Justin Mark Campbell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
likefatherlikeson) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
muserevival2015-07-28 01:54 am
likefatherlikeson) wrote in muserevival2015-07-28 01:54 am
Entry tags:
097.1. Muse Prompt (Lyrics)
"Have you ever fed a lover with just your hands?
Closed your eyes and trusted, just trusted?
Have you ever thrown a fistful of glitter in the air?
Have you ever looked fear in the face and said, "I just don't care."?"
• Glitter in the Air, P!nk
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy they called it. It was probably just one of many forms of therapy, but somewhere along the way, this was decided to be the most beneficial therapy strategy for a kid like Justin. He had a severe type of Bipolar Disorder, and even though it was controlled by medication to keep him on as even a keel as possible, he still needed therapy twice every week when he was well... or every other day when he wasn't. So, every week, he had a session with his psychologist and another with his psychiatrist.
Both served different purposes, but the psychologist sessions were more about the things contributing to making his moods wax and wane as opposed to directly about the illness itself. He liked Gabe too. He was more like a family friend than a stuffy, one-tracked-mind therapist so it made it easier to talk to. Part of this Cognitive Behavioural Therapy was not just visiting things that made him depressed, but things that made him feel all sorts of emotions, to recognise patterns and all that therapist stuff that goes on. Justin didn't really understand the ins and outs of it. He just had to show up and talk or answer questions. He was better at that these days than when the sessions started.
"You said last week when you were back that you were too tired from jetlag to want to think about anything. Did you want to talk about how you were feeling that led to you breaking up with Will?" Gabe prompted. "Things seemed to be going okay with things there, and it changed quite quickly."
Justin was sitting on the sofa in Gabe's office and his leg was bouncing with a little restlessness, finger tracing circles around one of the buttons on the armrest. "It's not even a thing. Not everything is a thing. Sometimes there's just stuff that aren't things. You know, nutcase things," he said, pointing to his temple and making small circles with his finger.
Gabe could smirk because he had been working with Justin long enough to know the teen's quirks and personality traits. "Break-ups are usually a thing for just about everyone on the face of the earth. You told me yourself before you went to Australia that after it, you wanted to hurt yourself again. It doesn't have to be a thing today, but we will have to talk about why it made you feel like that at some point."
"I was just angry and frustrated," Justin explained and he looked up to meet Gabe's eyes. If he wasn't responsive, there would be no eye contact. There never was, no matter who it was, when he was at his worst. "Everything was going okay, and then it stopped being okay. That was around the time that I started to feel like I'd... I don't know, changed too much for him. My life never stays the same for very long, and I don't want it too. When it stays the same for too long, bad things start to happen."
"You didn't think Will could handle the changes?"
Justin shrugged. "He couldn't."
"What changes were these?"
Silence took over then, but it wasn't because Justin didn't have the answers. He just wasn't sure he was ready to say them out loud yet. He looked away, out the window to the view over Central Park. "Changes to me," he finally said. "I've changed a lot. I thought it was my life that had changed, but it wasn't. It was me. Things were happening, and I was changing because of them. For the first time in forever, I felt like I could handle it all. But he couldn't."
"You mean the good changes? Your career thriving, your popularity increasing, winning the award?"
Justin nodded but it was accompanied by a shrug. "Changes don't have to be good to impact on you in a positive way. You told me that, Gabe. See? I remember shit. I might be almost drooling on myself at the time and strapped to a hospital bed, I remember what you say."
Gabe offered him a faint smile of acknowledgement. It hadn't just been once he had been urgently paged to the hospital to respond to Justin having attempted suicide again. Seeing people thrive after that was what made his job worth it. "Have you felt like hurting yourself since directly after the argument with Will?"
"No. Just that night. But Dad knew and he made sure I was okay. Then we went to Australia where I had time to just think. Every morning, I'd go down to the beach and watch the sunrise, and then I would go down again in the afternoon to watch it set. The sky in Australia does this amazing acrobatic show of colours, and it makes it easy to think. You can kind of switch off the rest of the world and focus on what shit you need to figure out," Justin murmured and was back to absent-mindedly tracing his finger around the button again.
"What did you think about when you were there?"
Justin sighed and sunk down further into the sofa. "At first, just all the horrible things that have happened to me, and wondering how I even still have a pulse. I was terrified for so long, then one day I just woke up and thought - Fuck it, if they want to hurt me, they can have at it. I stopped caring. I did things that everyone seemed to expect me to do but I didn't know why. I couldn't stop it, couldn't stop thinking bad things. Then I started thinking how I can use things that make me feel good to drown out the things that make me feel bad. I know that's cheesy, but it works. Performing, obviously. That sort of goes without saying these days. But in the show, the characters goes through a pretty intense range of emotions, so you have to know how to tap into them to pull it off. No matter how many times you do it, you still need to be a in the right zone and the right headspace to make people believe it. Then there's meeting people who love what you do. They appreciate it so much, they actually see what you put into it. They can quote lines from the play, they know the dance moves. Do you know how incredible that is?"
