!” he starts, not interested in how odd that’ll sound to French ears, “you gotta turn your thing off! You’re gonna damage the crops!”

 He has to walk along the field for a bit before he finds the entry path and follows the tire tracks from the tractors into the wheat, stomping more than he walks. Not that it seems to bother whoever decided to get a hot snack in the middle of the night, though, because there’s no movement or sound of any kind, not even when Yamato growls and calls out again:

 “Hé! Piss off before you do anymore damage, dumbass!”

 Still nothing. The wind picks up a little and the flame shivers, but as for the rest Yamato might as well be pissing in a violin—either the bastard is entirely deaf, or they’re ignoring him on purpose. Given the general conditions of deaf people in the country, Yamato’s inclined to believe it’s the later, and bright hot anger clenches his fingers into fists right before he decides to use his grandfather’s tried and true technique: just yell at them in Japanese.

True, the reason it works for Michel Takashi probably is that he’s a super-white octogenarian with the general silhouette of a particularly ill-combed leek, but if Yamato hasn’t let his obvious Japaneseness hold him back before he really doesn’t see why he’d start now.

 (Ironically enough, there is also something viciously satisfying at making himself so other in his country, his culture and origins spontaneously and universally recognized and accepted in a way they rarely are at home. Who knew racist ignorance could do good things for his brain.)

 “Sir!” He shouts, using the lower tones of Japanese to make his voice sound scarier, “could you please put your fire out and leave the field? You’re damaging the crops!”

 The flame grows several centimeters after that, fizzles out, and reappears right in front of Yamato’s knees with a relieved:

 “You speak Japanese! Can you help me? I’m lost!”

 Yamato blinks.

 Pinches his arm.

 Does it again, but harder this time, digging his nails into the flesh for good measure.

 Everything hurts the way it’s supposed to, so he’s probably not sleeping but, despite that, the flame is still here.

 Clearly, he’s gonna need to check out his meds’ notice when he gets home.

 “Can you help me?” The flame repeats.

 It’s got a pleasant voice. Lighter than Yamato’s, maybe a bit too loud, but relatively pleasant.

 It would, of course, be even better if it didn’t come from a fire that gives the inexplicable impression of being a head with far, far too much hair on top of it in the middle of asking a question. For a moment—a couple of seconds, at most—Yamato tries to make sense of it all.

Then he decides he doesn’t have the strength for this mess and walks away, refusing to let himself slow down even when the fire’s voice gets louder.

 “Please,” it yells, far closer than Yamato would have thought, “I’m lost!”

 Don’t talk to it, Yamato tells himself, that’s how people get themselves interned. Just ignore it and it’ll have to stop, eventually.

 Right. Because this is exactly how hallucinations work.

 “I’m lost! Please! I’m lost!”

“Buy a map!” Yamato tosses over his shoulder, heart in his throat as he reaches the exit path.

 He’s giving himself a rather severe mental talk down by the time he reaches the motorbike and starts pushing on the handles. He’s finally lost it, there’s no way around that, but that doesn’t mean he’s got to go and make it obvious, for heaven’s sake!

 “Please! I’m lost, help me please!”

 Yamato screams and lets the bike stumble into the irrigation ditch when the flame touches his calf, searing pain shooting up his leg and sending his heart in overdrive. He whines in pain as he slaps the fire out, a litany of apologies floating in his ears even when he forces himself to his feet and takes off at a run toward his grandfather’s home.

 ***

He doesn’t remember getting home, let alone in bed, but he must have managed it somehow because, when the pain finally gets too much to bear, his eyes immediately land on the old dance trophy that resides on the bedside table of his mother’s childhood bedroom. He hisses and grits his teeth against the pain to sit up...and yells when the movement causes the sheets to brush on exposed muscles.

He’s still swearing by the time he gathers the courage to check, heart racing like it’s going for a gold medal in the fear Olympics.

There’s almost no skin left on the back of his right leg, raw flesh exposed to the morning air like a painfully undercooked steak. There are blisters all over it, one of them almost the size of an egg, and jeans fibers stick to the wound in a couple of places. It could probably be worse, but it’s bad enough to make him dizzy and vaguely nauseous.

