OCD, anxiety, BPD, depression. The threat of suicide always loomed over the small blonde.
She'd been plagued with these issues all her life. Psychologists, therapists, and psychiatrists always called her back every time she left their practice but she never had the guts to return. Follow up with treatment, swallow the damned tablet. She couldn't bear not being perfect. The OCD in her talking, whispering their melodies of curses but to the mind they seem like lullabies. Songs you'd want to sing to your child, to make them at ease but the end result was the complete opposite.
Single words stringed into complex, compound, simple sentences formed in the brain, a tumour of verses becoming malignant and cancerous. Spreading from their origin through the blood stream, reaching the heart and being beaten into every cell of the body. That was the life of Krista as soon as she hit the age of 5.
Perception is what your brain makes of the world. Your cognition. The decisions are known to be unconscious. It's funny actually. The illusion of free will that is. Cognitive neuroscientists ran a study. It was only a simple thing but proves a point. What's your dominant hand? Did you choose that hand? Can you use the other in free will? The study involved someone pressing a button. They found that the decision to push the button with the left or right hand was made up to 10 seconds before the person even acknowledged their desire to press the button.
In fact, the majority of psychological approaches only look on the negative aspects of life. How things go wrong and how people function, the altered behaviour when things go tits up but never look on the positive. It was something that bothered Krista, her entire existence consisted of being told she was not normal in any way. From the things she ate to the things she said, all of them were deemed incorrect or something to be treated.
All her problems are more than likely rooted in her childhood. She still looks like a child, the same height but now she was a 25 year-old with a degree in philosophy and a job waiting for her to jump into. Back to childhood. She had an older sister once upon a time, well she still had a sister but she wasn't physically present. She committed suicide by the time Krista was 10. That's when she learnt the truth about the colour of her blood.
Her mother despised her for her birth. She was a bastard, nothing more than an unexpected pregnancy but the mother didn't have the guts to abort. Almost like her mother had a desire to have an outlet to project her issues onto. In fact, that's called displacement. According to Freudian psychology that's when the ego uses defence mechanism to calm the ID, the part of the personality that was based on the pleasure principle. It's supposed to be like a toddler, when it wants something, it will kick and scream till it got it. It was down to the ego to calm it , rationalise it, it was the reality principle. These defence mechanisms are how it deals with balancing the ID and the super ego, the morality principle.
Krista was awfully aware of her surroundings, the constant sense of endangerment, the fear of the unknown. With the abuse of her mother being met with the abuse of her father, the people who were supposed to protect her from the world were the people that made sure all the evil knew her weakest parts, where to exploit. Her sister saved her from that. The remedy from the psychological warfare. Krista and her sister shared the same father, Rod. But that didn't last long. Krista never knew the turmoil her sister was in. The people her father knew weren't nice people. She was about that age where men start talking an interest, her father let them without question, for a price of course.
Once her sister was gone there was no one. No shelter from the rain. There are lots of theories about maternal deprivation. Even more about a trigger event. The idea of having a biological origin, a vulnerability to mental health issues but the requirement of a stressor to 'activate them'. It could be said that this was a classic example. The stress from the environment, the constant beatings with fist and words. The lack of care. The lack of anything pleasant. She was a slave in her own home without the chains but she was still bound. She was bound until death.
She was away from the house, away from that situation. She allowed time to free her, but only physically. Trips to the doctors, hospital with another attempt on her life, the rope marks that were almost permanent around her neck. The cuts that were still fresh. The memories of her past still play with her neurons. PTSD was the new disorder of the week.
The train tracks that spanned in front of Krista were painful for her to look at. She could see each nail in the lines, each line of wood marking distance that Krista knew she would not advance.
What drove her to be there even she didn't know, she thought she had it all under wraps, the events that had occurred were in the past and everyone had moved on. Her home life wasn't getting any better but it wasn't getting any worse which was the key point, she was far enough away to only feel a small pin prick instead of the hack saw scraping into her spine. Nothing in her life had drastically changed for the negative within recent memory. So, when she heard the oncoming train her immediate reaction was to move out of the way.
She pulled out her phone to check her texts one last time. Nothing from Reiner. She checked Facebook. No recent posts from Reiner except a photo of him and his new girlfriend.
She had contemplated this several times, ways to go out. She didn't see the meaning in life anymore. Her own mortality meaningless and all her hopes and aspirations would be for nothing because at the end of it all she would become a pile of dirt just like everyone else. No impact on anything, anyone, she was always second best and she would be a faded memory in someone's newsfeed or in a memory book, the odd girl crying in the corner. They wouldn't even know her name, they'd notice her one time and think what the fuck is she doing there, they wouldn't even recognise her as 'once upon a time' in their life.
Krista was on medication but it isn't a quick fix situation. It only treats the symptoms. Restricted to the neurochemicals in the brain. Who would have known that just a tiny amount of one chemical, a combination of elements in the brain could cause such mayhem? Some of the symptoms of schizophrenia are said to be down to excess or lack of dopamine in certain areas of the brain. In Boca's area and the prefrontal cortex respectively.
