Open Quick! Gimme a dictionary!

[Ayana]

Ayana had found herself in the library. She finally had time to visit it after learning a word, or rather phrase that might be linked to... Whatever she is missing. "Dissociative" part of dissociative amnesia. The hell does that mean anyway? She already knew that amnesia meant by doctors someone had forgotten something, or more so, lost their memories. But the other word is the one that had brought her to the library.

It was quiet, and early in the morning, so not a whole lot of people were around. Which will give her the perfect opportunity to look through as much books as she wants to find her answers.

Only after thirty minutes have past before she came across a dictionary. She sat down and started to read. There were a lot of random and unique words in here that she hasn't even heard of, taking more time to read than just jumping to find the word 'dissociative'.

 

[Ueno Kotone]

Bumi yawned as her cart trundled out of two rows of shelves. The previous night was getting to the girl as she tried to start her morning routine, eventually settling on plucking a cushion from a particularly cozy reading corner. Attemtping to balance the soft, fluffy pillow on a stack of books that jutted up from her well-laden library cart, the girl eventually managed to get it settled without risking the toppling of too many books. Yawning again, the pink haired girl rested her head of the cushion and attempted to steer herself and her veritable tank of reading material to varying degrees of success.

The girl had just bumbled into a stray table, the jolt shaking her eyes open, when she spied a small brown-haired girl flipping through a dictionary. Her interest immediately piqued, Bumi had no choice but to greet this fellow lover of the written word! Forcing herself up from her portable headrest, the bespectacled girl nearly tripped over the oversized length of her pajamas pants, stumbling forward a few steps before righting herself. Whether this had caught the child's attention or she was too busy enjoying her book, Bumi simply decided to walk over and cross her arms over the other girl's head, peering down at the book in her hands.

"Hiya friend!" Glancing down to shoot Ayana a sleepy smile, Bumi pushed her glasses up a bit to fully make out the words. "Whatcha got the- Ohhh, I love that dictionary! Gosh I've probably read that one at least eight times!" Pushing off the girl's head the Bumi began to take a few steps towards her cart. "Actually hold on a minute, if you like dictionaries I've got a bunch more to recommend!" Upon reaching the small vehicle, the pink-haired girl immediately dropped to her knees and began digging through her stockpile that she had intended to shelve. "Yep, yep. Can never have too many dictionaries, no sirree, not if my name's not Sonozaki Shibumi!" Pulling a stack of books from one of the racks, the girl tottered back over to Ayana, a large welcoming smile still plastered across her face. "Everyone just calls me Bumi though by the way, especially my friends, like you! Did I say hi yet? Hiyaaa~"

[Thread entered with Bumi!]

 

[Ayana]

Ayana was about to flip to the page to find that specific word she needs when she heard noises and sounds happening in her immediate vicinity.

And before she knew it, she was ambushed by another girl whom to be put simply, is very loud and happy. The very exact opposite of her. Almost reminds Ayana of another girl who is loud, but is more so on the side of bossy in a sense. Everything seemed to be happening fast as the other girl rattled on from reading a single dictionary eight times to having a bunch more dictionaries, to slightly introducing herself to saying that they were already friends.

What was her name? Bumi? Shibumi? The girl couldn't really keep up. She tried her best to keep calm and quiet. It didn't help matters when the previous day she had that lesson with Maru, and she now knows how to stand up against people like him. Oh the urge to sometimes let go of her anger and frustration by yelling would be good, especially if she was getting annoyed. But the softer side of her won the internal emotional rollercoaster battle as she took a deep breath and said, "Nice to meet you Shibumi. I'm not actually interested in reading all of a dictionary, but rather find one specific word. Now since you have read some of these dictionaries, especially this one eight times, would it be possible if you know the meaning of the word 'dissociative'?" Ayana waited for the other girl to respond. It was obvious that she was dealing with an extrovert, with how the other girl is so willing to walk up to a person she doesn't know and go off on never ending talking. Seriously, Ayana doesn't know how other people do it, it being conversing on a regular basis.

