Shouto asked me to record my questions and his reactions and responses to some personal stuff. He told me to ask extremely personal and uncomfortable questions. I don't even know where to begin. He wants to see a less biased and more objective view of how he acts, for some reason. He also told me to write this like a diary entry or something, and to just write all my thoughts and everything.
OK, Shouto. I feel like this is a bad idea, but you knew it was a bad idea when I wanted you to tell me how you really felt, so let's see what the hell happens.
First question: "How often do you think about killing yourself?"
"All the time. I won't, but it's always on my mind." He looked the same throughout that.
"Why?" Just so you know, it fucking hurt to hear you say that so casually, Shouto.
"I don't know. It would be easier."
"Is it like…calming to think about it?"
Shouto tilted his head and thought for a while. "Maybe. Maybe that's part of it. When I think about dying, I just… It's like my reason to live, in a way? Maybe that doesn't make sense, but telling myself I'll just kill myself in a little bit gives me the energy to keep living to see that moment. Obviously, I never go through with it. I just use the relief to get through the day."
I don't think you'll ever understand how fucking devastating it was for me to hear that from you. That's not living, Shouto. That's not happiness. That's not good at all. You can go on living because you convince yourself you'll just kill yourself soon anyway? That's beyond fucked up…
Shouto looked no different while he explained his sad thoughts. I hugged him and said it made me sad to know that. I asked if he was sad at all that he had to do that just to live. He shook his head and said he was used to it.
That's even sadder, Shouto.
What kills me the most is that you just can't understand how awful all the shit you've been through is. No matter how many times I try to explain it, you just don't understand. Or maybe you do, but it doesn't matter to you. Maybe what I'm trying to say is that you don't understand the significance of it. Either way, it fucking kills me.
Second question: "Why are you like this?"
"I don't know. It was the only way I knew how to go. I never consciously chose this." He shrugged.
"Then what exactly do you think triggered the changes? You weren't like this before. What made you become so cold? Don't just say you don't know or give some generic answer. Think. Tell me some specific things."
Shouto was dead silent for a solid ten minutes. He just stared at the wall, blinking slowly at times, faster during others, and occasionally, just staring for a while. Sometimes I saw some of the muscles in his face twitch, and sometimes his expression scrunched up. Sometimes he closed his eyes tight, and sometimes I noticed he started breathing heavier and faster than usual.
I felt so fucking bad for making him relive his trauma. He asked for this, but I still felt guilty as all hell.
Finally, Shouto took a deep breath in, and he slowly nodded his head. "He… Endeavor beat me. He beat my sensibility out of me. He beat my priorities out of me. He beat my sense of self out of me. He beat my personality out of me. He beat my identity out of me. He beat my emotions out of me. He beat my pain out of me. He beat my empathy out of me. He beat the human I was out of me. He beat me until there was nothing left. And he enjoyed it. I never had to go through any of it, but because of him, I did. Hearing you talk about your mom, and just the good moments you had with your parents…
"I never had that with Endeavor. Any semblance of a normal family… I never had that. Even though I begged for something like that as a kid, things only got worse. I begged for a happy family, and I was beaten for it. And then my sister died, and I didn't feel anything. I know what you mean by now no longer having the chance to tell someone how grateful you were to them, what they meant to you, everything they did for you… I understand now. She did…so much for me, and all I was was a selfish piece of shit. I took it all for granted.
"I can't take that back. I can't take back how I thought of her as an annoyance. I can't apologize for any of it. I can't even grieve over any of it. And that's wrong of me, isn't it? 'Evil,' some might call it. And I can't seem to change…how after all this time, I still don't feel a fucking thing… And all because of someone who was supposed to be my 'father?' Someone who took advantage of the woman who gave birth to us all? Someone who just wanted that woman to give birth to the perfect weapon? I just… I don't even know anymore."
Shouto shook his head and was silent for a while longer. As he gave his answer, his voice slowly got more desperate and just kind of filled with this angry conviction, almost. Like he was in disbelief but also upset.
