After the third game, the lesson was over and I had to go through another round of being gay in the locker room. After that, we had everyone's favorite subject: math. Our teacher began by giving us a warm up which I didn't even remotely finish in time. Not because it was hard (Well, it was, but it wasn't too bad) but because my ADHD decided that the fly at the other end of the room was far more interesting. When I looked at Annabeth's notes, it looked like she was already done and was now also following the fly. "How did you finish it this quickly? Didn't the fly distract you?" "Oh it did, I had to keep forcing myself to look at the task for long enough to understand it. From then on it runs in the background. In total, I spent like forty seconds actually looking at the task, the rest was spent on the fly. It's like with the homework; I can only focus on a task for a short amount of time, but I can finish the task within this short amount of time. Also I'm almost always thinking about at least two different things at the same time, so I can do the tasks while looking at the fly. Now I wonder if I would have been able to focus on the tasks if it had been a spider rather than a fly." God's, Annabeth's mind was truly a wonderful place. While Leo was very hyperactive even by ADHD standards, Annabeth was definitely taking the cake for jumping from one though to the next. "Our language is so weird" Annabeth said, providing an excellent example of what I just explained. "Like, there are sentences that don't directly contain informa-" "Is your conversation related to the lesson?" our teacher asked. "Not really, we'll stop now" Annabeth told her. "So, want help with the warmup?" "it's math, obviously I need help." I gotta say, as much as Annabeth's hubris can get in the way of things, it makes her a really good and patient teacher because she very easily accepts when I don't understand something as quickly as she does. In fact, she doesn't just accept it, she assumes it. This can itself also become a bit annoying, but mostly, Annabeth's an okay teacher.
Our teacher then gave us a worksheet where we had to roughly calculate an area, leading Annabeth to a mumbled rant about how annoying this teaching method was and to just give us the gods dam integrals. Personally, I kind of agreed since cutting lessons was always great, but letting the class (or rather the three or so smartest and fastest students, which I was not a part of) figure out how to do it for themselves could help them understand the approach better and train problem solving skills, which was always a plus, especially as a demigod. Just as Annabeth and I finished the task (her constant "this is insultingly simple. There are ways to do this that are easier and give infinitely more accurate results" held her up quite a bit so I wasn't actually that much slower than her) the bell rang, signifying the beginning of the break.
"Finally, I hate this lesson" one of us said. Have fun guessing who it was. We packed our stuff and left the room. "So, watcha wanna do?" I asked, knowing full well that if my English teacher heard me, she'd probably throw up, disgusted by my terrible use of the language. "I don't know, maybe just talk to some people. Might have a mental breakdown or two. At least Percy's visit a few days ago did its job and the boys stopped hitting on me. I wonder what impression it specifically left" Annabeth approached a boy from our class. "Hey you, do I have a boyfriend?" She asked. The boy took a step back. "Uh, of course you have one, isn't he like a god or something?" "Only demi" "Uh, sure" Annabeth turned away and the boy quickly left. "What did you do to that boy?" I asked. "Did you threaten him with your knife?" "No, I just looked at him. Like this." She looked at me in a way I hadn't seen in a while for a few seconds "That is… very intimidating. Now stop" "Stop what, I'm literally just looking at you" She stared me down for two more seconds before looking normally again. "You can be really scary if you want to. I mean, I'm not the most emotionally stable person but still, that glare is good" "I know. It makes it easier to get what I want." "That sounds kind of manipulative" "I'm not manipulative. Manipulative people trick and gaslight others into essentially working for them. I just convince people to do things." "Not really sure how that is different. I'm not even sure that's what manipulative means" "Also, this didn't develop from selfishness but from neglect and the necessity to make sure my needs are fulfilled. It's just a redundant coping mechanism, except it's for coping directly with the way people treat me and not with the mental repercussions of that like you'd think based on the word coping mechanism. Maybe survival strategy is a more fitting term." "How long did it take you to come up with that?" "I've been doing this for as long as I can remember, but of course I've always been improving it up until the present. You don't just learn this in a few days" As she said 'this', Annabeth gave me yet another short death glare. "Great, you can look at me scarily, you proved it and now you can stop." "Fine, I'll stop death glaring you, unless it's necessary." We spent the rest of the day of the break talking. When I say talking I mean Annabeth was talking and I was doing my best to listen, but that was okay because ranting helped against- well, let me back up a bit.
