i have been watching this show religiously to the point where i cannot think outside of ed edd n eddy so i wrote this in theme
aka hi my names joey, im 18 but anyways so i did a therapeutic excersize/self insert/character study/thinly veiled string of conciousness dump/fanfic excerpt/writing piece using double d from ed edd n eddy as bait [but most of it i feel is him] i don't rly know how to use tumblr that well but i like to write and i gotta get better cuz im applying to uni so hopefully someone enjoys my brain alphabet soup
[before reading please be advised that i discuss some sensitive content, self injury & prescription medication in minor detail as well as more expansive topics like child neglect and anxiety! it's technically therapeutically driven, so if you happen to be uncomfortable with the afformentioned topics its probably not the best read for you. use caution]
i now present to you a joey joint,
joint i. alphabet soup a la ed
eddâs earliest memories consist of him thrashing violently until he woke up shaking, huddling silently in a warm pool of sweat. his jaw would be clenched, his fragile baby teeth grinding mechanically against themselves, before he scurried into the king-sized bed his mother and father shared. his mother would murmur a soft âshh,â until he fell asleep.
when double dee would wake up in the morning, he was alone in the previously occupied bed. the unoccupied space seemed to swallow him whole. the vastness and potential of such an empty space would unnerve him, and he would slowly tread back to his own bed upon the absence of his mother and father.
he also remembers noticing a label peeling on a dvd display tower at the blockbuster in his first neighborhood, and he remembers how thick, hot tears stung his face. and as he bit his lip until it bleed, attempting to force the rouge corner of the plastic label back to its assigned place, he remembers his mother tugging firmly on his wrist and leading him to the car. double dee remembers the label, and how the label would never be put back in place. he remembers how he shook and choked on stifled sobs in the back of the sedan as his mother drove home, only to squeeze his hand and rush off to work. he remembers the feeling of uncertainty upon the realization that label, which he had willed with every cell in his body to fuse properly back to the dvd tower, would now remain in a state of perpetual purgatory in his neurotic conscious.
double dee remembers when three days later, his mother returned home after a long day of work and in-and-out run to blockbuster and brought with her a documentary on polar bears. he had been crawling with excitement, polar bears being a specific interest at the time, and double dee remembers curling up with his father and mother on the rather uncomfortable leather sofa in the mechanical glory of his middle-class living room. he remembers how he hadn't even cared that the sofa was uncomfortable and much too firm, or that his mother had gotten garlic parmesan pretzel crisps when he had reminded her more times than he deemed worth counting that he only liked the spicy buffalo and original.
the television murmured on low about the specific travel patterns of polar bears, and the grainy blue light of the documentary had flickered against his face for nearly 40 minutes. for 40 minutes, double deeâs brain had been able to focus on the deteriorating climateâs affect on the polar bearâs migration and environmental habits. his mother had smoothed his hair with her cold, slender fingers, once in awhile twisting gently on a dark curl. she had regarded him with a twinkling smile, glasses perched squarely on her beautiful hooked nose, and he could feel his father tug him closer. 40 minutes of his life that had belonged solely to the three of them, before an emergency meeting regarding the pharmaceutical board had demolished it. the polar bears, needless to say, were inevitably paused.
double dee still remembers the feeling of his realization that he will never know what had become of the polar bears in the documentary, and he remembers the arresting feeling that engulfed him like an ice cube being dropped down his back.
he had walked by himself to the blockbuster three days later to return the suspended polar bear documentary.
they moved to peach creek less than three weeks later, where edd was to begin school. school had then, in its true fashion of providing education and possibility, become double deeâs absolute favourite thing. the passion for learning had become apparent after only weeks of his first year in elementary school, and so had his strange anxieties about labels, organization, contamination, and the idea that certain questions simply did not have direct or proven answers.
after a particularly low moment when double dee was halfway through the year of 4th grade, his anxiety had caused him to forget how to breathe. with his shyness and fear of burdening others with his ailments leading to him fainting from lack of oxygen due to hyperventilation, he was taken to see a shrink.