Gabe shook his head. "Not personally, no."
"And then," Justin continued, "there's a whole different level of people who appreciate you. I'm not talking family and friends. I'm talking those who have lived the same pain and fear you have, and you give them a reason to just keep going. Have you heard of Project Semicolon? The semicolon tattoos to symbolise people with mental illness to just keep going, even when it feels like you can't? I've been there. More times than I want to admit, and sometimes, the hardest fucking thing you can do in your life when you're like me is keep going. But I'm not the only fucking person who has ever felt like this, and I don't profess to be either. Now I've met people or gotten messages or letters from people who have been able to keep going because of me. Do you know how mindblowing that is?"
Gabe didn't continue. He just listened because Justin didn't have breakthroughs like this very often. Sometimes, the best thing a therapist could say was nothing at all.
"When you do something like I do, and people know you, and recognise you, and invest an interest in what you do, and how you do it, I don't get a little carrier pigeon to bring me a message every time to tell me which of the sea of fans is looking at me and seeing that I kept going, so they can too. I wish," Justin said with a humourless laugh and a shake of his head. "I don't know any of them personally, I just know they respect something in me to admire it. It's not my place or job to pick and choose who should be more entitled to get something out of what I do over anyone else. That's where shit started to go bad with Will and me. He couldn't handle the time I was spending with fans, or sometimes not even fans, just people who know I'm sick but work to overcome it and still achieve something. Anything. When you're fucking sick like this, getting dressed and showering can be a fucking huge success, you know..."
Justin looked down at his lap, catching his lower lip between his teeth because it still hurt, and it was hurting all over again these past couple of days. "We used to get each other, despite all the damage I had, and all the things I feared. He got me despite that. The person who has achieved things despite being sick and nearly killing myself multiple times, fucking up over and over and over again? That's who I want to be. I want to hear the stories of how people get that. I want to look at my fans and know they've given me way more than I could ever give them. That's how I've changed. I don't think it was a sudden change. It just sort of happened. I'm not ready for it to stop yet, so something else had to give."
Gabe nodded in understanding. He had personal experience with mental health, and it was what led him here to want to help others too. He more than had an empathy for what Justin was saying. "It takes a lot of guts and focus to take your fears and trauma to be able to draw something positive from it. You're right, I did say that."
"Sure," Justin mumbled and looked up at Gabe again. "So, why is it starting to hurt all over again all of a sudden?"
"Because you can't just turn off love," Gabe reminded him softly. "Love is just as strong as fear. It takes time to know how to overcome it."
Justin's eyes fell closed and he sighed again, much more heavily this time and went back to looking out the window. "That's what I'm afraid of..."
Justin Campbell
Original Character
Closed your eyes and trusted, just trusted?
Have you ever thrown a fistful of glitter in the air?
Have you ever looked fear in the face and said, "I just don't care."?"
• Glitter in the Air, P!nk
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy they called it. It was probably just one of many forms of therapy, but somewhere along the way, this was decided to be the most beneficial therapy strategy for a kid like Justin. He had a severe type of Bipolar Disorder, and even though it was controlled by medication to keep him on as even a keel as possible, he still needed therapy twice every week when he was well... or every other day when he wasn't. So, every week, he had a session with his psychologist and another with his psychiatrist.
Both served different purposes, but the psychologist sessions were more about the things contributing to making his moods wax and wane as opposed to directly about the illness itself. He liked Gabe too. He was more like a family friend than a stuffy, one-tracked-mind therapist so it made it easier to talk to. Part of this Cognitive Behavioural Therapy was not just visiting things that made him depressed, but things that made him feel all sorts of emotions, to recognise patterns and all that therapist stuff that goes on. Justin didn't really understand the ins and outs of it. He just had to show up and talk or answer questions. He was better at that these days than when the sessions started.
"You said last week when you were back that you were too tired from jetlag to want to think about anything. Did you want to talk about how you were feeling that led to you breaking up with Will?" Gabe prompted. "Things seemed to be going okay with things there, and it changed quite quickly."
Justin was sitting on the sofa in Gabe's office and his leg was bouncing with a little restlessness, finger tracing circles around one of the buttons on the armrest. "It's not even a thing. Not everything is a thing. Sometimes there's just stuff that aren't things. You know, nutcase things," he said, pointing to his temple and making small circles with his finger.
Gabe could smirk because he had been working with Justin long enough to know the teen's quirks and personality traits. "Break-ups are usually a thing for just about everyone on the face of the earth. You told me yourself before you went to Australia that after it, you wanted to hurt yourself again. It doesn't have to be a thing today, but we will have to talk about why it made you feel like that at some point."
"I was just angry and frustrated," Justin explained and he looked up to meet Gabe's eyes. If he wasn't responsive, there would be no eye contact. There never was, no matter who it was, when he was at his worst. "Everything was going okay, and then it stopped being okay. That was around the time that I started to feel like I'd... I don't know, changed too much for him. My life never stays the same for very long, and I don't want it too. When it stays the same for too long, bad things start to happen."
