[Misery, dismay, conflict—and most of all, an utter hopelessness for the future. But that's not all there is to him now, and the other things have allowed him to keep himself together, in more than just an emotional sense. If he doesn't focus on what gives him happiness, he has the sense he'll simply shatter, and that would probably be that.

But of course he knows focusing on the happy things isn't so easy. It was a difficult journey to get where he is now.]

I tried that... pretending. It didn't really work the way I was hoping it would.

[In Geardagas especially. All that time he was made to be something he wasn't, something he hated even more than his usual self, and he simply put on a facade. It left him a mess when he finally returned to his home, and when a few of those memories came back to him here, they weren't easy to accept.]

They say acknowledging the problem is the first step, you know. To coming to terms with it, instead of sinking under it. [Lest he be taken as lecturing, though, he adds:] Not that I can really say what you've done.