[b]Fiona:[/b]

Let’s talk about the Great Gatsby and mental illness, but for completely different reasons. 

So that rich people peninsula in the Great Gatsby where the mansion is, the garden parties, all that? Based on a real place, early 20th century New York gated community of the richest people in the country. People like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Carnegie were all shoulder-to-shoulder neighbours there. They owned the entire landmass leading to what would become long beach, and they built a golf course on it there.

Children of these magnates would go on to say that a busy day on that course meant seeing a single other living person on it. These people weren’t golfers, but they maintained it at huge expense, dredging swamp, maintaining grass, designing everything. Millions of dollars project between them. Why? [i]Well[/i]. The previous owner of that land had no heirs to leave it to, and it nearly went into public trust. The golf course was just there to prevent the land being used for anything else, despite the now-still swamp water causing an endless blight of mosquitos.

That was fine, the heir being interviewed said. Their parents said, actual quote; “Better the mosquitos than poor people.”

This, I think, sets the scene for how much John Snake-in-the-Eye’s neighbours hate him, and how much righteous joy he gets out of that. There is no man happier than a man with moral clarity and the right enemy.

That’s why this has to be an infiltration, with Fiona. There’s evidence all over of John’s war with his neighbours. It’s not just the animals having their own war, no, these people don’t just fight with lawyers. They fight with “private investigators”, which can be anything from a bloodless private journalist to former intelligence services agents with more hawaiian shirts than morals. 

A lot of these guys are con artists, finding sheltered clients who will believe a handsome looking rough guy who can shovel impressive sounding bullshit. The kind of guy who Tropic Thunder parodies as their Vietnam expert, giving lines like “I don’t know this gun by name, I just recognize it by the sound it makes when it takes a man’s life”. These people love that stuff, but it’s wrong to chalk their clients up as gullible for it. The grift works on them so often because these people are in Zeus looking for excuses to justify their view of how dangerous the real world is, that it’s something worth hiding from. John’s neighbours aren’t idiots, they’re just a sucker for a moral narrative that vindicates them; they’ll grasp at anything they can get . These con artists take the money, write a fake novel sitting at a bar, and take it back and call it intelligence. 

If that’s all that was going on you’d have nothing to worry about, I’m just saying that because it’s the case often enough that the information might be useful. No, the Everest mansion actually has protected itself against the real kind of infiltrator, the good kind. The kind of operator that Black would respect as an enemy. 

Fiona’s mostly got this. Pink is, for the most part, physically safe while she’s led by the lace around her wrists. That’s not the danger. 

She’s physically safe when Fiona puts her on her back to shimmy her up a tall tree, safe when Fiona fires a tether crossbow at the second floor balcony of the mansion, entirely carried over the heads of the wolves and to the unlocked door on the second floor. 

That’s when the problems start.

See, John Snake-in-the-Eye is a kind of take matters into his own hands sort. The Everest mansion has been sort of… Home Alone’d? Given the Kevin McAllister treatment? Spring-loaded cricket bats in the walls, false floor tiles that lead to single sharpened wicket punji spikes covered in… fluids. A gunpowder-launched clothesline on the corner of the first turn that acts as the blade action of a giant mousetrap, nylon hanging wires turning into a human-sized egg-slicer. 

None of that’s dangerous to you though, because it’s absolutely fucking Looney Toons and Fiona’s in charge of navigating you through it and she does. It’s ramshackle because all these things are so deeply illegal that John couldn’t hire anyone to make it for him, so he did it himself with parts dragged over from his old place. None of his victims can afford to be honest about what they were doing, it’s always settled out of court. 

This is where we talk about mental illness. 

All that stuff about Pink seeing this place deeper instinct, not seeing it? Yeah she can’t do that now. It’s not just that this place has changed, it’s that this place has become dangerous.

This is the difference between PTSD and CPTSD. PTSD is the first layer of trauma reaction you get, something happens that fucks you up badly enough it leaves a scar - just like body scars they can heal differently based on how messy the wound was and how well it gets treated. Some don’t heal at all, others fade unnoticed into invisibility. 

CPTSD though is the next one, and here the scar metaphor falls apart. There is no analogy for being scarred by your scarring, to be cut over the first wound in a way that multiplies them together that makes sense. We have to speak of this thing literally, as it is. 

It’s when you have more traumatic incidents after the initial scarring where your learned PTSD behaviour isn’t enough to protect you - or maybe it even put you in a worse situation. The mind starts having a trauma response to its trauma response, its PTSD triggers its PTSD. The mind becomes scared of its own reaction to its coping mechanisms. It destroys itself. It cannot feel safe and trying to make itself safe puts it in danger. 

This is where we get into the really bad kind of mental illness. This shit is where we get into the [u][color=#1155cc][url=https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-work-with]Things I Will Not Work With[/url][/color][/u] blog of psychology. Not all CPTSD is built the same, but if we're talking about the kind of repression Pink is, then-

The mind destroying itself in these circumstances is not a universal experience. Each self-destruction is precious and fragile like a burning snowflake. For some it feels like being shunted right back into the corner of our mind, like you’re put in a safe room in the back of your head watching out, locked out of the controls. For others it feels like your mind is an animal caught in a beartrap trying to gnaw its own leg off to escape, but the leg that it’s trying to gnaw off is the vulnerable physical body that it’s grown terrified to be in, that it can’t protect and wants no truck with. 

