"I broke enough medical droids most of my doctors hated me," he admitted, though he had the decency to look and feel sheepish about it in retrospect. "Eventually people learned to get me in and out as quickly as possible so they didn't have to deal with me. I was - I was afraid they were going to try to stop me and take away the only thing that was working, so I made myself too much of a nuisance for them to look closely at me." He had no idea what they would have done with fuller medical scans. He never gave them a chance. Ben had grown wary of them, of the critical gazes medical staff gave his body, the obvious disapproval. The way they murmured to each other had felt like vultures circling. He had been afraid of so many things, of them locking him up, turning to Snoke and informing him how bad it was getting, giving him some new false hope treatment that didn't work and never did. It had been easier to shun all the medical staff entirely than deal with the things that went off in his head when he tried to talk to them.
He thought about life on Tsussain, those months where the episodes had vanished entirely. He'd been in the freezing cold, working day in and day out, always active. Ben slept better after exhausting himself and woke up still himself, every time. For a few months he'd felt like a real person. And he'd been able to eat full meals at the time, for a while. There was so much hope back then, but maybe it wasn't all gone. If there was actual science behind it, then maybe he didn't have to stay out in the cold until his whole body shook or avoid food until his stomach was concave. All the neuroscience is beyond him aside from the basics, yet the very fact that there's some science at all that explains what's wrong is a miracle. A long time ago, Ben had given up hope for even that much. When that happened, it was like pouring water on an ember, the last bit of resistance he had to his growing addiction to starvation being stomped out.
The idea of living with food again is strange. He was unsure how he would get through all the anxiety it caused him these days; Ben handled food the way other people handle live ammunition. As impossible as it sounded, though, when he looked at his mother, he thought he could do it. She wasn't going to be planets away anymore. If he needed to talk to her, that was actually possible for once. He wasn't really looking forward to telling Han, but once he did, then he had two people, at least, to turn to when he wanted to do something stupid out of sheer avoidance of the next episode.
"Why would I need to see a psychotherapist? Didn't we just establish this is about brain chemistry and not... depression or the usual things I presume people go to people like that for?" His experiences with therapy were basically knowing that such professionals existed and, on occasion, having to tell officers under him to go see someone for their PTSD or depression or whatever other mental catastrophe was making them a nuisance while they themselves were still too valuable to be reassigned. As far as he was aware, someone had to be actively suicidal or publicly breaking down to merit that kind of thing. He wasn't really at that point, was he? He made it through the day alright, other than when mealtimes were concerned.
no subject
He thought about life on Tsussain, those months where the episodes had vanished entirely. He'd been in the freezing cold, working day in and day out, always active. Ben slept better after exhausting himself and woke up still himself, every time. For a few months he'd felt like a real person. And he'd been able to eat full meals at the time, for a while. There was so much hope back then, but maybe it wasn't all gone. If there was actual science behind it, then maybe he didn't have to stay out in the cold until his whole body shook or avoid food until his stomach was concave. All the neuroscience is beyond him aside from the basics, yet the very fact that there's some science at all that explains what's wrong is a miracle. A long time ago, Ben had given up hope for even that much. When that happened, it was like pouring water on an ember, the last bit of resistance he had to his growing addiction to starvation being stomped out.
The idea of living with food again is strange. He was unsure how he would get through all the anxiety it caused him these days; Ben handled food the way other people handle live ammunition. As impossible as it sounded, though, when he looked at his mother, he thought he could do it. She wasn't going to be planets away anymore. If he needed to talk to her, that was actually possible for once. He wasn't really looking forward to telling Han, but once he did, then he had two people, at least, to turn to when he wanted to do something stupid out of sheer avoidance of the next episode.
"Why would I need to see a psychotherapist? Didn't we just establish this is about brain chemistry and not... depression or the usual things I presume people go to people like that for?" His experiences with therapy were basically knowing that such professionals existed and, on occasion, having to tell officers under him to go see someone for their PTSD or depression or whatever other mental catastrophe was making them a nuisance while they themselves were still too valuable to be reassigned. As far as he was aware, someone had to be actively suicidal or publicly breaking down to merit that kind of thing. He wasn't really at that point, was he? He made it through the day alright, other than when mealtimes were concerned.