This wasn't the Shouto I was familiar with at all. This was a human being who was feeling something, deep inside. This was someone so fucking vulnerable and open who wasn't just spitting out practiced lines to fake his empathy.
Shouto abruptly continued, muttering, "I was forced into this because of him. I could've been normal. I could've developed the way I was supposed to. I could've been myself. This never had to happen. Why? I was miserable back then. I'd cry after every fucking thing…" He closed his eyes. "All because of that man…"
I couldn't stand seeing Shouto distraught and clearly hurt, so I put the notes down and hugged him. I told him it wasn't fucking fair, that I'd have killed Endeavor myself a long fucking time ago if I'd been in his shoes, that he never deserved to go through all his suffering, that he was only human, that everyone should have the right to their humanness, that it was all fucking horrible, that I was there for him, that I would never let him experience anything like that ever again, that I was hurting so fucking badly for him… I was fucking crying. For the first time, I actually saw Shouto show a little bit of emotion, and it wasn't because he was happy like I always dreamed of. No, it was because he was breaking.
That killed me.
Shouto stayed silent for a few minutes, but then, he said, "I couldn't even be human. I couldn't…be human? I wasn't allowed to do that. I got beaten…for being human?" His brows were furrowed, and he fell into silence again. "I couldn't even function without killing off my 'humanness.' It never really hit me…just how much he did to me…until you pointed it out. I never realized a few years ago when you commented on his abuse. But the more you've brought it up…" He shook his head, and with this visceral expression I can't even begin to describe, he buried his face into his hands.
He continued, saying, "The more you've proven how abnormal, shitty, cruel, unfair, and just…how 'bad' it was… What 'normal' relationships and families are like… What I should've had, but that was ripped from me because of him when it never should've been… What just blatantly wasn't OK about it all… How many fucking lines he crossed, and I was the 'villain' for it, even though I… Even though it damaged me so fucking much…that I had to accept my perpetual guilty verdict as the villain and shrug it off just to live with it all…
"All this time…I blamed myself for all of it. All of it… I never saw what was so wrong about it all because I deliberately blinded myself and dissociated from it so I could recognize its morality, but not when it came to me. That's what he beat into me. Even now, when he's fucking dead…" He lowered his hands to his sides in defeat, and then, he looked me right in the eyes, and I know what I saw: tears were drowning his eyes. "Katsuki…" He faltered into my arms, and I just kept telling him that I loved him, I would always be there for him, this was a safe space, he'd suffered through enough…
I'll never know if he let those tears fall.
But after a while of just sitting on the floor and hugging, he asked me to ask him about our wedding. He wouldn't budge from keeping his head over my shoulder. His arms wouldn't move an inch from around my chest, either.
His first genuine hug. I cried over that too. Seeing Shouto come undone broke me so fucking badly, but not nearly as much as it broke him to come undone.
I didn't want to ask anything anymore. I just wanted to comfort him and listen to him. But he was begging me to keep asking. I asked him why when it was clearly destroying him, and I'll never forget how he reacted:
Shouto tensed up, and with this raw, agonized anger in his voice, he hissed, "I don't fucking know! I'm just…" He squeezed my hands and took a few shaky breaths in. "Why? Why? Why, Katsuki?" He let out a long, heavy sigh. "Whatever… Just ask. Please."
Question three: "What did you feel at the wedding?"
"I don't know. No. I know. I just… Even though I fucking wrote it all down, somehow, I never fucking realized what I was feeling—that I was feeling. All this time… I don't know when I started to slowly feel again. I don't fucking know. But I did. I have. I just couldn't recognize the feelings. My therapist was talking to me about this. I thought she was full of shit, saying I just didn't realize what I was feeling. I was so convinced I didn't feel anything at all, despite even what I wrote down where I obviously fucking felt something. Just like…at our wedding. When you proposed to me. I did feel.
