The opening scene of Teen Wolf actually killed me, because it just… encompasses Stiles’ coping mechanisms, and what he’s dealing with. He says very little about how he’s feeling directly, but everything out of his mouth gives us more. It opens with:
“You know when you’re drowning you don’t actually inhale until right before you black out. It’s called voluntary apnea. It’s like no matter how much you’re freaking out, the instinct to not let any water in is so strong that you won’t open your mouth until you feel like your head’s exploding. Then when you finally do let it in, that’s when it stops hurting. It’s not scary anymore, it’s… it’s actually kind of peaceful.”
When Stiles is confronted with something he doesn’t know how to deal with, that forces his life to take an unexpected turn, he arms himself with research, with knowledge. Matt turned Stiles’ life upside down because of a traumatic event that pushed him over the edge, so Stiles researched exactly what caused Matt to go psychotic. But the way he talks, we get the feeling he’s not just talking about Matt, but himself. About the fact that no matter how much is thrown at him, he can’t seem to make himself stop fighting to stay alive. About the idea that there might be more peace in just… giving up.
“Can you feel sorry for the nine year old Matt who drowned?”
“Just because a bunch of dumb asses dragged him into a pool when he couldn’t swim doesn’t really give him the right to go off killing them one by one. And by the way, my dad told me that they found a bunch of pictures of Allison on Matt’s computer. Not just of her though, I mean he photoshopped himself into these pictures. Stuff like them holding hands and kissing, y’know like he had built this whole fake relationship. So yeah, maybe drowning when he was nine years old was what set him off the rails, but the dude was definitely riding the crazy train.”
There’s a few things in this: the therapist is trying to direct the conversation back to Stiles’ emotions, to Stiles’ feelings. Stiles manages to, as always, deflect. Or, at least, he’s intending to. But Stiles has already found similarities in what drove Matt crazy and himself. The feeling of helplessness, the feeling of constantly battling to stay afloat, to keep breathing. He knows what it’s like to lose control of your body, to feel like you might not make it out alive, because of his panic attacks. We also know that Stiles lost his mom when he was young, and has, similarly to Matt, had a part of him “killed.” So Stiles has to justify the diferences to himself, to prove out loud that he is not Matt, that even with all their similarities, Stiles isn’t going to fly off the handle and attack everyone. So he turns to the stuff with Allison; yeah, trauma was his trigger, but something had to be wrong with him fundamentally, right? So my trauma won’t send me off the handle.
“And what about you, Stiles? Feeling some anxiety about that championship game tomorrow night?”
“Why would you ask me that? Oh. Uh, uh, no I never actually play but hey, since one of my teammates is dead, and another ones missing, who knows, right?”
Again, the therapist turns the attention back to him, after Stiles has done what he does best: pay attention to everyone’s state of mind and well being other than his own. Stiles has been replacing the net on his lacrosse stick throughout the entire meeting, tightening it, unable to get it right. The thing is, as Stiles points out, he doesn’t play. The net isn’t worn out, it doesn’t need to be replaced, and even if it did, he wouldn’t need to replace it since he won’t be playing. Stiles doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. When it’s pointed out to him, he quickly deflects it, and removes the net from his mouth. He’s hiding behind something that he knows he won’t ever be able to fail in, because he never has the chance. And when that’s pointed out, he hides behind his biggest coping mechanism: deflection and humor.
“You mean Issac. One of the three runaways. You haven’t heard from any of them, have you?”
“How come you’re not taking any notes on this?”
This is the first time Stiles consciously and clearly deflects something, because it’s the first question he realizes he’s guilty of avoiding the answer.
“Yeah, aside from the not sleeping, the jumpiness, the constant, overwhelming fear that something terrible’s about to happen.”
Stiles’ first reaction is to reassure someone that nothing is wrong, and he does it without flinching. It takes him a minute to realize that the whole point of this conversation is to let out the fact that he isn’t fine. But even when he concedes to that, even when he lets out the first actual admission of what he’s feeling, he still doesn’t take back the “I’m fine.”
“It’s called hyper vigilance. The persistent feeling of being under threat.”
Stiles has been diagnosed before. He doesn’t want to be analyzed or fixed. Doesn’t want to be told that what he’s feeling is a disorder. It’s why he didn’t answer any of the questions directly originally, didn’t volunteer any information. Because he’s been through this before. He’s been diagnosed. And he’s tired of feeling like somethings wrong with him.
“Maybe it’s not just a feeling though, right, it’s… it’s like it’s a panic attack. Y’know, like I can’t even breathe.”
Stiles stops himself from saying anything that’s the truth. “It’s like I’m being attacked by the supernatural, like I’ve dragged the only remaining parent I have into it, like I almost watched him die because a crazy kid went off the handle and happened to find a freaky lizard who is also my classmate who tried to kill me and killed lots of other people and almost killed my father.” So instead, he likens it to the only thing he knows he can articulate that’s possibly similar: panic attacks. Because they make him feel helpless, like Jackson did, like Matt did. Helpless to take care of himself, or anything around him.
“So, if you’re drowning, and you’re trying to keep your mouth closed until that very last moment… what if you chose to not open your mouth? To not let the water hit?”
“Y-You do anyway, it’s a reflex.”
“But… if you hold off, until that reflex kicks in, you have more time, right?”
“But more time to fight your way to the surface”
“More time to be rescued.”
“More time to be in agonizing pain. Did you forget about the part where you feel like your head’s exploding?”
Because Stiles never gets rescued. That’s the difference between him and Matt. He’s felt like he was drowning since his mom died, since his father started drinking himself to an early grave, since Scott turned into a werewolf and left him, since everyone around him became stronger and more well adapted for life, since his dad told him he didn’t trust him. Since his dad called Scott’s name instead of Stiles when he heard a gun shot go off. Since he watched his dad get attacked, and he was helpless. Like he always was.
“If it’s about surviving, isn’t a little agony worth it?”
“I mean, what if it just gets worse? What if it’s agony now and… and it’s just hell later on.”
“Then think about something Winston Churchill once said: If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
I think the last quote really encompasses Stiles’ way of coping, way of living. He’s under this barrage of every thing going wrong, of drowning under every crisis his life throws at him. But Stiles is in the constant state of voluntary apnea. He never breathes in, never lets it take him under all the way. He’s going through hell, he can’t breathe, he wants nothing more than to open his mouth and let the pain go away. To have peace. But he lives with feeling like his head’s exploding, because other people need him to survive. His dad, Scott, even Derek. Stiles plays a role, and that role is the only thing that keeps him going, even if he doesn’t realize how big it is. It’s the only thing that keeps him from breathing, from letting the water in. Stiles doesn’t believe in a brighter future for himself; he doesn’t see the drowning feeling going away any time soon, unless he lets the water in, gives up. But he does believe in the fact that if he does give in, does concede, it might hurt the ones around him more than he’s hurting.
So Stiles is willing to deal with agony now, and hell later on, because he cares about those he loves more than he cares about himself. He’ll live in hell if it means everyone he cares about gets to live, period.
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