and ever since his first meeting with a shrink at the impressionable and mildly concerning age of nine, double dee had seen doctors, psychiatrists, recreational club directors, youth rabbis, life coaches, tutors, and nearly every professional that could be remotely helpful in a case of mild child neglect thinly veiled as âstress.â and every single time, they had all said the same thing as a way of labeling this unfortunate circumstance. double dee was obsessive-compulsive, anxious, showing slight evidence of child neglect and home life instability, and was chronically awarded with the dreaded vague observation that he seemed to be âself-destructive, self-sustaining, and self-critical.â
âeddward seems to be experiencing textbook symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder,â each ludicrously expensive professional would repeat, offering a sympathetic glance and knitted eyebrows in the direction of his mother while they stirred a chilled latte in their other hand. âthese symptoms seem to become exacerbated by instability in everyday life, lack of availability from and/or existence of a support system, and loss of control.â
âit's encouraged that quality time with a support system and self-esteem building activities be introduced,â they would say. âhowever, based on my professional observation, i can stress that availability, active interest, and consistent presence in eddwardâs day-to-day life would likely be quite healing for his array of anxieties.â
his mother would clutch his hand, gently squeezing his palm and observing his raw nails as she explained the situation to whatever professional was on the receiving end.
âit is only possible for us to offer eddward the help he deserves if we have a suitable source of income to provide it,â his mother would say, âjobs in medicine are demanding and although we would much rather spend all our days doting on our son, eddwardâs father and i manage a network of medical centers that are counting on us. eddward himself is counting on us to have a home to return to and financial security in relation to his health.â
double dee would nod at the professional, resting his head against his mothers side in solidarity of her statement, and would often be sent away with a hastily scribbled note on a yellow prescription pad that would be exchanged for a tiny orange tube of capsules that had been deemed âgenetically effectiveâ for his hypersensitive brain.
he would walk in tandem with the click of his motherâs heels to the lot of the building, awaiting patiently for whatever prestigious new suv his mother had sacrificed her time off for sneaking into view. after his mother would tip the valet worker, and once double dee was strapped comfortably to the expensive leather, he would let the impending doom of awaiting 9 more mind-numbing months of some type of oxone or iazine or some other pharmaceutical sink in. he accepted with shrinking resistance as the cycle would drag him through his first, second, fifth, or seventh inevitable episode of being cannibalized by his own thoughts, his life itself a question with no answer.
and he knows, he knows that his parents care for him deeply and he is very privileged to have access to professional help. he understands that as far as teenagers who experience traumatic, stressful, or generally highly-emotional events go, he is extremely gifted and generally stable. he understands that his anxiety isn't all bad, and he recognizes that he gets emotional at times, and he does let these more emotional moments drive his anger more often than not, but in all honesty⊠while âchild neglectâ may be a harsh word for the relationship between his parents and himself, double dee did feel worse after staying home alone for 3 days at a time and going for 9 months without a family dinner or conversation that was not recorded on a post-it note.
what double dee was certain people failed to understand about him, or even inquire about for that matter, was the fact that double dee wasn't bothered by the simple misalignment of an object or the visual discomfort said object may cause. it wasn't the anxiety of being ignorant or an isolated variable outside of a hypothetical range of decent capacity, either. no, double dee was actually fearful of the fact that by all laws of physics, for as long as he remained aware of such things that had gone unchanged since his last encounter with them, he would live in a suffocating loss of meaning. be that a torn plastic label on a blockbuster dvd tower that was his self-imposed duty to fix or a one-of-a-kind moment where his parents had been undoubtedly present and had opened the opportunity to fully connect, double dee would remain unresolved and neglected from the collective consciousness of a potential memory. the peeling sticker was misaligned, yes, but in reality⊠in reality, double dee was thinking about the fact that the stickerâs purpose was to fulfill its duty as a label for the selection of dvds, and by extension, it was his purpose in the moment to assist the label in its battle with clinging to the tower. it was never about the label. it was never about that. it was about the principle that living with the knowledge that he had neglected to correct the little fluke of the peeling label had robbed him of a memory. a memory, to his own horror, that he had cursed himself with by failing to fulfill his purpose. he was so sure that if he had just put the slightest bit more effort into salvaging that label, that he would have fulfilled a purpose. he wouldn't feel so isolated, so empty, so numb, if he could only fulfill a purpose.
it was what had double dee tearing his hair out in fistfuls, only to shield it with his beanie, and bashing his head into cabinets of his empty house located around the cul-de-sac of peach creek. his raw nailbeds and black and yellow bruises at various stages of healing had turned his body into a shrine of his own inadequacy. the stress of the deafening, profound emptiness held enough reign over his nervous system that it had rearranged the chemical functioning of his brain.
in fact, if double dee were not so gloriously exhausted by the result of the operation, he might have been impressed with such biochemistry of doom.
instead, the cunning mockery of it had just turned him grumpy.
[characters don't belong to me obviously duh this is fan made hehe i just feel super grateful for this show and its unnerving ability to draw complex content out of me]
