you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.
(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)
but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.
(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)
there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.
(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)
you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.
(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)
you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.
in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.
but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.
they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.
it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.
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Some of the evidence supporting Mike not being in love with El is brutal. No, but seriously.
In s3, when El's leg is injured, instead of Mike putting his arm around her waist, allowing him to take some of the weight off her injured leg, he puts his arm around her shoulder, basically having the exact opposite affect of taking the weight off of her, instead just adding more weight for her to have to carry.
Now, I’m not coming at Mike here, I’m actually coming at the writers, because this choice here has everything to do with them using this gesture to signal Mike’s lack of feelings for El, even at the expense of realism.
I say this bc any person with common sense, including Finn and everyone around him and Millie filming these shots, would've known it looked unnatural for Mike to be adding more weight onto El as opposed to taking some off of her.
This means that what Mike did here, Finn was directed to do, and therefore it was for a specific reason.
And we know they could have easily made the opposite choice, because they show us Max AND Lucas doing it.
See how putting an arm around El's waist looks so much more natural? Because homegirl is injured and clearly needs help taking weight off her leg to qualm some of the pain she's experiencing there, which is why Max and Lucas are shown here doing it the correct way.
And so, why can't Mike do the same? Why are the writers making a point to show Mike being incapable of simply taking some weight off of El, instead doing the exact opposite?
I don't think it's as deep as Mike not being able to do something intimate, and that's bc, again we see Max and Lucas doing it.
I honestly think what they're trying to convey with this choice here, is that Mike thinks he's helping El, when he is in fact doing the opposite despite his best efforts. The implications of that and how that sort of aligns with their romantic relationship and what it leads to at the end of s3, going into s4, is pretty spot on.
I do think Mike thinks he's doing the right thing by being with El instead of voicing any doubts at the end of s3, because he is under the assumption that she is in love with him. I do think he believes he is indebted to her and that this is the least he can do after everything they've been through together, which has mostly been riddled with romantic pressures and so continuing that instead of disputing it seems like the only option anyways. Not to mention, he does care for her deeply, so it's not hard to imagine that he's a teenage boy confusing deep care for love (he literally tells us this is his problem when he can only say care and not love to El's face... but that's a whole other conversation).
Still, when it's all said and done, Mike's not actually doing El any favors by being with her romantically, if that is not what he truly wants.
Because that's the sad truth about all of this, which is that you would never want someone to be with you just because you want them. If you knew that they truly couldn't have those feelings for you, you'd want to know, right? You don't deserve someone just because you have deep feelings for them. And I think there's so many layers to this idea, bc many people are capable of not giving Byler a chance bc they truly believe Mike could never return Will's feelings. Will also feels this way atp, so though it hurts, he rips the band aid off, because he would never want Mike to be with him just out of pity or something. No one would want that. And so it all really comes down to who Mike truly loves romantically and wants to be with. And the right thing to do, even if it hurts someone, is to be honest, because being with them just bc you think that will make them happy is never going to be enough if you aren't truly feeling it, or worse, feel it for someone else.
We see how Mike's inability to be honest with El at the end of s3, leads to a season of Mike feeling deeply insecure and undeserving of the love El has to offer him, and even though he does try, he always comes up short. Despite Mike putting up this front that they are the perfect couple, the details are telling us something is off. And it gives him away.
Another example that I think is very similar to this loaded gesture from Mike to El in s3, is the scene in s4 when they hug in the airport.
Common sense ppl, picture this: You're reuniting with your long distance girlfriend. Then suddenly, she runs up to you, with her arms wide open, and instead of opening your arms wide to embrace her properly, you take the bouquet of flowers you brought her as a gift, and shove them against your chest just as she approaches to hug you, effectively squishing the present you got for her (a pretty delicate present at that) for no reason other than to... what exactly?
Like?? El isn't even squishing the present Mike, she's trying to hug you, dude! Your gf is trying to hug you properly and you threw the gift you got for her in between you so you could throw in a careful! x3??
Again, this has less to do with Mike's thoughts and reasoning behind this gesture in a literal sense, and more to do with the simple fact that this is a narrative choice! Mike is not a real person! There are real people sitting down and writing this and actors are having to do multiple takes to act it out. What feels natural for a situation is going to be what is often chosen 9 times out of 10, because of realism and wanting the audience to see stuff happening that is believable. That 1 time though, when it's not being done the way it would usually be, is usually because there's a specific reason for it.!
So the question really is, not why is Mike doing this, but why are the writers having Mike do this, and what message are they trying to convey about Mike's feelings based on his behavior, in these moments where he's just not capable of committing to El genuinely, one way or another?
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