Haise/Kaneki VS. Nightmares, Memories and Bad Eyesight
Today we are going to have a talk about Haise and some of the shit he goes through and what I think is going on.
Starting at the top (and by that I mean what we learned 1 chapter ago). When Haise/Kaneki was first in cochlea he had a major problem with nightmares that made him scream cry worse than a baby and claw at his eyes.
My own theory to this is that at that time in his life Kaneki/Haise was still clawing at his memories (I don’t personally think he lost all his memories after what Arima said about his friends being dead). Because Haise was desperate to get a hold on saving the people he loved (even though he may not have known who they were) he was desperately clawing his brain for memories.
The power of these memories caused him so much grief and probably physical pain that his mental status was dropping dangerously from mostly amnesiac unstable young man, to being completely unable to sanely care for himself and physically hurting himself to the ppint of starvation and a festering eye infections for the clawing.
After he was told his friends were dead, (which upset him in a different way but probably made him less likely to claw at his memories). And relearned his old coping mechanism of reading he stopped having so much physical head/eye problems (aside from less than stellar eyesight) and nightmares.
Though they never fully went away (as we see from magical centipede sleeping visits and incidents with certain snakes and stuff…)
Flash forward to after the auction raid when Haise first decides to start accepting Kaneki in the form where he was looking for his past to come again. At times he is seen with a few more dark circles under his eyes and his flashbacks grow more frequent.
His flashbacks are also sometimes accompanied by eye pain, and after a while his eyesight seems to worsen.
Now there are a few thoughts as to why this could be happening:
His eye pain alongside memories was what may have made him claw at his eyes when he was first mentally unstable and grasping for memories and the more he looked for old memories again the worse the pain grew.
Without knowing it the above problems caused his to fuck with his eyes in his sleep, repeating old behaviors and damaging them.
The pain and memories was actually damaging his eyes physically.
Haise’s eyes were getting worse be cause he was starting to remember the past physical damage, but the actual eye problems were psychological.
The actual eye degradation was anchored to something else and was getting worse separately.
Now lets look at the signs in present days. Haise has started wearing his glasses a lot of the time meaning his eyesight could be getting even worse. (he even began to get tunnel vision before a flashback)
Haise has massive under eye bags and looks like he doesn’t sleep. His arm has not repaired properly. I’m worried how far Haise is sinking into his original down ward spiral.
Sign 1: Eyesight - For the aforementioned possible reasons Haise’s eyes seem to be getting distinctly worse, because his “mostly only for reading” glasses have turned into his “most of the time” glasses. There is a small chance he’s damaging his eyes again.
Sign 2: Eyebags - Because either he’s constantly overworking himself, or his nightmares are getting really bad again and he’s not sleeping well or both.
Sign 3: His arm and near break down - At the moment Haise has recently broken down and started crying and shaking and is convinced he should work and die soon. (which is different from “I’m unstable and confused and in trying to escape like a caged creature am hurting myself” but is still a downward spiral. His lack of healing in his arm could also mean he’s restricting and/or not eating his food as well.
All in all, I’m very worried about where he’s at right now. Or what his memories and mind are doing to him.