"You can't be responsible for their happiness, though, kiddo. It's not fair to you that you can't just be yourself. There's a lot that comes with dealing with bad stuff, that comes of being the kind of person that would drop kick someone a couple blocks that you have to learn to deal with and work through, you know? Trust me - out of my brothers, I'm the one that's most okay with caving people's faces in and there's stuff I have to deal with that they don't, that my dad always helped me work through. You know, when he was alive."
A pause.
"Nico and I talk about it now. And I wouldn't be able to work through that stuff or talk to a friend about it if it was always a secret. With it not being a secret, with being myself, I can deal with it by talking about it to someone. Or my brothers can help me with it even if I have trouble talking about it with them. Like Mikey knows how to help me work through it even if we don't really talk about what's going on."
He knew the right times to hug, the right times to play video games, the right times to try to make him laugh. Because he knew Raph. Because Raph was himself and that meant the people he loved knew when and how to help him deal with some of the struggles that came of being himself.
"It'll hurt 'em more if it goes on and someday you have a moment where you just have to be yourself. Where you do have to dropkick someone a couple blocks. How do you think they'll feel if you wind up in that place and have to be true to yourself in that moment and all of a sudden they realize they already lost that fight a long, long time ago?"
no subject
"You can't be responsible for their happiness, though, kiddo. It's not fair to you that you can't just be yourself. There's a lot that comes with dealing with bad stuff, that comes of being the kind of person that would drop kick someone a couple blocks that you have to learn to deal with and work through, you know? Trust me - out of my brothers, I'm the one that's most okay with caving people's faces in and there's stuff I have to deal with that they don't, that my dad always helped me work through. You know, when he was alive."
A pause.
"Nico and I talk about it now. And I wouldn't be able to work through that stuff or talk to a friend about it if it was always a secret. With it not being a secret, with being myself, I can deal with it by talking about it to someone. Or my brothers can help me with it even if I have trouble talking about it with them. Like Mikey knows how to help me work through it even if we don't really talk about what's going on."
He knew the right times to hug, the right times to play video games, the right times to try to make him laugh. Because he knew Raph. Because Raph was himself and that meant the people he loved knew when and how to help him deal with some of the struggles that came of being himself.
"It'll hurt 'em more if it goes on and someday you have a moment where you just have to be yourself. Where you do have to dropkick someone a couple blocks. How do you think they'll feel if you wind up in that place and have to be true to yourself in that moment and all of a sudden they realize they already lost that fight a long, long time ago?"