 

[Ueno Kotone]

Bumi plopped the stack of books down with a thud, shooting another big smile at the brown-haired girl's greeting. "Nice to meetcha too friend! But no no no no! Just Bumi! You can drop the Shi. Sonozaki Shibumi was my great-aunt!" The girl did her best to cram the introduction in, but was eventually cut off as the other girl continued with her explanation, causing Bumi's brow to furrow slightly at the idea of not wanting to read something. The pink-haired girl eventually brightened as it became clear that in spite of her poor reading-ethic, Ayana was still interested in learning something.

"Ohhh, yep yep yep! Can never have too many words. Nope, never ever not if my name's not Sonozaki Shibumi!" The girl adjusted her glasses and then rested herself on crossed arms at the top of her newly placed stack of books, letting her face get a bit closer than necessary to the brown-haired girl. "'Hmmm. Disassociative, oh that's a good one! Let's see..." Bumi rolled her eyes up as she mouthed out a few silent words before finally settling on the definition stored in her mind.

" diassociative

Adjectival form of disassociation.

disassociation

1: the act or process of dissociating : the state of being dissociated: such as
a : the process by which a chemical combination breaks up into simpler constituents especially : one that results from the action of energy (such as heat) on a gas or of a solvent on a dissolved substance
b : the separation of whole segments of the personality (as in multiple personality disorder) or of discrete mental processes (as in the schizophrenias) from the mainstream of consciousness or of behavior
2 : the property inherent in some biological stocks (as of certain bacteria) of differentiating into two or more distinct and relatively permanent strains"

Bumi smiled, her eyes rolling back down to beam at the brown-haired girl as she shifted a few inches even closer. "Yep yep, that's a good one alright. It's basically like... You know what it means to associate? That! But, opposite! Yep yep yep. Here let me write that down for you." The smiling girl suddenly pushed herself up, barely avoiding toppling the pile beneath her in the process and stumbled back to her cart. Procuring a pen and index card from one of the shelves, Bumi furiously jotted down the definition, along with a quick doodle of a heart. "Can never have too many words, nope nope, but whatcha' need this for anyway? School project? If you need more help you can count on Bumi!"

 

[Ayana]

Okay, Bumi, got it. Just please calm down, was all Ayana could really think of, but she was too nice to say it. Well... At least the girl did help her to find out what the word meant, even going as far as giving her all of the definitions of the word.

Ayana had to scoot away when the other girl was starting to get uncomfortably close to her. All the while, she was thinking to herself which of the definitions would best describe what kind of predicament she is in. The phrase as a whole is Dissociative amnesia. Amnesia means to lose memory. And the best definition for dissociative that could fit with amnesia is the one that talks about mental processes and consciousness and behavior.

Which means... Put both of those together, and she would get... Loss of memory from the mainstream consciousness? Remembering how the doctors have diagnosed her with it, when she snuck around and read the hospital bill, she would only guess that something had happened to her that made her mind go crazy, but what? It seems just looking words up alone wouldn't be enough to solve this mystery that she had found herself in. Now it looks like she needs to know how it happens, and why did it happen to her. Only then will she be able to figure out what she is missing.

The other girl caught her attention when she asked Ayana's why she needed to know that word. In all honesty, she herself doesn't even know. Maybe she is going on a wild goose chase. But it seems to be the only thing that she can at least get a grasp of on the situation and maybe know. "I don't know, to be honest. Trying to figure something out that might or might not exist for me."

 

[Ueno Kotone]

Bumi rapidly pulled up a chair next to Ayana as she handed over the previously scribed card. Shifting around, the pink-haired girl slowly edged herself closer to the other as she replied, eventually resettling herself to having their faces just inches apart. "Something that might or might not exist.... So like a Schrodinger's cat! Yep, yep friend. That's a thought experiment to describe an interpretation in quantum mechanics in which atoms and their subatomic components collapse from their previous wave-like probability distribution into a particle-like behavior upon observation." Bumi once more shifted forward to account for any fidgeting that might come from Ayana.

"Yep! So it goes like this, you've got a cat in a box, and you've got something to measure radioactive decay that's hooked up to another device that will release a dangerous neurotoxin on the cat, poor kitty! But yep, yep, when it detects the decay it'll release the poison on the cat. So you stuff a teeny-tiny little bit of radioactive material in, super-duper small, just enough that one atom might or might not decay within the hour, and then you wait! Yep! But here's the problem! Since it's a probability distribution of decay, you can't know if the atom did decay without going in to measure it yourself, thus-collapsing-the-probability-wave-into-a-discreet-particle-like-behavior, so how do you know if the cat is dead or alive? Since we're dealing with probability until measurement, we have to treat the cat as existing on a wave-like spectrum in which it continously exists as both dead or alive!"