He has to grip the edge of the bed with white knuckles before he tries to stand, and when he tries to put a foot in front of the other the pain, sharp and raw like nothing else, catches him fast and hard enough that he yelps and falls to the ground, wincing when the door open to reveal his grandfather standing there with his night gown and a panicked expression on.

“What did you do?” He yells in French when his gaze lands on Yamato’s calf.

“I didn’t do anything, it’s—”

A pained exclamation cuts through Yamato’s sentence when his grandfather plucks the jean fibers out of the burns, and it’s all he can do to get his breath back while Papy Michel chastises him:

“You couldn’t just do that with a knife, could you? You could have set the house on fire!”

“But that wasn’t me!”

He knows he’s lost before his grandfather speaks again. It shows in the way his features go from worried granddad to steely war veteran and, even if that wasn’t enough of a tell, the fact that he reverts to Japanese for the next sentence is a dead giveaway.

“Can you get to the bathroom?”

“Yes,” Yamato confirms with burning eyes, “I’ll manage.”

It’s easier to brace himself for the pain now that he knows what it’ll be like. With a wince, he bites on the pained sound that tries to get out of his throat and pushes himself upright, grabbing his phone on his way up. If his grandfather won’t listen to what he’s got to say, he might as well reach out for people who will.

‘got 2nd degree burns from a head in a fire ball last night’ he texts to Sora, before transferring the message over to Takeru.

It’s a little over seven PM back in Tokyo, so he’s not surprised when Sora answers first:

‘Did your dosage change recently?’

‘np & nothing causes hallucinations, I checked + I was in a wet wheat field. Nothing to burn me w even if I was seeing things’

‘Yikes. How did your granddad take it?’

‘badly’

‘YIKES. Hang in there & phone me when you can. My new pill keeps me up anyway.’

Yamato promises Sora to call her as soon as he’s done getting bandaged—possibly with lunch, too—and does his best not to be too obvious about how much he wants this thing to be over already.

“You know,” his grandfather tries after a while, eyes straying toward Yamato’s phone almost too quick to be noticed, “if you want to talk about this, I can—”

“Sora says hi,” Yamato says, heart in his throat, before the sentence can end.

“What?”

“Sora. My friend from the hospital. She says hi.”

She never had even the beginning of a will to get in touch with Yamato’s family, a sentiment he approves of and mirrors entirely, but mentioning her is a surefire way to cut any conversation short without having to provide an excuse. It’s not that Yamato’s family isn’t trying to support him. They are.

It’s just that they don’t exactly understand one another at the best of time, and neither his parents nor the two grandparents he still has were prepared to deal with the kind of issues Yamato turned out to have. His friendship with Sora, born and forged in the heart of a psychiatric ward, is quite possibly too much of a reminder for them to be fully comfortable with it.

“Good,” Papy Michel mutters with a bit of a strangled voice, “that’s good. Well, you’re all patched up now. Don’t get this dirty.”

Yamato nods and gives a perfunctory mutter about wanting a smoke before he makes his exit to the garden, where he promptly lights a cigarette. He can’t honestly say he needed it right this second, but since he’s here he might as well indulge and settle his nerves.

Besides, it’ll give him some space to answer Takeru’s incoming text.

‘Dsnt that sound lk 1 of grdma Fumikos stories?’

‘wut?’

‘the head ina fire thing. Its a Kõchi story no?’

‘maybe idk’

‘ill check’

Takeru doesn’t really need to check, seeing as his comment actually reminded Yamato of the legend in question, but waiting for more information gives hims something to do while he finishes his cigarette, and it’s as good an excuse as any to stay away from his grandfather for a bit.

The thing he met—the thing he thought he met—was probably a kechibi: some poor sod’s spirit literally rolled right out of them and into a fireball, for whatever reason. It can’t be real, of course, and Yamato feels stupid for entertaining the notion now, but he used to be a hardcore believer when he was younger. Not, as his grandmother first thought, because he was afraid of them, but because she used to say some kechibi were wrathful spirits, meant to exact vengeance on those who wronged them during the day.