I can’t say what that feels like for Pink. 

What I can say is that 3D familiar interior for her is a coping mechanism of everything she’s repressed and is repressing. It’s a safety thing for her to not have to think about any of this, process any of her feelings about this place. 

No. That doesn’t work now. She has to look and see this place and search it for the unfamiliar, because while Fiona is protecting her, who is protecting Fiona? 

(Isn’t it funny how that works out? That’s a CPTSD thing too, if you didn’t know, a protective mechanism is to simply not care about our own wellbeing because we can’t afford to anymore. But we will always care about [i]you[/i]. For [i]you[/i] the safety comes off and we have to feel again. Because we love[i] you[/i] like we cannot love ourselves anymore.)

(Even when we are so far gone we cannot feel that love anymore we know how precious it is because we can imagine the grief of losing you and we live in that moment as if you are already gone and it hurts more than dying and the thought of dying no longer hurts please I’m so alone when I’m with you I can’t imagine how alone I’d be without you I can’t do this anymore but I have to, I have to.)

(I’m sorry)

Pink it’s… This is going to break you. Not permanently, not as badly as the word ‘break’ implies. There are softer ways to break, and gentle ways to be broken. 

It’s not enough to see the traps, you have to look for them, prepare for them, see if Fiona’s missed anything. But they’re disguised, hidden, in ambush. If you want to know you can see them-

[i]She will get hurt because of you she is here because of you she loves you and you got her killed she’s already dead because you fucked this up you fucked this up you fucked this up and she died for you didn’t ask her to[/i]

You need to know what places are supposed to look like. Really remember how they were. Remember what’s changed. Open your eyes Pink.

Not as they are now, but then. Open the eyes you shut back then and see through them so you can protect her now from your selfish fucking stupid party it wasn’t worth this.

Fiona is already dead and she hums Genesis 3:23 by the Mountain Goats, a band from 60 years ago that still has some minor popularity among hyper-literate internet weirdos like teenage girls still wore The Smith band shirts then and everyone in those bands is long dead and she sings the dead words to herself so low under her breath she doesn’t think Pink can hear her, but she can. 

She wants good things for her. She smiles, and pulls the ribbons.

“I knew this was going to be fun, I had no idea it was going to be this fun.” She says. “You’re being quiet. How are you holding up?” She says. “Pink?” 

Pink how do you tell her the past is superimposed onto the future and you feel what was never safe for you to feel? How do you tell her that you can’t stop seeing it no matter how hard you try and that’s not, that’s not figurative you can’t see the walls as they are in front of you except in their differences, in the parts where the changes are dangerous to [i]her[/i], in the parts you need to see now for her to be safe.

Because that’s the thing. You’re looking for danger and the most dangerous thing you can recognize here is your past. You’re not going to be able to stop seeing it until you understand how to make someone safe from it. 

And then will she be fixed? Jesus Christ, no. Fuck, no, are you kidding me? God. I’m sorry, no. 

That’s what it takes to get her through the corridor and into the mansion. You’re still only ten steps out from the balcony door. 

This is doable. You’ve already survived this once, you already know it’s possible. This isn’t, this won’t… I’m trying to work out how to put this. This will keep happening as long as you’re here, as long as there are rooms and as long as there are reasons to trigger you. John Snake-in-the-Eye has been thorough. 

You can’t do the party, though, without seeing this and figuring it out. You cannot perform your exorcism without facing your demons.

Don’t get trapped in your own head in this. You have someone here; Talk to her. She’ll help you. She will. I promise she will, I promise. 

This isn’t your fault. You’re broken but it isn’t your fault. We can fix this, just, I promise we can fix this, but you can’t hide from this anymore because if you do you can’t tell her what’s broken and if you can’t tell her what’s broken then she can’t help fix you and if you’re not fixed then she’ll die and it’ll be your fault because you need to be able to [b]SEE through these fucking ghosts in your eyes.[/b]

This is the scariest thing you have ever done in your life so be brave even though it’s hard. Even though telling her how broken you are might make her not trust you to save her and she’ll die and it’ll be your fault it won’t though. It won’t, it’s not your fault. Trust her. 

Fiona hugs Pink tight, and cups the back of her head with a hand and pulls Pink’s head tight into where her neck meets her shoulder and cradles it. “Hey.” She says. “Hey, hey. You don’t have to be okay, right now.” She says. “She’s dead. She can’t hurt you anymore. And even if she wasn’t, I wouldn’t let her.  We’re never going to let anyone hurt you like that ever again.” 

[i]And in her private thoughts Fiona thinks she’d cut and run with Pink right now, if it wasn’t for the party, because the party is the closest way she can think of to kill a bitch that’s already dead. [/i]

[i]And if she hides it well enough Pink never has to know angry she is right now., because Pink could blame herself for it, for being the reason she’s here. Because the anger comes when she looks at Pink, but it’s not at Pink. She can’t help that in the contour of her bruises she sees the shape of the fist. [/i]

[i]It’s fine, she has so many other feelings right now to smother her anger under. Anger holds nothing for the survivors, it’s not for them. [/i]

“I love you, okay?” She says. “I love you.”

…

…