The pink-haired girl suddenly sat straight up, shooting a single finger into the air and accidentally elbowing over her stack of dictionaries in the process. "Clearly that's crazy! And you'd be right! Yep, yep! You're a real smart girl! Despite people often repeating this as a super important revelation in quantum mechanics, this was actually originally proposed as a reductio ad absurdum rebuttal to this interpretation of the physics! A lot of people forget that!" Suddenly Bumi stopped, silently mouthing a few words to herself, before shooting another smile down to Ayana. "Do you ever forget things friend? I hate forgetting things." Something seemed to strike the girl as she finished her sentence, immediately bending over to slap her leg as she burst out laughing. "Oh Bumi you crazy girl. How could people remember if they forgot things! Nope, nope, that'd never work. That's why writing was invented! Don't need to remember things you've written down! Yep yep, never ever. Do you like index cards friend? I love them! Here I'll give you mine, don't worry I've got so many more in the back. That way you can write things down you don't want to forget!" Getting back to her feet, Bumi immediately fell face forward over the scattered pile of books and tumbled forward to her cart. Without pausing, the girl shot a a hand up to the shelf containing a hefty stack of cards before rolling back to Ayana to present them to her. "Yep, yep, never leave home without your trusty index cards!"

 

[Ayana]

Man, this girl never shuts up, was the first thing Ayana had thought, she was slowly starting to lose her cool and her kindness. A thing about a cat and radioactive decay and particles and quantum mechanics just made her head spin. Maybe it would be a bit too late to mention that she has an affinity to the radiation advanced element. But she can only guess that would only source the other girl up even more to talk about radiation and all random facts about it.

Then she said the most relevant thing that Ayana had a dilemma with. Forgetting things. Oh the irony of this whole situation. How Ayana desperately wants to forget this moment. Mainly because she can't handle all the talking. Finally the other girl handed her a stack of index cards, and a thought came to her. It would actually prove useful to use these, to write down things that suddenly come to her, in case if her dissociative amnesia decides to kick in.

"Um... Thanks Bumi. But can you also please slow down on the talking? I'm an introvert and all this talking is wearing me out." Ayana doesn't know anyway else to politely tell the girl to calm down on the talking, she just hopes the other girl won't take offense to it, or tries anything rash.

 

[Ueno Kotone]

Bumi was in the process of picking herself off the ground when the answer came. The girl dusted herself off as she listened to Ayana, never breaking eye contact as she maintained an interested smile. "Ohhh, an introvert! Yep, yep. Totally understandable friend!" Bumi bent over and began collecting and restacking her pile of dictionaries as she thought for a moment.

"Did you know that some people model introversion and extraversion as a an system by which energy is obtained and expended? Now, it's actually a really fascinating debate, but a lot of laymen actually claim with absolute certainty that introversion is represented by a person having a net gain of energy outside of social interactions, while continually expending energy during social interactions that scales with the amount of people around? Quite an interesting model! But sadly one that is not totally backed up by the science! You see it actually draws a lot on early Jungian models of psychic personas that we inhabit, these actually differ greatly in that rather than a given person being an introvert or an extrovert they actually have societal influences that lead to them inhabiting certain roles at different stages in t-"

Suddenly Bumi slapped her head, laughing to herself as she plopped the reformed stack on the table. Glancing back up to Ayana, she slowly pinched and ran her thumb and index finger across an imaginary zipper on her mouth, before yanking the invisible tip off and tossing it behind her. The pink-haired girl quickly carried the books back to her cart, and arranged them back into position as she maintained silence.

Trotting around, Bumi set about shelving books relevant to the nearby area, throwing increasingly more glances back to the brown-haired girl as time passed. As she slid the last item into the place, the girl reappeared behind Ayana and leaned her head over the child's shoulder. "Did you need any more help friend? I would never abandon a friend in need, not if my name's not Sonozaki Shibumi!"

