fandomhigh | Coping With Loss, Tuesday, Period 3

The great advantage to datapads over paper is that you didn't look so stupid or awkward casting glances at a datapad as you did, say, rummaging through papers. So... there was that.

Kaidan wasn't really in his element here, facing a bunch of teenagers, expected to talk about something that wasn't rerigging shields or blowing things up. That was gonna be... well, he'd see what it was gonna be like. He didn't quite manage a smile for the class as they came in-- as a teacher, he figured he could get away with that.

"Good morning," he greeted. "Welcome to Coping with Loss. I'm Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko, Systems Alliance. Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to talk with you guys about grief and... how to handle it."

He took a glance down at his datapad before continuing. "Grief is a normal part of the emotional experience of most species," he said. "It's a brand of emotional suffering that, uh, happens when you lose someone, sometimes even something. You can grieve over a lost relationship or your own health just as much as you can grieve over someone's death."

He touched the desk, mostly for the sake of something to do. "There are a lot of myths about the process," he said. "Like that the pain is supposed to fade if you just ignore it for long enough. Trust me on that - it's just gonna keep coming back worse and worse until you deal with it. Ignoring it doesn't make you strong or capable, it just makes you stupid. It'll creep up on you when you need it least and mess with your head."

Okay. Maybe he didn't need to rely entirely on his datapad for this.

"Being 'strong' isn't always the right way. It might not even be the natural way. You're gonna go through a lot of emotions, sadness, fear, loneliness. Maybe you'll need to cry, maybe you won't, it's different for everybody. But... don't just push it aside. It's no good to anyone."

Kaidan scraped his throat. "Anyway, enough about that," he said. "This is the first class, so... introductions. Tell me your name, your class, and something about something you've grieved about."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Coping.

Cade ~~who didn't go for healthy coping~~

Evan Sabahnur

Mercy Thompson

Flick

Anna Korlov

Slightly awkward as it is.

How the kark did he end up in the class? Karking Bantha. Cade slumped down in his chair as the lecture continued.

Flick was sitting stone faced at his desk, mentally cursing his father and his father's entire lineage for this. If he was trying to joke around, he'd done a miserable job of it. He was probably laughing his ass off in his ivory tower.

Flick clenched his hands into tight fists and glared at the wood patterns on the desk. He didn't need this today.

You know you've been aching to do them. Name, class, something you grieved about.

"I'm Cade, this is my last year, and I was really sad when someone ate all of my chocolate cereal."

Like Cade was going to share something real. Please.

"Hello, Cade," Kaidan said, eyeballing him. "You gotta do better than that."

... He wasn't a therapist, okay.

"I was really sad."

Not what he meant, Cade.

"Right."

Kaidan looked dubious. Didn't push the point, though. Because: really not a therapist.

"Mercy Thompson. I'll be a senior this year." How the hell had she ended up in this class? She was going to have to hurt somebody.

"Um... my foster parents both died a couple of years ago."

"I'm sorry," Kaidan said, with a little nod. "How do you feel about that now?"

She looked up at him more than a little skeptically. "Terrible. I lost my whole family, what would you expect?"

"No, I mean-- there are steps to the grieving process," Kaidan said, rubbing his forehead. "Are you accepting of what happened, or... I'm saying this all wrong."

She blinked at him, not sure what he was looking for. "Accepting? I know they're dead. I saw the bodies."

And boy did she wish she hadn't, but Bran had thought it was important.

Funny how that had only been the beginning of the life she knew falling apart.

"I mean, I wonder about... stuff... But not that."

Oh... Oh. Professor Alenko wanted them to share something they had grieved about, and Evan's life had been literally storybook perfect, without any sort of loss or lingering pain, until he'd lost everything all at once.

He kept his head down and his eyes on his desk until his turn came around, and then he spoke a little more quietly than his usual enthusiastic classroom voice when he started to introduce himself.

"I'm Evan," he shared. "I just finished my freshman year. And..." He hung on that part for a little too long, not quite sure what to say to a room full of people who probably didn't actually want to know all about his emotional traumas. "I... really miss home."

Well. That was. Uh.

That was kind of familiar, tone-wise, and everything.

Kaidan gave him a quick nod. "Yeah," he said. "I get that. It's rough, being away from everything you know."

"Yeah," Evan agreed, his voice a little hollow, still not quite able to look up. "It was hard before, but it's worse, now that I know I can't go back."

Because it wasn't there to go back to.

Kaidan winced just a bit - it was only visible if you looked closely.

"Hopefully class'll help," he said finally. Damn it. Now he was really going to have to put his back into it.

"Flick. Junior."

Which was another thing he was holding against his father. He should have been a senior but this was better for hiding, his father had said. Flick was so stupid to have listened to him.

"And I cried bitter tears when I lost my fluffy teddy bear."

Flick was going the Cade route and saying something ridiculous in lieu of saying anything about himself.

Kaidan sighed audibly. "Right," he said. "Defensive. Okay. We'll get to that."

"Grand," Flick said and let out a quiet breath to try and relax himself. He had plenty to grieve about. He just didn't want to share it with people.

Safe to say, coping was an issue.

"I'm Anna," Anna said. "I'm a senior, and do I have to answer this question?"

Having gone through several much ruder variations on that theme, Kaidan decided to err on the side of not making his students more defensive.

"Not if you don't want to," he said. "I mean, if you did, it'd be a start. But if you want to pass, that's fine."

He'd only taken like three tries to get that one right. He thought. Maybe?

Who has, in his epic awkwardness, completely forgotten to request a TA.

Continued SP warning due to a combination of shot laptop and busy schedule, sigh.

But is there going to be cake to go with the grief counseling?

*is a horrible person*

Coping With Loss, Tuesday, Period 3

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Listen to the Lecture

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Introductions!

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Talk to the Teacher

OOC

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