The amount of time Yamato spent nursing his resentments, during middle school, hoping he’d generate a kechibi powerful enough to take care of his worse bullies, was probably not very healthy. He can’t say he regrets it, though of course he’s given up on their existence a long time ago now. After all, he may go to a temple on a semi-regular basis, half-because he wishes he’d believe again and half because the atmosphere soothes him, but that doesn’t mean he can’t realize that legends are just that. Legends.

‘how do u explain the burns then?’ Takeru asks when Yamato points that out.

‘dunno. Y do u even want it 2 b real?’

‘either it’s real or u burned urself & fabricated the encounter 2 cover it up. Whether were talking hallucinations or lies I prefer the 1st option’

‘...ngl, so do i’

It’s getting late by now, the butt of Yamato’s cigarette long discarded in the ashtray he keeps on the low wall protecting the vegetable garden, so he wishes his brother goodnight and finally goes back inside for lunch. He answers his grandfather’s questions—in Japanese, for the most part—without lying, though he’s careful not to mention the kechibi, and they spend the next few hours figuring out how to get the motorbike out of its ditch and into a garage shop.

The words ‘please, I’m lost’ float in Yamato’s mind the whole way through.

***

‘You’re a nutcase,’ Sora texts when Yamato finishes telling her about his projects for the night.

‘tell me somthng I don’t know’

‘No, the depression is regular crazy. This is just nuts.’

‘im going now ttyl’

Yamato can almost ear Sora’s disbelieving little snort as he sneaks out of the house and climbs on the mountain b ike his grandfather borrowed from a neighbor on his behalf. She doesn’t let it out as often as he does, but sometimes she’s got enough sarcasm to give him a run for his money and, honestly, the only reason he doesn’t keep texting her is because he has no intention to die on the road tonight.

Still it’d be nice if he could. He’d feel a little less stupid, for one. How else could he feel when he’s on his way to a freaking field in the middle of nowhere just so he can maybe have a—second—conversation with a head in a fireball.

Ridiculous doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The ride goes peacefully. There ’s next to no traffic on the roads as it is, let alone at eleven at night, and the weather finally cleared so aside from the darkness it isn’t that different from Yamato’s usual exploration of the countryside. There’s a sense of trepidation in him his usual outings lack, though.

The countryside in this part of France is dreadfully empty—not even five hundred persons in his grandfather’s village—and it doesn’t even have the decency to make up for it with particularly beautiful landscapes. Yamato had been spending most of his days out so far, but it’s a way to be alone with his thought and away from his grandfather’s worried incomprehension more than a show of appreciation for the place, r eally.

Add a healthy dose of depression to that and, well. That’s all you need to know about Yamato’s current hobbies, really.

There’s a real purpose to this particular trip, though, if only to figure out whether that thing really is real—it can’t be. Legends aren’t real! But then Yamato’s burn, still throbbing under the bandage and disinfectant, is, so there’s that. He pulls into the entry path to the field with a sigh and one last volley of disbelieving insults to his own intellect, and rests the mountain bike down on its handle before stepping onto the tire tracks.

The full moon’s getting near which, if legends are to be believed, make the possibility of a spirit encounter even more likely. Of course, that’d feel a little more logical if he weren’t thousands of miles away from Japan in a field that is painfully, obviously empty—of people and of flame.

Yamato is running a hand over his face with a weary sigh when there’s a firecracker sound, and he jumps about thirty centimeters into the air, shrieking as he lands on his ass and damages a sizable patch of wheat, as well as the butts of his hands, in the process.

“Shit, warn a guy would you?”

The face in the fireball doesn’t have very definite features, except maybe for the ridiculous excess of hair, but it still manages to convey a decent air of contrite confusion as it settles down at some distance from Yamato’s legs. Good. Not only does that mean he won’t get burned again just yet, it should also spare him the mental image of a head bouncing after him like a rubber ball which, as his irreverent conversation with Sora this afternoon attests, is nothing short of ridiculous.

Still, the head looks like it sort of feels bad, so Yamato sighs, shifts his mental processes over to Japanese, and says in as calm a voice as he can manage:

“Excuse me, oh Spirit, but what are you doing here?”

The flames around the head brighten, and the vague hint of eyebrows raise up as the head exclaims:

“You speak Japanese! Can you help me? I’m lost!”