 

[Ayana]

All the while Ayana was feeling socially drained from this talk, she didn't really pay attention to much of the talk, that is, until the other girl started to talk about Jungian models. She remembered reading a little bit about his theories of the human psyche, which she had actually found pretty interesting. Then the next word, psychic personas. For some reason it clicked in her mind.

There were other things, a persona is like a mask... Like it hides who we really are. And shadows... Source of creative and destructive energies... Once had survival value back in ancient times. She felt a slight headache, ...truth...hid...you.

Huh? She looked around, but nobody else seemed to be around. Was she just imagining things? Then the other girl got up and left to put some books away, after she was done, she had come by next to Ayana to ask her if she needs anything.

Ayana's thought for a moment. She could ask more about this Jungian theory, but she doesn't know why it is even relevant to her dissociative amnesia, if even at all. Unless... The persona is like a mask, it hides who we really are... Could it be that some part of her own psyche is hiding itself from her?

"Erm Bumi. I have one final question. What are the chances that a person's own mind locks away information from themselves? Like forgetting, but on a different scale? Like part of you wants to forget, but then you don't know why, it just is?"

 

[Ueno Kotone]

Bumi shot a smile of glee to Ayana before sliding back into her much too close chair. Finally more permission to help! The pink-haired girl's eyes rolled back up as her lips rapidly moved, seeming to silently form hundreds of words a minute as she sat in thought. Suddenly Bumi's eyes refocused, immediately snapping out of her own mental catalogue to give guidance to her small friend. "Not exactly as uncommon as you'd think! Yep, yep. To some extent, this really does describe a lot of undiagnosed PTSD issues, in which victims often don't necessarily know exactly what's affecting their lives so much."

Bumi leaned forward, nearly touching her nose to Ayana's as she filled the girl's vision with her own eyes. "But that's not quite what you're thinking is it? Nope, nope. You want to real juicy psychology debates. And that answer is.... Complicated! The idea of genuine memory repression is actually a big component of Freudian psychology, which has had quite the rocky road over the years! Oh yes, yes it has. Memory research is actually very tricky, since like much in the case of Quantum Physics, our current methods to measure certain states inherently requires interacting with them in ways that affect the results."

The pink haired girl shot back, toppling over her chair and nearly sending herself flying back to the ground in the process. Stumbling back to her cart, she tossed a stream of books from the shelves until she at last arrived on what she needed. "I'm afraid if you want to know whether memory repression empirically exists, we'd be here all day going over case studies and still not have an answer friend. And not that I'd mind to, it's quite a fascinating topic, you seem like a girl on a mission." Bumi delivered a new book on the table with a thwack, immediately shooting her gaze back up to the brown-haired girl.

"Instead what might be helpful is a visit to the good ol' mother of all sciences, philosophy! And what better place to start than the one and only Republic! Yep, yep friend. And we don't even need to debate whether it was a satirical work! Nope, nope. We can skip right to the Myth of Er." The girl flipped open the book, rapidly paging to her necessary section. "You can read the full account yourself, but the way it relates to The Republic is in the theme of cycles. You see it is a supposed story by a man named Er, who was slain in battle and ends up in a conception of the afterlife in which souls either punished or rewarded for their sins or virtues in life. Quite a common theme in afterlife myths! But the catch is that after several days of this, the souls are lined up and forced into a lottery to choose what kind of life to be reborn into. I'll spare you the nitty-gritty details, there's many parables in this section, such a poor man who was rewarded for his virtue and chooses to be reborn as a powerful king, only to discover his new destiny had cursed him to eat his own children later in life! Quite a twist of fate! But the most important part to our discussion is the river of Lethe."

Bumi flipped a few more pages ahead, her eyes rolling up slightly as she automatically came to the where she needed. "In this mythology, Lethe, when drunk from, would cause the souls to forget their time in both their previous lives and afterlife, thus allowing them to be reborn. The idea that through no other change than the loss of memory, these souls would in effect become new beings, ready to be reborn, is actually quite profound. Now returning to your question friend-yep, yep, I haven't forgotten-while we don't know for sure, if we were to grant that repressed memories could exist, the real burning question is what conclusions we could draw from that. If the memory can not be accessed, can we consider this past self the same person? What underlying affects might be carried onto the current self? And most importantly, just what would cause the human mind to repress something?"