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A few months ago there were days where I would see an edit and then just lie in my bed for hours feeling the weight of all the sorrow in the world inside my chest and limbs.

For making everyone risk their lives to save him. Making everyone do so much to help him.

I think that Will also felt awfully ashamed and guilty for the fact that even after he'd been saved he couldn't just be okay again. That the thing which had happened to him still haunted him and he couldn't do anything about it. He thought that everyone had done so much for him and now he needed to just be alright and happy and not cause more trouble but he just couldn't be alright. So Will wanted so bad to feel normal, to be normal. He didn't tell others about his nightmares and episodes when he had the possibility not to. I think that he was ashamed that he was still so scared. He hated that he still needed help. Because he was also deep down afraid that everybody might get tired of him being so helpless.

I also think that Will thought that he had probably somehow deserved everything that had happened to him. That there was probably a reason why it was him who got taken and not someone else. Maybe it was because he was too weak. Maybe it was because he was different.

And maybe he thought that if someone understood that it had been his fault, they'd be disgusted. And that they'd be disgusted if they knew about everything that had happened to him. Including what was done to him after the Demogorgon had found him—even though Will barely remembered those moments at all and would've been really glad if he never ever recollected even for tiniest fractions of seconds—

Seriously, by the way. In s2 Will told Mike that he'd "seen Dart in the Upside Down". Will didn't tell him—even Mike—that he'd choked Dart out of himself. That he'd done that supposedly because something that let Dart become alive had been once shoved down his throat with a tentacle.

I think that Will felt so, so ashamed for everything that'd happened to him. So disgusted with his own self.

Like, when I was first watching s2 and they were talking about Will's episodes and stuff I was like "ohhhh yeah that makes sense I don't think he could have gotten over that shit without disorders, seems like a nice representation" but then it turned out that the episodes aren't really flashbacks at all and that they're real and, uhm.

I know that flashbacks don't always occur to people with PTSD, but they are a really popular symptom. And with that move about episodes being real and their origin being supernatural and not mental, it just kind of made it look like Will didn't have PTSD at all; in the beginning of the season a pretty good scene of other symptoms was also portrayed, but it was kind of cut off after s2 anyway. Except for probably s3 Will seeming "childish" to an extent and immature and clutching onto his childhood which is a common behavior among children who experienced severe trauma and s5 Will looking hella scared when seeing Vecna (and oh I can talk about that one too but not now).

Like, they really didn't explore it further and I don't like it. They also never spoke or showed whether the possession thing affected Will's psyche and I just don't think that it could have not. Since s3 his trauma or PTSD wasn't really addressed anymore, probably because it didn't look revelent for the plot any longer or because it would have been a burden for the plot. Did Will get better because he was on meds and therapy? Well then show me the meds and the therapy. At least mention it. Please, I'm serious. I don't think they even implied that. The things that many people saw in blurred shots in the show and suppose to be pill bottles are, as much as I don't want to admit it, most probably just cans of paint. If there were no proper meds or therapy then it should have been a lot, a lot worse for him. Show me little or preferably big ways in which it all affected him. Show me the actual PTSD if Will did develop it because I genuinely don't think he could've not. Show me that it's tough for him to think or to speak about those periods of his life even a long time after it happened. Show me at least something, Jesus Christ.