It’s really still just one option: Billie. Billie has an option, however. She can just grab a key which is close, or she can invite Ruth into her bedroom to “find a key.” 🙂
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me but this comes off as extremely creepy. I’ve never heard of anyone just making multiple copies of keys to someone else’s room, even if they were dating them. It’s like “Billie, you realize you just ruined any chance of Ruth ever being able to sleep soundly at night anymore right?” I feel like this will become a plot point later on, like somebody finds one of the keys, or multiple people find them, and then Billie has to go around getting those keys but also try to remember where she placed the others.
It’s another string of trust from Ruth that Billie just cut. She keeps doing these things that are pushing Ruth further and further away, and each time acts surprised that Ruth would get mad. Newsflash, nobody likes the idea of their partner breaking their promise to lay off booze, nobody likes it when someone their dating makes twelve damn copies of a key to their room and then hides them all over the place.
Also damn, that final line in the second panel. That’s what she’s doing to you Billie? Giving you addiction after addiction? But then you still say that neither of you really want this over?
No, it’s just you Billie, it’s just you. You’ve taken a person’s trust multiple times and shown that you don’t value it. At the end of the day there’s really only one thing left to say.
Forget you.
And thank you all for listening to this long, LONG rant of mine. Needed to get that off my chest. Know some people aren’t going to agree with me here, but that’s what dialogue is all about. Can’t wait to discuss this one with ya’ll.
Also do you think I gave Cerberus a run for their money with panel by panel analysis? 🙂
Uh, no. Billie and Ruth’s relationship is built on them lying to each other about alcohol use. Billie does not want Ruth to kill herself, and is legitimately worried about such a thing. I think your analysis is completely wrong.
Ruth gave up the booze at one point because she thought Billie was too. Then she found out otherwise. That doesn’t sound like she cares enough to stop her addictions. This relationship isn’t healthy in the least, not from beginning to end. Ruth was literally fat shamming and destroying pieces of property that belonged to Billie when they first met. But then they’re in the hallway and Ruth plants a kiss on Billie and that’s when the relationship started.
These two are not good for each other. And I get it, they’re a good ship because they give plenty of decent banter and create some good situations for the story, but they ARE bad for each other.
“Ruth gave up the booze at one point because she thought Billie was too. Then she found out otherwise. That doesn’t sound like she cares enough to stop her addictions. ”
Because addictions are just that easy to give up.
Ctrl+C D@
Of course they’re not, if they were then there wouldn’t be counselling and therapy for that stuff.
But the main issue here is that Billie lied to Ruth. If she had just come out and told her that she was having trouble staying on the wagon, they could’ve worked it out and helped each other.
But it’s once again something that Billie thought she could just keep from Ruth. If she wants to save Ruth then she needs to be honest.
I may be looking too deep into this, but I’d say Billie’s biggest enemy besides herself is her pride. SHE can save Ruth. SHE can stop drinking anytime she wants. SHE can keep secrets because she knows that’s the right thing to do.
Look, I think a lot of people here seem to think that I hate these characters. I don’t, well I dislike Ruth a little but who didn’t at first, what I can’t stand is that we’re shown these two people’s lives, their relationship with one another, and it’s just pothole after pothole of sadness and anger. I can’t see what other people see, that Billie is trying to save Ruth, because all I’m seeing is two alcoholics who promised a suicide pact, and both of them are too stupid to just admit they can’t handle this by themselves and seek help.
Newsflash Billie and Ruth, the world is heavy, and it’s issues tend to lighten up when you have some other people on the outside to help you.
mendel
This relationship doesn’t work by pretending to curb your urges orhiding them. This relationship is about being broken, about admitting to each other about being broken, and about having acceptance anyway. “Outside help” is acceptance for money.Itis necessary for both of them to feel accepted, and while that may help sustain addictions,it also provides for a basis to not deny them to themselves.
I think up to that point Ruth has not realized how important she is to Billie because (like Billie) she’s putting herself down. Billie’s words (and her key fetish) make her realise that, and they make her feel what she’s putting Billie through by forcing her to move out again.
