Atarangi: If you are having side effects from amateur magi-medical treatment — The cure is not more amateur treatment.
Violet: That ain’t it — I feel fine. Good, even!
Like every other day of my life. And I don’t mean that like “whoops, just figured out I don’t like my life.” Got a straight-up happy one, here.
But I never felt good like that before. That was a whole other level.
How long you knew you could do this? There a reason you don’t just do it all the time?
Kiki: Ummm. Can I tell her I don’t know how I did it once?
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Uh… no that definitely sounds like the treatment might be talking to a counselor, because I doubt Kiki invented a whole new level of happy that is healthy for your brain. :/
So either Violet has dysthymia (consistent mild depression) or she just experienced the magical equivalent of cocaine.
I’d guess the second one if I had to go by how she was acting.
I kind of hope not? I know they generally have better mental health stuff than the USA (who doesn’t?), but the first time I got on medication that alleviated my constant anxiety, my reaction was similar.
I can’t tell you how good it felt to feel like a real actual person, or to feel like I could be below a 5 out of 10 on the mental anguish scale. Even having KNOWN that I needed medication to help me with anxiety and depression, I still didn’t actually realize it was possible to feel that good until I felt it. I was still at 3 of 10, but my usual was 7 or 8 of 10, so it was a shocking and drastic improvement for me.
But I also knew exactly what had been done and exactly how to get more of that feeling, neither of which Violet knows. The only reason I stopped taking the medicine was because I stopped being able to note the difference between taking it and not (and my life circumstances DRASTICALLY improved), so I had a bit of a break from it.
Yeah, I think it’s probably mild depression and/or anxiety that just… kind of exists right under the surface so you don’t realize it could be better. I was mostly joking about the cocaine, I think it’s more likely to be mental illness that you’ve lived with so long you don’t realize how much better it could be. I have bipolar and I’ve experienced that myself. I *was* getting treated but my life circumstances improved and I realized things could actually be better.
heck, sometimes there isn’t a clear line between the two. ADHD meds are like that – they’ll feel *great* regardless, and then you need an objective measure of how they’re affecting you to see if the feelings match reality.
also I was mildly creeped out by how MDMA made me *feel* like it would be a real good idea to have some more. The person who sold it to me made me promise to wait 3 weeks between doses, and luckily that was something where my brain went with rigid rule-following despite the mildly intrusive “let’s have some more” thoughts. I can understand why it’s illegal (despite being super helpful personally as a reminder that happiness was worth fighting my depression for).
..and once the 3 weeks were up, it was out of my system enough to not feel that way any more, and then I forgot I still had any for ages, lol
Is there such a thing as ‘constant mild anxiety’? My muscles are always tense and even though I present as ‘calm’ in an external fashion, whenever I go to a doctor my vitals show as ‘stress’.
I’m pretty damn good at faking being calm though.
…if your vitals never ever clock in as within a healthy range, that sounds like *some* kind of medical issue, yeah.
Chronic anxiety is definitely a thing. I wouldn’t trust random strangers on the internet to diagnose whether it’s your thing or not.
another source of muscle tension (and, oddly enough, anxiety) can be hypermobility disorders (lots of comorbidity with autism there).
but yes, general anxiety is also a thing.
there are other sources of muscle bullshit too – I’ve forgotten the ones I ruled out personally.
♪ Violet’s got a girlfriend! ♪ (Or five.)
Two at most, by my count. Kallie is all for it, and “A potential romantic liaison” may represent a “pressing external-world interest” for Sandy… however:
1: Atarangi has already stated she’s less than thrilled when Kallie has dalliances with Atarangi’s co-workers, and I suspect that extends to not wanting to mix professional and personal relationships herself.
2: Kiki is in her late teens, and therefore might not be romantically interested in someone Violet’s age, (and that’s before one starts the debate of “Is it ethical to be romantically entangled with someone who is inhabiting a body that is of the age of majority, but whose personality is younger than that by a decade or more.”)
3: We do not speak about Pond Thing.
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