"You didn't think Will could handle the changes?"
Justin shrugged. "He couldn't."
"What changes were these?"
Silence took over then, but it wasn't because Justin didn't have the answers. He just wasn't sure he was ready to say them out loud yet. He looked away, out the window to the view over Central Park. "Changes to me," he finally said. "I've changed a lot. I thought it was my life that had changed, but it wasn't. It was me. Things were happening, and I was changing because of them. For the first time in forever, I felt like I could handle it all. But he couldn't."
"You mean the good changes? Your career thriving, your popularity increasing, winning the award?"
Justin nodded but it was accompanied by a shrug. "Changes don't have to be good to impact on you in a positive way. You told me that, Gabe. See? I remember shit. I might be almost drooling on myself at the time and strapped to a hospital bed, I remember what you say."
Gabe offered him a faint smile of acknowledgement. It hadn't just been once he had been urgently paged to the hospital to respond to Justin having attempted suicide again. Seeing people thrive after that was what made his job worth it. "Have you felt like hurting yourself since directly after the argument with Will?"
"No. Just that night. But Dad knew and he made sure I was okay. Then we went to Australia where I had time to just think. Every morning, I'd go down to the beach and watch the sunrise, and then I would go down again in the afternoon to watch it set. The sky in Australia does this amazing acrobatic show of colours, and it makes it easy to think. You can kind of switch off the rest of the world and focus on what shit you need to figure out," Justin murmured and was back to absent-mindedly tracing his finger around the button again.
"What did you think about when you were there?"
Justin sighed and sunk down further into the sofa. "At first, just all the horrible things that have happened to me, and wondering how I even still have a pulse. I was terrified for so long, then one day I just woke up and thought - Fuck it, if they want to hurt me, they can have at it. I stopped caring. I did things that everyone seemed to expect me to do but I didn't know why. I couldn't stop it, couldn't stop thinking bad things. Then I started thinking how I can use things that make me feel good to drown out the things that make me feel bad. I know that's cheesy, but it works. Performing, obviously. That sort of goes without saying these days. But in the show, the characters goes through a pretty intense range of emotions, so you have to know how to tap into them to pull it off. No matter how many times you do it, you still need to be a in the right zone and the right headspace to make people believe it. Then there's meeting people who love what you do. They appreciate it so much, they actually see what you put into it. They can quote lines from the play, they know the dance moves. Do you know how incredible that is?"
Gabe shook his head. "Not personally, no."
"And then," Justin continued, "there's a whole different level of people who appreciate you. I'm not talking family and friends. I'm talking those who have lived the same pain and fear you have, and you give them a reason to just keep going. Have you heard of Project Semicolon? The semicolon tattoos to symbolise people with mental illness to just keep going, even when it feels like you can't? I've been there. More times than I want to admit, and sometimes, the hardest fucking thing you can do in your life when you're like me is keep going. But I'm not the only fucking person who has ever felt like this, and I don't profess to be either. Now I've met people or gotten messages or letters from people who have been able to keep going because of me. Do you know how mindblowing that is?"
Gabe didn't continue. He just listened because Justin didn't have breakthroughs like this very often. Sometimes, the best thing a therapist could say was nothing at all.
"When you do something like I do, and people know you, and recognise you, and invest an interest in what you do, and how you do it, I don't get a little carrier pigeon to bring me a message every time to tell me which of the sea of fans is looking at me and seeing that I kept going, so they can too. I wish," Justin said with a humourless laugh and a shake of his head. "I don't know any of them personally, I just know they respect something in me to admire it. It's not my place or job to pick and choose who should be more entitled to get something out of what I do over anyone else. That's where shit started to go bad with Will and me. He couldn't handle the time I was spending with fans, or sometimes not even fans, just people who know I'm sick but work to overcome it and still achieve something. Anything. When you're fucking sick like this, getting dressed and showering can be a fucking huge success, you know..."
Justin looked down at his lap, catching his lower lip between his teeth because it still hurt, and it was hurting all over again these past couple of days. "We used to get each other, despite all the damage I had, and all the things I feared. He got me despite that. The person who has achieved things despite being sick and nearly killing myself multiple times, fucking up over and over and over again? That's who I want to be. I want to hear the stories of how people get that. I want to look at my fans and know they've given me way more than I could ever give them. That's how I've changed. I don't think it was a sudden change. It just sort of happened. I'm not ready for it to stop yet, so something else had to give."
Gabe nodded in understanding. He had personal experience with mental health, and it was what led him here to want to help others too. He more than had an empathy for what Justin was saying. "It takes a lot of guts and focus to take your fears and trauma to be able to draw something positive from it. You're right, I did say that."
"Sure," Justin mumbled and looked up at Gabe again. "So, why is it starting to hurt all over again all of a sudden?"
"Because you can't just turn off love," Gabe reminded him softly. "Love is just as strong as fear. It takes time to know how to overcome it."
Justin's eyes fell closed and he sighed again, much more heavily this time and went back to looking out the window. "That's what I'm afraid of..."
Original Character