hashtagpitchbank:

one thing that i wish to be discussed further in the show – but which likely won’t be – is tian’s mental health. like this is a kid who was diagnosed with a heart condition that could end his life basically any day without much warning. because of that diagnosis, it’s beyond obvious that he became depressed and went into a downward spiral of doing whatever he could to not think about it the inevitable.

what’s significant about this is that when he’s given a heart transplant, tian was prepared to die. he had become uninterested in life by force, because the alternative was being too depressed to function at the thought of leaving it all behind. he engages in bad behaviour but rather than his parents asking why tian is hurting himself, they call him spoiled. his dad even tells tian that if he doesn’t love himself enough to take care of himself, do it for his mother. just unpack that! take a look at your son and recognise that he is drowning in pain, not just being careless. his carelessness stems from much more than being spoiled.

he thinks he’s going to die and honestly by now he sort of wants to just to escape all this. and instead a woman dies, a seemingly selfless volunteer teacher, and all he can think about is how it should’ve been him; it was supposed to be him.

his brain hasn’t changed, that’s the thing. new heart or not, tian’s still depressed and feels like his life is perpetually ending, but instead of trying at all to sympathise with him, his parents (even strangers) spout time and time again that it’s a miracle and he needs to be grateful. how can he be grateful when what he wanted was to die? this is their miracle, not his.

he speaks self-depreciatingly, he doesn’t care for his body the way he needs to and pushes himself to an exhaustive limit while ignoring his body’s warnings, all actions that expose how little he thinks of himself. because he’s still convinced that he doesn’t deserve anything he’s gotten because of torfun.

tian’s black and white in this case – she deserved to live, therefore i don’t. but what he fails to grasp is that nobody deserves to be alive, we just are. but there’s an engrained misconception that we need to deserve it and by that we need to have good impact, tangible proof that we have done something “worthwhile” with our time here. tian goes to the village in pursuit of that and does help! but he can’t leave behind the brain that’s been telling him he isn’t enough, is undeserving, and so when things go wrong he reverts immediately to the same rhetoric of putting it all on his own shoulders: im worthless, this is my fault, im the problem.

(side-note: that’s why i loved when tian was saying these things and phupha said that he is allowed to feel bad or guilty, but that he shouldn’t blame himself. because it would’ve been so easy for him to be like aw :(( tian no you’re so awesome, don’t feel bad ahaha as though that would do anything to help tian. instead he showed understanding, listened to the way tian was feeling, and offered realistic advice.)

he needs to understand that sometimes “deserving” isn’t applicable and sometimes just to make it through the day safely is more than enough.