After Annabeth had scared the schist out of an innocent student, we went outside. We walked around the school grounds for a bit. "Well, looks like someone just decided to be triggered. Ready to handle a flashback?" Annabeth asked. "I guess I don't really have a choice" "I mean, I can still try to fight it. Remember when I talked about- wait, I didn't tell you, I was just thinking about it. Anyways, the way that glaciers change the landscape is really interesting. For example…" Before I knew it, Annabeth was ranting about glaciers. It went well for a few minutes, but then Annabeth seemed to get distracted. "Dam it, I'm getting dissociated. This isn't working. I don't think I can dodge this one." "Want to go to our room?" "Yes, good idea. So, the flow of glacial meltwater carries rocks…" She kept talking to delay the flashback. Once in our room, Annabeth sat down on her bed and reached for my foldable hairbrush. "Welp, let's get this over with. You'll be there for me, right?" "Of course I will." I sat down next to her as she finally gave in to the flashback.
So, I've mentioned my love radar a few times, but it actually works for most emotions, it's just way more efficient at picking up love. By the way, this wasn't like an empathy link, since it didn't really have to do with bonding with that person. If an empathy link was like a matching set of walkie-talkies, my power worked more like a very sensitive microphone. Right now, this microwave was picking up a schistload of fear. Another difference to empathy links was that they actually made you feel what the other person was feeling while I was simply aware of it. Right now, I was very glad that the difference existed. While sitting there, Annabeth was intensively fidgeting with the hairbrush, probably to prevent herself from slipping in deeper. After a few minutes, it was all over.
"This wasn't even that bad. I didn't even have a flashback, it was only a panic attack. Okay, that still sounds bad, and it was, but it could have been worse. I even feel grounded right now. Probably because of this. Maybe later I'll modify it. Then I'll be able to ground even better. This might just become a seriously powerful tool." "That's a great idea, but we only have a few minutes of the break left so we should probably go to…." "Biology. Room 120" "Exactly there."
Biology was pretty okay. Once there, Annabeth had fully recovered from her panic attack (or at least recovered enough to act normally around others) and was pretty much running the lesson as always. She came up with some good analogies for everything that we learned and made it more understandable for us. I believe even Percy, aka seaweed brain, would have understood it. I didn't tell Annabeth this because 1) She'd get offended because she's the only one who is allowed to make fun of Percy, 2) It might make her miss him and the last time that happened, she'd had a pretty bad flashback and 3) It would have her feel really good about herself, and her hubris growing really wasn't something we wanted to happen. It was almost ironic how Annabeth had this immense load of mental health issues, from people-don't-care-about-my-well-being-issues over flashbacks to people in her head while having a self-esteem which vastly surpassed the level of a typical heaöthy person. See, while most mentally ill people have very low self-esteem and should be reminded every once in a while that they were important and could achieve things, Annabeth had the opposite problem, often overestimating her own skills which usually led to trouble. Because of this, situation that raised Annabeth's self-esteem were actually undesirable. After what felt like half an eternity (would have been a whole without Annabeth helping us understand), the lesson was finally over and we were free for that day. "If I have Percy's schedule memorized correctly, which I have, he'll finish his last class for the day in about thirty minutes, I guess then I can call him." "You guys seriously couldn't live without each other" "You try going through Tartarus with Jason and then being separated. This is completely normal for me." "If you say so. I have to admit though, after my first quest I did spend more time with Jason than I usually do, so considering the severity of your trauma, your codependency is somewhat justified." "I'll modify the hairbrush" "What" "The foldable hairbrush I used as a grounding object. I decided that I'll modify it to be better suited as a grounding object. You're okay with me breaking it, right?" "Sure, do that. Maybe I'll spend the time getting to know the people around here. Maybe I'll see you a bit later. Well, we'll obviously meet later because we share a room, but you know what I mean. See you then."
Annabeth
Piper went off to socialize or something. If you're asking me, that's a dangerous thing to do because meeting and becoming friends with lots of people means a lot of people who can potentially harm you, either by getting you to trust them and let your guard down around them or simply by the act of abandoning you. But maybe that's just my abandonment issues. And my trust issues. And probably some other issues as well, I probably haven't figured all of them out. It's not even really necessary, I can deal with my trauma just fine, I mostly analyze my issues because I like analyzing, not because I would otherwise be unable to handle them. While they did prevent me from understanding Piper's actions, my abandonment issues didn't otherwise care about her leaving, so I quietly made my way to our dorm room. Once there, I began working on the world's probably first grounding hairbrush. First, I made a tiny incision into the air pillow so I could more quickly compress the brush, allowing for more sensory options. Another thing I wanted to add was smell, but I didn't know how I'd do that. I didn't even know what smell to add. Maybe something ocean related. It'd probably remind me of Percy, which would greatly help with calming me down, but how was I going to do that? Maybe by vaporizing some of the most important contributors to this smell. I decided to deal with that later. First, I'd add some textures. The mirror, the actual brush and the other parts were great, but I felt like I could do more than just that. I got out some duct tape (Of course I have duct tape with me, you never know when you'll need it) and wrapped it around the handle, right next to the folding line, sticky side out. This would be annoying at first but over time would attract a variety of small particles like sand and dust, creating a large range of sensory inputs. I also put a piece of tape on the correct way since it that of course had a texture on its own. I checked the time. Percy's last class had ended ten minutes ago, so he could probably take my call.