About three months back she had a partner, Reiner; the man of her dreams. He was the person who gave her unconditional positive regard. Krista claimed him to be the best treatment she had ever received but she forgot that all things are conditional. Reiner lost interest, cheated out of the blue. He was awfully cosy with a mutual friend, Annie. Another short blonde. Krista couldn't help but damn her, taking the one thing that kept her sane. It was like ripping the carpet from underneath her feet. She found herself on the cold hard ground and with a sore arse.
Krista didn't know why she was still attached so strongly to the taller blonde. It was obvious from a psychological stand point. That was the only solid attachment she had ever formed with anyone apart from her sister.
The train sounded its horn, screaming for Krista to get out of its path but she was unresponsive.
With the blink of an eye Krista was on the platform as the train ploughed through the station. Another one of those memories. The last time she attempted to end her life. Even she can't remember what actually happened, maybe she walked from the track and called a taxi, drank herself to sleep. That sounded plausible. But she knew that there was no message from her ex-partner, no sign of attempted redemption. There was no doubt in her mind that if a message popped up in her notifications stream asking for second chance then Krista wouldn't be single for a second more than needed to type a response back.
The next train arriving was the train she needed to get to work. She had a big opportunity to find a more fitting work placement but a shop assistant manager was something that fell into her lap. The entire time she was funding her way through university she worked at the same place, after her graduation they offered her a promotion. It was a comfortable wage for her life style. Krista didn't own a car or a fancy flat. It was a small apartment, adamant in relying on public transport much to her old friends' dismay. The more she thought about it, that was one of the things that didn't bother her OCD. The timing of public transport was despicable but she was more of the work perfectionist rather than the stereotypical clean 'freak'.
Krista worked in a small room, handling the administrative side of the business. She couldn't handle the stress of people. People were unpredictable even though she knew all the questions they asked to themselves. Philosophy allows her some insight into people's minds, just enough to dampen her tastes but not enough to submerge her in her own mental issues.
Hiring, firing, wages, stock managing. Net profit forecasting. She was a jack of all trades; some claim a master of none but that wasn't the case. She was a master in everything she did, her mind would attempt to destroy her if she wasn't.
There was a new employ starting today. Krista was told to take her under her wing, show her the ropes. She was to be Krista's own assistant, someone to handle the people side that was supposed to be done by Krista but we all know how that would pan out. The blonde was grateful for the owner of the business, they understood her limitations and accommodated for her. She guessed that's why she held her heart in the shop rather than move on and into something that she may enjoy more. The world was a hostile place, with her own brain twisting it to make it worse was like poking a dragon with a tooth pick.
Nothing good could come from it.
"Erm… Hi? I'm Ymir, in the new guy. I've been told to come see a Miss Lenz, imma guess that's you?" A taller woman swung in through the door. She kept her hand on the door frame, making sure to be able to make a swift exist without looking too foolish. Krista's eyes dragged themselves over her form. She was the lanky type, brown hair tied back. The honey coloured eyes that flourished in the light of a night club. Her choice of clothing was also odd. Most employees were dressed in a red T shirt and grey trousers but Ymir was in a suit. An ID badge hanging around her neck. She looked more like the manager than a subordinate and made Krista feel uncomfortable with her smart-casual approach to her work attire.
Krista was already sat upright, so she pursed her lips and made sure to assume dominance. It was something she read in a magazine. She was that type of person. She had little friends and no 'real' parents who cared to give her advice so she was heavily reliant on the media. She knew it wasn't good but it was the only thing she had. Reiner was a good influence on changing that but a man tends to give 'man' advice. The power plays for the male work environment. At first glance Ymir appeared male, she was the androgynous type of woman that made society fear her. It was something Krista had studied, how that society demonises people that don't fit into a category. A woman with very masculine qualities, do you treat them like a man or a woman? They'll catch you off guard with every instruction that falls from their mouth. Apart from the unknown approach to take with this woman, the homophobic voice of her father reigned free within her mind, the power to hate the woman for looking like a butch dyke. Krista couldn't stand her father's influence.
She crossed her legs, closing her body space a little, backing down from her imagined power play. "Yes, that's me. So, you're my new assistant, it'll be nice to have some company for a change." Timid words hovered in the air, Ymir could only pick up on the conformation of that being the person she was going to work with.
She moved further into the room after detaching from the door frame, extending a hand for the blonde to shake but she was too socially awkward to reciprocate. With Ymir staring blankly at the seated woman she chipped in. "not the hand shaking type of person eh? That's cool… Miss Lenz sure seems a little bit… formal? Can we keep it to first names?"
"Miss Lenz is preferred, I'm more used to that, it's more comfortable to keep things formal at work."
"Sure? Well, I prefer plain and simple Ymir. Good talk! What stuff do you need me to take a look at?"