{"id":225872,"date":"2014-02-23T21:17:11","date_gmt":"2014-02-23T21:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/02\/23\/pardon-me-if-its-mentioned-before-realize-in-hlv\/"},"modified":"2014-02-23T21:17:11","modified_gmt":"2014-02-23T21:17:11","slug":"pardon-me-if-its-mentioned-before-realize-in-hlv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/02\/23\/pardon-me-if-its-mentioned-before-realize-in-hlv\/","title":{"rendered":"pardon me if its mentioned before, realize in HLV John kicks down wiggins and kicked chair in 221b after SH reappearance with his psychosomatic limp. I can’t help but feel that theres a deeper significance to the limp than his adrenaline\/ risk addictn (or dependence) He was limp bec of meaningless existence; SH came so he feels hes doing something\/ can move on- no longer limp; then emotional rush\/ tension that gives him impulse to use leg to do somethin like how someone want to stomp when mad"},"content":{"rendered":"

prettyarbitrary<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Oh yeah. \u00a0No, people don\u2019t develop psychosomatic injuries over adrenaline addiction. \u00a0I think it\u2019s pretty obviously tied to John\u2019s feelings of uselessness. \u00a0It\u2019s a physical manifestation of his sense that there\u2019s no purpose or place for him, and nothing for him to contribute.<\/p>\n

John\u2019s clearly a man who needs to feel like he\u2019s needed. \u00a0Not just useful\u2014because John is a doctor, he\u2019s always got something valuable he can contribute to society, and furthermore he clearly doesn\u2019t suffer from fundamental self-esteem issues. \u00a0He needs to feel like he\u2019s doing something that requires\u00a0him,<\/span><\/em>something that not just anybody can do. \u00a0Any doctor can treat hemorrhoids and strep throat. \u00a0But when he was in Afghanistan, with a team, he wasn\u2019t interchangeable with just anybody else.<\/p>\n

And when he\u2019s with Sherlock, there\u2019s no one else who could be there, who could fill the role in Sherlock\u2019s life that John does.<\/p>\n

I think this tells us something about why and how John grieved. \u00a0Because when he lost Sherlock, he didn\u2019t only lose a friend. \u00a0He lost his place in life. \u00a0This has a similarity with losing a spouse, or a parent when you\u2019re a child, in that the person you\u2019ve lost isn\u2019t only someone you care for, but someone who forms an important foundation in your life. \u00a0In a very practical, real sense, their loss leaves you struggling to find your bearings and rebuild your entire life around yourself.<\/p>\n

(Sherlock really has no conception of what he did to John with that stunt. \u00a0I don\u2019t think he can; I don\u2019t think he\u2019s got the experience or background to have any idea how extensively he shook up John\u2019s life.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that John is still limping in TEH, even though he\u2019s met Mary and is meaning to propose. \u00a0He loves her, and she brings much-needed stability back into his life, but this indicates that he isn\u2019t finding his purpose with her. \u00a0He doesn\u2019t feel like this relationship with her is the thing he\u2019s needed for.<\/p>\n

And I like the fact that Sherlock didn\u2019t\u00a0<\/span>really<\/em>cure\u00a0John\u2019s limp. \u00a0He made it go away because he gave John a purpose; he didn\u2019t fix whatever it is in John\u2019s head that makes him need to be needed so badly that he\u2019d develop a psychosomatic limp over it in the first place. \u00a0<\/p>\n

That limp represents John\u2019s sub-conscious (or maybe not so sub-conscious; if you asked him he might well tell you this to your face) equating of uselessness and brokenness. \u00a0He sees himself as having been discarded by the Army due to no longer being able to do the job; ergo, he\u2019s a cripple, he\u2019s broken, he\u2019s refuse.<\/p>\n

My apologies to people with disabilities in the audience; I don\u2019t mean that this is true, because it\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>so very\u00a0not<\/em>. \u00a0What is true is the frustration that can arise from feeling like you\u2019re less than fully functional. \u00a0For a lot of us, even a weekend of flu-ridden sofa-coma is enough to leave us\u00a0feeling like a lump or a burden on the people taking care of us. \u00a0For John, clearly he\u2019s turned that frustration in upon himself.<\/p>\n

But think about this one for a moment. \u00a0Lots of us want or need to be needed. \u00a0But for that urge to be rooted so bone-deep that John is in\u00a0physical pain,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>his body actually physically twisted\u00a0from the deprivation when he can\u2019t fulfill it\u2026 \u00a0He seems to have picked that limp up subsequent to being invalided out of the Army, and it\u2019s understandable if that gave him a sense of being kicked to the curb. \u00a0But even before that, he must have had a deep sense that\u00a0being useful to other people is an overriding priority. \u00a0How does a person learn that the most important thing in their life is that they need to be useful to someone else? \u00a0Where could he have come by this sense of needing a One True Place in life? \u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not a single possible answer. \u00a0Some people suffer abuse that teaches them that if they\u2019re not being useful, they\u2019re being a waste of space. \u00a0Other people grow up being told that they\u2019re meant for Great Things, that they\u2019re bound to do something Important, until they feel like they\u2019re a failure if they\u2019re not. \u00a0But I think we can be sure that there\u2019s something fractured in John\u2019s psychology, and it goes way deeper than John simply having a high tolerance for risk.<\/p>\n

You might also ask yourselves, what kind of history could a person come from to leave them blase enough with being called stupid\u2019 or \u2018an idiot\u2019 on a daily basis to live with Sherlock without ever getting riled or taking those words to heart? \u00a0What happens in a person\u2019s life to give them a \u2018love for danger\u2019 that in fact flirts with emotional masochism? \u00a0Watson canonically has a gambling problem. \u00a0In the show, John gambles, too. \u00a0He gambles with trusting Sherlock to keep him safe no matter what kind of hair-raising insanity Sherlock pulls them into, and he gambles with whether the people he\u2019s chosen to love will cut him too deep for him to bear.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not news that the characters on this show are all, um, questionable in their various ways (let\u2019s be honest, it\u2019s modern noir, they were never meant to be upstanding ethical icons of good behavior). \u00a0But whereas Sherlock is batshit but not especially broken, John is really, truly a fucked up mess underneath all that cuteness and stoicism and friendly demeanor.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

prettyarbitrary: Oh yeah. \u00a0No, people don\u2019t develop psychosomatic injuries over adrenaline addiction. \u00a0I think it\u2019s pretty obviously tied to John\u2019s feelings of uselessness. \u00a0It\u2019s a physical manifestation of his sense that there\u2019s no purpose or place for him, and nothing for him to contribute. John\u2019s clearly a man who needs to feel like he\u2019s needed. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “pardon me if its mentioned before, realize in HLV John kicks down wiggins and kicked chair in 221b after SH reappearance with his psychosomatic limp. I can’t help but feel that theres a deeper significance to the limp than his adrenaline\/ risk addictn (or dependence) He was limp bec of meaningless existence; SH came so he feels hes doing something\/ can move on- no longer limp; then emotional rush\/ tension that gives him impulse to use leg to do somethin like how someone want to stomp when mad”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[16,5326,1810,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}