I got out my prism and created a rainbow, then loudly said his name. After a few seconds, a connection was established and I saw Percy sitting on a bench probably somewhere in his school. Once he noticed me, he looked around. "Okay, I'm alone." "Should I maybe hang up and you go to your room?" "No, people don't usually come to this place. We can talk here. So, why you calling? Just to let me check up on my amazing girlfriend?" "Aw, thanks. But yes, that's pretty much it. I just felt like taking to you. I was also starting to miss you and we both know what happens when those feelings get too strong." "I get an excuse to physically visit you?" "No. I mean, yes, that also happens, but I was referring to the part where I have a flashback of when I thought that you- you-" I genuinely still couldn't talk about this event without stammering like crazy. "Hey, I know what you mean, you don't need to say it." "That's great. I've already had one almost flashback like two hours ago and don't plan on repeating that experience. In fact, I've not had a flashback free day since last Thursday" From the corner of my eye I saw Percy's arm twitch in my direction. "Uh, Percy, what is your arm doing?" "Oh, I was just feeling bad for you and wanted to give you a hug, but we're several kilometers apart, so that obviously isn't possible, but apparently my arm doesn't care" "So your arm decided to give me a hug?" "Pretty much" "I don't know what's more amazing to me, the amount of weird schist you say on a daily basis or the fact that your arm cares about my well-being more than most people doing my childhood did" "Now I want to hug you even more" "Obviously it's technically not your arm that cares about me, just a part of your brain disagreeing with the rest, but this way it feels more validating, when I'm thinking a mass of flesh and bones cares about my emotional well-being. If you couldn't tell, I have some issues" "Don't worry, I've known for a while. I'd say ever since… okay, I could probably pinpoint a specific point in time where I started thinking you might not be alright, but my memories just don't reach that far back, at least not in sufficient detail" I went through my first conversation with Percy in my head. "So, the first thing I recall telling you is that if my dad was in the underworld, I'd let him rot because he barely cared about me as a kid. I didn't realize it at that time, but that kind of Zeused me up a bit. So this would be the time you might have started getting worried about me." "Makes sense. From this you can conclude that, and I know I've told you this already, but I want to say it again, when I actually started dating you, I was one hundred percent aware of the existence and ready for the handling of your trauma." "So now seaweed brain is explaining logical conclusioning to wisdoms daughter?" "No, I was just thinking that if I actually tell you how I feel, it'll mean more to you than if you make conclusions regarding how I feel about you" "That's actually really sweet of you, thanks" "Sure thing. So back to what I was saying. I was aware and ready. This then means that helping you through your trauma was something I chose to do. Not because it would be expected of me in a relationship I was in, but because I wanted to be in that relationship, if you know what I mean. Anyways, me consciously making that choice, paired with my loyalty, means I won't change my mind. Sure, your trauma and the amount of effort I have to put into helping you through it was more than what I expected, like, a lot more, but it's not enough to make me change my mind. Also, the more often you get sad or scared or otherwise emotionally low, the more I can see you get better, so maybe it's not that bad" "Are you sure you've told me this before. Because I don't recall it at all." "Apart from the last sentence, I told you all of this two days ago, at the lake. Why don't you- okay, wait, it was Annie. I told Annie this stuff, not you" "Okay then, go on making me feel good I guess. Did you just say you enjoy seeing me suffer." "No, I love to see you get better, I hate to see you suffer, but I'd hate it even more for you to suffer in silence without me seeing you" "So you're putting my mental health over your own?" "Not really. The negative effect on my mental health from seeing you suffer is both miniscule compared to the benefit to your mental health that comes from me comforting you and also offset by the benefit to my own mental health that comes from seeing you get better, so helping you is better for both of us." "I pretty much knew these things beforehand but still, hearing them here, from you, just makes me so happy, I can barely put it into words." "Which is just another- I think I'm stuck in a loop. I comfort you, you're surprised by being comforted, I notice what that says about you and your childhood, I feel bad for you, I want to comfort you even more" "It's not really a loop because comforting me more won't strengthen your awareness of the fact that my childhood sucked."
And you know what also sucks? My upload consistency, so I'll just post this now