“So I understand,” Yamato says, a not-so-small part of his brain still yelling at him to go home and get a grip.

The rest of him figures it can’t be worse than staring at the ceiling and hope for something to come and jump start his emotions back to life.

“Who are you?”

There’s a pause, like the head is gathering breath, and then:

“I’m lost, sir.”

“Yes. You mentioned that. Where are you from?”

There’s another, longer pause, and the flames around the kechibi’s head dim a little before it—he?—tries in a hesitant voice:

“I’m lost.”

“Alright,” Yamato sighs, distantly relieved this thing is managing to irritate him, “let’s try something different. Do you have a name?”

“I have a friend!” the kechibi answers, voice piping so high it sounds more child-like than the adult voice it had before.

It’s not the answer Yamato was aiming for, but it’s a step out of the ‘I’m lost’ loop, so he’ll take it.

“What’s you friend’s name?”

“Koushiro.”

There’s happiness in that one name, like saying it is enough to put the kechibi in a good mood, and a trickle of dread worms its way inside Yamato’s heart. He really hopes he’s wrong about where this is going.

Maybe this Koushiro person is just a close friend.

“Do you know where Koushiro is?”

Pause. Dimming flames.

“...I’m lost.”

Evidently, not the right question to ask. This is going to be tricker than he thought it would be.

At least, he reminds himself, it’s not a wrathful one. He hasn’t believed in literal spirits in a long time—tending to interpret them as energies of some sort more than anything else—but he did grow up with a healthy respect for them. That, and a certain awareness of their potential for harmful behavior, because respecting spirits doesn’t mean pretending they’re only ever nice and fluffy.

Hell, even his mother, who is a practicing Catholic, always told him not to anger any spirit, that’s how well aware of their nature he is.

This one though? More confused than angry. It’s honestly the only thing that keeps him from turning heels and leaving it to its own devices. Instead, he follows his earlier inkling, and asks:

“What’s Koushiro like?”

Look, Yamato isn’t usually the type to compare real life to movies but, one, he’s literally talking to a spirit so the usual rules can suck it and, two, there’s really no other way to describe the way the kechibi glows other than Ghibli-like. It’s like watching a flaming, wild-haired version of Ponyo puff itself up and yell:

“Awesome!”

It’s a good thing it looks so cute, because it means Yamato doesn’t have to fake his little smile when he replies:

“That great, uh?”

“Yes! He’s smart, and he’s funny and he knows how to do so many things with computers! And he’s nice and sometimes he forgets to it so I bring him food and then he smiles and we laugh a lot. He’s a really good friend.”

It’s funny the kechibi’s voice should sound like a child’s. Yamato can’t know for sure tit’s not its real voice—although the head seems large for a kid’s, and it did start out speaking in deeper tones—but even then there’s something so...innocent about the way it sounds. There’s no fear, no embarrassment, no self-disgust here, just pure affection and a fondness that can never be faked.

He sort of wishes he’d get to have that.

“He does sound pretty amazing,” he says, trying to keep the wistfulness out of his voice. “How long have you known him?”

“Oh, forever, I’m sure,” the kechibi replies, head tilting back like it’s looking for an answer in the stars, “I don’t remember not knowing him.”

“That’s quite a long time.”

“Yes, but it’s nice! Don’t you have someone you’ve known forever?”

“Not really,” Yamato shrugs, “my oldest friend is my little brother, but I remember what it was like when he wasn’t there.”

Dimly, in short flashes that mostly consists of the few weeks before Takeru’s birth, but Yamato still remembers.

“Do you like your brother a lot?”

Yamato blinks at the change of topic, in part because he was starting to get lost in his own thoughts, but also because he’d kind of given up on the kechibi extending their conversation topics on its own. Evidently, he just hadn’t found the right angle.

“Yes,” he says, settling into a more comfortable position, “I do.”

“How much?”

Oh well. If he’s gonna hear a kid’s words in a kid’s voice, he might as well go the whole way.

He extends his arms as far as they’ll go before he says:

“That much.”

He really hopes this kechibi didn’t come from an actual child, though. If he’s right, and there’s less an less hold on the hope that he isn’t, then he really hopes it’s happening to someone who’s old enough to mostly bounce back from it.