"When you proposed, I just felt warm inside. Like I was snuggled in a blanket with you on the inside. I was glad. But I didn't understand what it was. I didn't know that I was feeling anything. And after that…I think is when everything slowly started to fray. Like the wedding. I was stressed. I was panicking. I was anxious. I was afraid. I was paranoid. I was on high alert the whole time. Just remembering the wedding sent me into an anxiety attack or something. I don't know. But I couldn't recognize any of my feelings. I made myself forget, and I kept telling you and myself that I didn't care.
"I did care, Katsuki. I did… I just didn't know…that I did. I didn't know it was a lie I was telling myself. Because I'm not saying I've always cared. No. For a long time, I genuinely didn't. I couldn't. But I don't know when 'I don't care' became a lie I told myself to stay strong. Because I… Without that… If I can't fucking make myself believe I don't care, I'm no one. I'm nothing. I'm weak. I'm so fucking weak and pathetic. But all this time… Katsuki, all this time, you just… You gave me this safe space… You never fucking left me, and you just poured all this love into me, knowing I wouldn't even reciprocate.
"You kept trying to help me through all the things that were killing me. Maybe you weren't even aware of it or actively trying to do this, but you just kept showing me what was right and wrong, normal and abnormal, OK and unacceptable… And you pulled me out of that hell I was in with Endeavor, where I needed to be a monster to survive. You gave me a loving, safe environment. I just… Over time, even though I didn't realize it, you were healing me. All this time, Katsuki… I needed you. I needed this environment. I needed…this love and kindness…to start healing.
"All this time…I have been healing. Slowly… So fucking slowly to the point where I couldn't notice any of it and denied the possibility of it. But this… This is the pain I rejected from back then. It's all slowly been coming back. It's always been killing me. That's why I… That's why it's so fucking hard to stop drinking off the pain, smoking off the worries, numbing everything, and then cutting and doing reckless, suicidal things just to feel alive. That's why… I never understood why I couldn't stop. Why it was so hard to stop once I started. It made me feel better, and I didn't know why. Now I know…"
I had to write Shouto's response after the fact, so this is just a summary of it. There was literally more. He said even more than this. And I can't even begin to fucking say the things I felt, and that I've felt just writing this all down. It fucking hurt. It hurt so fucking much. It still does. Shouto is asleep beside me, and even though he said he just wanted to be alone, I didn't want him to cut or something from the stress of everything.
I love him so much, but constantly worrying about whether he's even gonna be alive the next time I see him? Always trying to check for signs that he went through something rough that would make him more likely to hurt himself? Being terrified all the time to the point where the pauses in his breaths at night make me panic if they're ever so slightly longer than usual? It hurts. It's hard to even sleep at night. For all I know, Shouto could wait for me to fall asleep to kill himself.
I'll never be able to describe how badly it hurts me to feel just so fucking useless and worthless while my own goddamn husband suffers. How bad it hurts to know that, whatever pain I'm feeling, he has it so much worse. How bad it hurts to see with my own two eyes how, despite everything I've done, Shouto is still an absolute mess. If I were a good husband, surely, I'd have fixed things long ago, right? I'd have been able to make my husband happy like he deserves, right?
I just feel so fucking worthless all the time, knowing how little I can do for the person I love and care about the most.
But even I couldn't tell that Shouto had been feeling what he did. He just kept that cold facade and never shed any tears or showed any signs of being worried or caring about anyone or anything. Is that why he's been binge eating? He's done this for a long time now. I never fucking realized… I feel so fucking stupid. What the fuck is wrong with me? How did I not realize all these things?!
I've written so much. I honestly forgot I'm supposed to give this back to Shouto. It just naturally became a vent thing for me.
Guess I'll consider journaling my thoughts since scribbling all this shit down has felt kinda relieving and freeing.
Also, hey, Shouto. I love you. Don't you ever forget or deny that, K? I don't regret a single thing about loving you. You're my husband, and I'll keep you safe. Cry to me if you're sad. Scream your pain at me when you're angry. Cuddle in my arms when you're afraid. Call my name when you feel alone. Take my hand when you feel like ending it.
Promise me you'll laugh with me when you're happy sometime, OK?
I love you, Shouto Bakugou.
