i accidentally posted a rough draft of this earlier and then deleted it immediately after, but since someone was able to recite it event for event i decided to rewrite it to be even Longer with even More headcanons for everyone’s favorite dumbfuck mcgee. i am not sorry! i just hope the read more works, because i… wrote a lot. oops.
@cacklebat here you go
tw for abuse / neglect, alcoholism mention (tell me if im missing anything else)
popple was diagnosed with ADHD as a young child, around 4 years old, when he was still living in an orphanage. when he was adopted by his foster parents, they were told of this, but dismissed it and said a child is a child, and he’d be treated like a normal kid. this would sound better coming from nice people, but unfortunately it came from not very nice people. his foster mother did try at first, and she even tried to be somewhat polite about it, too. “Sit still, don’t move a muscle.” “Try to pay attention to mommy.” “Please, be good for me. Just this once.” she thought it’d be easier than it was, and after a while she got fed up quicker and quicker. eventually she just… gave up. he never got to be very close with her.
she died when he was around 9, and from then on he lived alone with his foster father, who did less than his wife. he never tried to help in the first place, only giving popple food and making sure he went to bed on time, like his kid didn’t need anything else but food and shelter. ever since becoming a widower, that only ever got worse, escalating to full-on neglect and unconcern. he just told him to do his work, stay in school, get out of bed, the same drag, all day, every day.
when he was in secondary school, popple started skipping his classes. the reasons behind it would vary, but they all led to the same root of him feeling like he’s pushed to his limit. he’d come home and his father would mention that he received a note of his absence and scolded him for it, but never asked why or if he was doing fine. he stayed out late and come in at the dead of night. after the third time or so, his father stopped asking him where he had been, and just started to say he was only hurting himself. it was just a downward slope from then on. other kids stopped talking to him voluntarily because he was getting to be so abrasive and frustrated with the world around him. he stopped trying to understand what was being taught to him. the amount of fights he’d get in in a week’s time increased steadily, most of which he started. the only reason he got out of bed in the morning after a while was because he didn’t want to be yanked out of bed.
when he was 15-16, he broke under the stress. he came home one day to the same old horrible house with the same old horrible foster father, who spat at him for failing yet another exam. he went into his room as always. his emotions built far past his limit, and he just couldn’t take it anymore. he went into a complete meltdown, one so intense that when he was finished, all he could do was curl up and sob with a throat sore from yelling, in a room he completely demolished.
only then did his father notice. he dragged him to a clinic the next day to see if anything was wrong with him. the results? he had developed horrible bpd and depression. doctors told his father he needed to get treatment in therapy as soon as possible, before it got even worse, before it became an extreme case. he just nodded and left, and then proceeded to do nothing, saying, “it’s not that bad”, “you’re faking it, you still have good days”, even though That Wasn’t The Point. even though he was told his child was very unwell, he still did Nothing, and refused to send him to therapy; not because he didn’t have enough money (he most certainly did), but because he didn’t care. and it was all of this– the neglect of his shitty foster father, the constant stress of school, his declining mental health that has no choice but to go untreated, along with underlying gender dysphoria– that caused his teenage years to be a complete nightmare. it was because of this that he never got a secondary diploma; he dropped out before he could finish school.
when popple was 24, 5 years after he was kicked out of his household, his ex-boss sent him a considerable amount of money as compensation (for almost killing him, but that’s a story for a later date). he used it to go back to the clinic he was taken to as a teen, and finish what should’ve been done years ago. therapy helped him immensely, more than anything. over the years, he started to recover. he learned to control his emotions more and take out his anger in better ways, and he finally stopped resorting to drinks as an escape and cushion from reality. he’s not completely healed, however, as there’s some insecurities that are hard for him to overcome (some of which he feels would be solved by certain surgery, which he doesn’t have the money for yet). he still has bad days every now and then, and he has permanent memory loss due to going untreated for so long, but he hasn’t had a particularly bad meltdown or frequent outbursts in years. he’s never been in a better mental state in his life than present day. even if he’s not the sharpest spork in the drawer… but, that’s just popple.