“I,” the kechibi says, the flames at the side of its head widening like they’re trying to imitate Yamato’s gesture, “like Koushiro thiiiiiiiiiiis much!”

The fire licks at a couple of strands of wheat on the side, and Yamato is halfway to his feet before he realizes nothing caught fire. In fact, aside from the damage he inflicted, it’s like nothing’s happened here at all.

Well, good to know major burns are a human-only experience, he guesses. Could have done without the discovery, though.

“Oh, sorry,” the kechibi says, dimming and shrinking as it talks, “sorry, sorry—”

“It’s okay,” Yamato reassures it, one hand straying to his calf, as if he could have forgotten the wound there, “it’s not so bad, and you didn’t—”

“Koushiro is a boy,” the kechibi shrieks.

Fuck, Yamato thinks.

He was right.

The spirit vanis hes with a loud snap before he can fully figure out what to tell it.

Yamato waits for the kechibi to return for a long, long while, even going so far as to call out once or twice, but to no avail. The spirit, it seems, is either back to its body, or determined not to come back. Yamato could wait it out until morning if he wanted, he’s definitely got the hang of not moving of uncomfortable length of time. That would probably result in his grandfather having a stroke in worry, though, and he’s not so far down that it’s something he’ll let happen anymore.

Besides, even supposing he stays here all night and his grandfather either doesn’t notice or survives the experience unharmed, anyone who lives within in a twenty kilometers’ radius would soon know about how Michel Takashi’s grandson slept in a field. He’s already the local weirdo, there’s no need to add to that.

He calls out for the kechibi one last time, then looks around to make really sure no one hears him when he promises to come back the following night.

By the time he gets back to his bed, he’s tired enough that even his brain can’t keep him awake.

***

The kechibi is already there by the time Yamato makes it to its field on the third night and he thinks, a little stupidly, that he might have to find it a name at some point. It’s ridiculous, really, these things are supposed to be people’s souls, not pets. It feels weird not to have a name to give it, though, so it doesn’t hurt to think about it.

It isn’t a priority though, and as soon as Yamato is within speaking distance of the spirit he makes sure to say:

“It’s alright that Koushiro is a guy.”

The kechibi’s features are a little more defined when he looks up to stare at Yamato. Its hair, still overgrown, is dark brown, a little paler than the stereotypical Japanese black. Its nose is short, its mouth a little too thin but somehow friendly, as if made for smiling. It’s the kind of smile that half begs you to be telling the truth, half asks if you wanna be friends.

If maybe you already are a friend.

Yamato’s Gay Epiphany wasn’t what sent him to the psychiatric ward but damn, he would really have loved it if someone would have put that kind of expression on his face instead of having to figure it out on his own.

“It really is.”

“It’s alright,” the kechibi repeats, its flames growing a little taller, a little brighter.

“Yeah.”

“Koushiro’s a guy. And it’s alright.”

“Completely alright.”

He’s not sure how a disembodied and mostly featureless head manages to make fondness bloom in the vicinity of his heart but, eh. It’s a spirit. They do weird things, like burn people by accident while leaving crops alone or, in this case, flickering and changing colors at a steady pace.

Flick-orange, flick-redder, flick-range, flick-redder.

“That’s funny,” Yamato says after a moment of silence, “your flames.”

“What about them?” the kechibi asks as if having fire all around your head was a normal, every day occurrence.

It probably is to a spirit, mind you, but that doesn’t mean Yamato can’t keep in mind how surreal the entire thing is.

“The way they change color. It’s like a heartbeat.”

“Heart?”

“Yeah,” Yamato replies, deciding to try and circle back just to see if their conversation changed anything, “it’s what you like people with.”

“I like Koushiro a lot.”

The flames don’t widen like enthusiastic little arms this time, but considering there’s no abrupt disappearance either, Yamato decides he’s okay with it.

“Yeah. It’s alright to like him a lot.”

It sort of feels like Yamato should be trying to have this conversation with a more elaborate vocabulary, mostly because the face in the flames doesn’t really look child-like. Sometimes, though, even adults need to get simple words, and this one hasn’t protested the lack of over-three-syllables lexicon yet.

