[MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

[markwatney]

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: Town Hall & Inn
WHEN: 6 September 2018, Evening
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Warn on your threads, please. PTSD is probably a given.
NOTES: Support group mingle! If your character needs some support after the latest meta plot or just generally, send them on over to Town Hall. Also, feel free to do top levels having to do with signing up for a tube monitoring shift. Please let me know if you want a Mark thread, I have notifs off for the post.

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So, I have been down to what we all seem to be collectively calling the Bunker. It is... something, to say the least.

For some people it feels like hope and for others despair, and I can honestly see both sides of it. Some people need to feel like they have some control, even if it's illusory — Having a puzzle to possibly solve makes them feel less adrift. For others, it's too much reality, or the perception of, anyway. I can't say I'm personally convinced by any of it.

See, I've been here since the start of whatever this is, with a group that's almost entirely gone now. It's been five months since we were birthed into this expanded world, and I don't know if it's any more real than the last. That isn't me putting on a tin foil hat, that's just respecting the environment. Mars was the same way: You do what you need to do to eke out a life, to survive or even thrive, but it's dangerous to think you have any real control. Everything can go to shit in the blink of eye, and then you're tumbling around in an airlock while your entire food supply is turned to dust.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people should stop hoping to get home, stop trying to figure it all out. I'm just saying we might all be a little easier mentally if we could express how scary it is to know, deep down, that the rug can be pulled out from under us at any moment... And then to accept that feeling that way is okay.

With that in mind, after a little meditating during my daily work in the fields, I put up two notices on the blackboard in the South Village inn:

Volunteers to monitor the bunker tubes for new arrivals, please sign up for a shift on the paper on the bar.

That's one thing we can do, at least. Just the illusion of control, but still important to some people, and definitely helpful for anybody new.

Below that:

Support Group Tonight
Town Hall - 7:00 PM
Everyone Welcome

I don't know how many people will actually show — We've got a surprisingly stubborn, resilient group, in my experience. But even if it helps just one person, it's worth doing.

Comments

[markwatney]

"Don't look at me, when our benevolent overlords provide the coffee plants, I will do my best to grow them." Not ideal in this climate, but if I can make tomatoes work, I could manage coffee. Just probably not as effusively as most people here would prefer.

"I am a little disappointed by the lack of pastries, though. I would have thought we could at least crank out a danish or two. They could even be stale, for that proper support group vibe."

[underpinnings]

"I've got one of those soaps left if you've got some imagination," he rejoins. Possibly soap: he hasn't tested it after the last one dissolved into crumbs of fizzy, slightly stinging lather.

At least he'd been using it on his hands.

"Coffeemakers, no beans. Not so different from home." He'd run on chicory cut, instant sludge by the time he was old enough to care. "So," he asks, eyeing the rag-tag group strung between walls and benches. "Between the people here, and the people not, where do you think we're at?"

[markwatney]

"What, like in terms of mental health, or?" If he means just a headcount, I guess I'm the guy to ask, but with the happy surprises that have been piled on us lately, I don't know if anybody here is actually doing great. Seems like between near-drownings, actual drownings, resurrections, secret bunkers and turning into fucking birds, there's been a little something to screw with even the most indifferent of the bunch.

"The way this place is, it's really just about maintaining. We've done pretty well— Actually really well with the physical needs department. Food, shelter. Safety's a little more iffy but not terrible. But we've been bad at the psychological side. It's easy to shunt aside."

[underpinnings]

Owen nods as Mark picks up the thread and needles it, both of them poised to--patch something, pin it into place for future work.

"This seems like a start," he says, acknowledging Mark's willingness to put it together. "What do we do with the people who won't show up, is a question." He looks around, picking out the brooding pillars acting like their transparent wallflowering is necessary to keep the building up. "Or might not come back. Keep them busy?"

Keep them out of the bunker, is his first thought, but he's not here to herd cats.

[markwatney]

I glance out at the group, a mix of eager beavers and folks who look offended by the idea they might need to be here in the first place.

"Everybody's different, and I'm not a psychiatric professional," I admit with a slight lift of one shoulder. "But having a place for people to go, even if it's something like this semi-regularly, could help. You can't make anybody come to a support group, but for some people, it might make a difference just knowing if things get really bad for them, it's an option."

[underpinnings]

"Pretty sure this place would throw them for a loop as well," he promises; it had been one of those dying professions in the zones. Nobody was going to pay ration cards to talk about their problems, when most of their problems were the ration system and an empty stomach.

Hunger and boredom. They're getting those basics covered enough to be here, doing this.

"Maybe it doesn't always have to be a group," he says. "Or a meeting. Got folks signed up for all kinds of jobs, maybe a handful volunteering to hear people out could cover the gaps. Between meetings and for people who don't do groups."

[markwatney]

"Like a buddy, or a—" I falter, snapping my fingers as I cast for the official terminology. "Sponsor. A lot of people do okay here, either come in with a safety net or build one pretty quickly, but those gaps, yeah. There are definitely some who fall into them, get a little lost. Having someone you can depend on to just talk to anytime— I mean, I'd volunteer for that." I huff out a laugh through my nose. "I already do it for enough people, might as well make it official."