#meaningful connection bc they were never taught how to / were raised to consider themselves unworthy and unloved

[witchsickness]

no cause i’m never not thinking about how lonely billy was. not just the neil-enforced, hawkins-stranded isolation. even before that, i can’t ever see him having a real connection to anyone. growing up in a household that put a label of wrongness over everything billy did, or wanted, or was. that taught him, from such a young age, to hide the parts of himself that put a target on his back. that made him believe himself unlovable and destined to be abandoned for who he is. all that shame punched into him that created an unbridgeable chasm between him and the rest of the world, convinced him that no one would ever stick around unless billy hid those parts that made him abhorrent and and twisted and wrong in his father’s eyes. i just. i don’t ever see him truly able to open up to anyone, making real friends he can confide in, because he’s been conditioned to think that he’d either be abandoned for who he really is, or beaten bloody for it. 

and like. that’s what gets me the most? that neil won. billy lived his whole life behind a mask of self-enforced isolation, truly alone and with no one to be his real self with, and it still wasn’t enough. everything in his life, from the moment he was left motherless, to the final act of his sacrifice for people who never even bothered to stop and consider billy worth saving, proved neil right. it just. yeah. doesn’t sit right me

#billy hargrove #unfinished thought but there is sth to be said about both billy and steve being constantly surrounded by people who want something #from them (billy -- the new‚ cool kid in town / steve -- the rich guy whose family owns half of hawkins) but never able to establish any #meaningful connection bc they were never taught how to / were raised to consider themselves unworthy and unloved #and then finding solace in one another and recognizing the mutual loneliness and building something on it #two single drops coming together to form an ocean #just them seeing behind the mask each other's wearing / the image others have of them UGH #harringrove in the tags #my stuff