“Jyou doesn’t like Koushiro as much.”

Ah, yes. That’s the fun part, as far as Yamato remembers, the moment he went from a relieved, almost elated ‘this is why it’s not working with girls’ to ‘oh fuck, now I’m even more different’.

There were other components, too, things being straight wouldn’t have changed like, oh, being blond or being socially awkward, or having lucked out at the brain make up lottery—although that point might have been easier to deal with in a different world. The fact remains that, even though his Big Gay Epiphany was, depression aside, a mostly smooth process, that part was particularly hard to swallow.

Still is, whenever it rears its ugly head, but Yamato learned to suppress his gag reflex by now.

God, this metaphor is getting out of control.

“Not everyone likes boys this way,” he says instead of trying to examine that strange train of thoughts.

“Boys don’t.”

“Some do. I do. Some girls don’t like boys that way, either. My best friend Sora, she prefers girls. The person she’s in love with is a girl.”

“I like girls a lot too,” the kechibi says, like it’s correcting a mistake, “and I like Koushiro.”

“Well, you’re allowed to like both. You’re allowed to like any kind of person.”

“Mom will be angry.”

“Maybe she won’t,” Yamato counters, because it’s true. Not everyone gets terrible reactions. “Even if she is, there’s nothing she can do against it. No one can stop you from liking people.”

Yamato has to hide his eyes behind his arm when he ends his sentence, and even then it’s not fast enough to prevent him from seeing spots for the next ten minutes, at the very least. He really, really hope no one was awake to see that, because he’s got no idea how he’d explain it.

Somehow, he doesn’t think ‘sorry, some poor fucker was having an identity crisis in the countryside’ would appease many people.

“I love him so much,” the kechibi says.

It’s quiet and wistful, back to the deeper tones of the first night. There’s acceptance in that, and some relief, but there’s grief, too, and Yamato isn’t quite sure whether the guy is grieving the safety of straightness or the possibility of something happening with Koushiro.

Either way, he’s definitely back in a headspace where he’s aware of the potential ramifications of his recent discovery, and Yamato knows exactly how that feels.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, “I can tell. Sorry.”

This time, when the kechibi pops out of the conversation, Yamato doesn’t bother waiting around before he leaves.

***

When he reaches the field the next evening, he’s almost afraid to find it empty. Sure, it’d mean no more risk of sounding like a complete nutcase, but then again...well, the spirit was the first person he had a real conversation with in this country, including his grandfather. He thinks it’s understandable that he doesn’t want to let go of the connection just yet.

Doesn’t prevent him from swearing blue murder when the kechibi startles him again, though.

Yamato ignores the kechibi’s surprised stare as he slaps dirt off his jeans and checks the state of his hands...yep. Fresh scraps. Damn it.

Then, because there’s only so long he can ignore a pair of big, almost pleading brown eyes in a fireball looking up at him, Yamato sighs:

“What?”

“Why do you keep speaking in a different language? I don’ understand it.”

“We’re in France. If you wanted to hear Japanese you shoulda had your out of body experience back home. Why don’t you ask Koushiro out if you like him that much?”

“He’s aromantic. He told me last week.”

“Ah. Tough luck.”

Brown eyes look down, shadowing a vague hint of pinched lips and, well, yeah. It’s not like there’s anything wrong about the aromantism thing, it’s just inconvenient for the spirit’s love life at the moment.

“It’s not a problem,” the kechibi says, looking like it’s shrugging nonexistent shoulders, “I’ll get over it.”

“Of course. Doesn’t mean the first few days of it are fun. Is that why you’re here?”

“What? No. I’m on vacations with my family.”

Yamato would be lying if he said he doesn’t smile at that. Sounds like the spirit isn’t so lost anymore.

“Anyway,” the kechibi adds with the tone of someone who’s trying really hard to convince themselves, “at least it taught me something about myself. It’s….”

“Kind of painful and coming with a whole lot of unpleasant strings attached?”

Okay, Yamato knows he sounds harsh, here, but this is honestly the easiest part of this whole story so far. He’s had plenty of time to think about the sort of unpleasant reactions people could, would, and did have to learning he was gay.

“If it makes anything better,” he says as he sits down in the grass of the entry path, “you learn to enjoy the cool parts more than you think about the bad ones. Those are only there because people are ridiculous.”

“No offense, but ‘ridiculous’ coming from you sounds somewhat...nice.”

“Just wait ‘til I can handle more than two languages again,” Yamato replies with a shrug, “I’ll show you how mean I can be.”

The kechibi snorts at that, laughter burying itself in the ground next to Yamato’s feet, and the only reason Yamato can think of for that is that the poor guy’s had a pretty stressful week. It’s got to come out somehow.

Besides, it makes him chuckle, too. It’s not actual laughter yet, but it’s been a while since he did that and really mean it, so he figures he might as well enjoy this new step on the path of re-recovery or something.

“I’d like to do that, actually,” the spirit says with one last huff of breath. “I really was lost and you...you got me out of it.”

“Well, my twitter handle’s @yamaNO, if you want to get in touch there. I have a rainbow-filled silhouette as a profile pic.”

“Okay!” The kechibi agrees with more enthusiasm than Yamato feels is needed, “I’ll check you out!”

A second passes.

“I mean, I’ll check IT out. It. Your profile. Soon. Tomorrow. Oh my god this is—I really should go….”

He snaps out of existence before Yamato can ask for his name.

***

Yamato is wasting time around the web the next day, trying really hard to pretend he’s not checking his twitter tab every five seconds, when he gets a new follower notification and a direct message, pretty much in the span of a second:

@tAYYYYYchi: OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE REAL

@tAYYYYYchi: I THOUGHT YOU WERE A DREAM

@tAYYYYYchi: YOU’RE TOO WEIRD TO BE REAL

@yamaNO: says the guy whose Big Gay Crisis gave him a literal out of body experience

@tAYYYYYchi: First of all I told you I’m still into girls so I don’t know what it is but it’s definitely not gay. Second, shut up, dumb face. Third: what are you doing?

@yamaNO: wondering if some1 invented time travel so I can go back & not help u

@tAYYYYYchi: LIES AND SLANDER.

@tAYYYYYchi: Everyone loves me.

@tAYYYYYchi: Clearly, you’re A Big Liar Who Lies.

Well, there’s no denying the guy—Taichi, his bio says when Yamato follows him back—is entirely right about that.

Yamato really , really doesn’t mind.

[herwitchinesss]

tumblr has a real issue with being anti-medication for mental illness and it’s really fucking bad and pretty dangerous, honestly. why all these posts “medication doesn’t make you you anymore/it numbs you/dulls you” etc etc because, honestly, medication makes me way more me whereas my mental illness pretty much dulled that. and there are some mental illnesses, where you don’t get the choice of “not being on meds” because the illnesses only get worse without treatment. like, that’s a thing, and encouraging others to distrust psychiatric meds/treatment is a really shitty thing.

would you encourage someone w cancer to not do any treatment at all or to only use weed & exercise bc “that’ll cure it!”? because mental illness... is illness. and it’s typically chronic & reoccurring. and for some mental illness... being unmedicated is dangerous, not to others around you necessarily, but to yourself. 

it was being around that kind of “community” that caused me so much unending heartbreak. it’s not a bad thing to be on meds. and sometimes, your illness will tell you it is. being able to look at that part of it and go, “that’s nice, but like suicide ideation/self-harm, this is not a good thing in the long run; i’ll stay on my meds/going to therapy” is so important in recovery.

and sometimes, you do have to be forced because sometimes, mental illness takes away our ability to rationalize and we start rationalizing really shitty, dangerous behavior and need an outside source going, “I love you and you are hurting yourself and others around you (bc mental illness can cause you to hurt others without realizing it, this is a fact); you need help.” don’t hate the person for trying to help. stop, slow down and listen. most of the time, someone encouraging you to seek treatment/get help is doing it out of love, not anger or unwillingness to “let you be yourself.”

these are things i wish someone had told me when i was on here way more than i currently am as a way to cope.

healing is not bad. getting treatment, seeking recovery, is not evil and does not mean that you are inherently flawed anymore than anyone else is. it just means you need help.