Given the massively codependent style of their relationship and their addictive personalities, I can definitely see one or both of them seeing their attraction for each other as yet another addictive behavior they can’t quit no matter what… which is super healthy and not at all bound to blow up spectacularly when the NRE fades in another couple of weeks.
i mean i get where youre coming from, but… billie started doing all of this in the first place because she wanted to save ruth.
she lied about quitting drinking because she couldnt manage it, but she wanted ruth to quit. getting copies of her key is a little fucked up, but she did it because of that time she found ruth drunk and unconcious in her room.
also ruth has been way shittier and abusive to billie literally the entire time theyve known each other
Ctrl+C D@
Not gonna’ argue with you there, if it weren’t for the magical hallway that makes you kiss the person you currently throttling who knows what might’ve happened.
Hang on I’ve just figured out a way to settle the Carla/Mary debacle.
Emperor Norton
I can honestly not see anything going wrong with that ship.
Mainly because the about 340 million things that can and will go wrong are blurring by so fast that I cannot see them.
Totes. Ruth has been pushing her away for a while now, but Billie is fully aware that she’s been doing so largely to create a firm justfication for finally offing herself because “no one cares”. Additionally, Billie has decided it’s 100% her responsibility to stop this offing by any means necessary and even if Ruth actively pushes her away or hurts her to try and get her to stop being a thing holding her to the Earth. And Billie has placed her own sense of self for fighting her own depression on “being able to save Ruth” and thus is terrified of failing as it would mean in her eyes that she’s a failure who can’t get anything right (this is not true, this is just what she believes).
Add a bit of addictive personality and an already born fear of losing access to things caused by Ruth’s early abusive and gaslighting behavior where she regularly stole things from her and changed her locks as a response to Billie breaking a major promise to her as well as kept her constantly in a whirl on whether or not she was at suicidal risk or liked her at all, and…
Well, you get Billie reflexively and unhealthily creating key after key for a desperate illusion of control and power. Like, if she had more of them, ones that couldn’t disappear, then Ruth couldn’t ever make her fail and she would still be head cheerleader, problem solver.
I guess what I’m saying is that these two are the healthiest. Super, not at all fucked up beyond belief.
It’s not just you, the keys thing is mad creepy. You can justify ONE, because Ruth may kill herself if they break up, so it’d be good to have. After that it gets weird and creepy.
I do agree with Billie in her last panel though, considering that they’re both shitty to each other and Ruth isn’t being honest as to why if she actually wants a break up. At this point Ruth has been saying that they need to break up, but then blaming Billie for abandoning her? That’s… approaching abuse territory?
Point is shit’s bad and neither of them are good for each other. It started in a toxic way where Ruth forced a kiss on Billie after insuring her, so it won’t end cleanly either.
Ruth blaming Billie might just be her way of making it easier for Billie to leave, because if she says “We can’t keep being together because it’s not healthy.”, Billie would just try to cut the booze again and most likely fall off the wagon. This way Ruth gives Billie something to hate.
Russ
And then she can.. drink out of spite? You may be right! But it’s still not a very good excuse, and may not even work if that were the case.
mucklegallooly
It’s not her way of making it easier for Billie to leave.
It’s her way of making it easier for herself to believe that nobody loves her, so she can kill herself.
If you drive away the people who care about you, you can’t kill yourself because nobody cares about you.
If you convince yourself the people you drove away “abandoned” you, then you can totally tell yourself that nobody cares about you, then kill yourself because nobody cares about you.
I’m guessing she bothered with more than one mainly because Ruth had already demonstrated a penchant for finding and taking things when she stole and desecrated the Dragons uniform.
ehhhhhhhh, even then, that was when they were “enemies”. I don’t think Ruth has stolen from Billie since they’ve been together since they shared a dorm for like a week anyway and all of Billie’s stuff was in there. Plus, the uniform was something Ruth knew about, and knew it’s emotional importance. an extra key hidden away wouldn’t get found, let alone stolen
plus Billie could pick the lock anyway, since she’s done that exact thing before. this isnt for a practical purpose. this is some sort of compulsion. not healthy
That… doesn’t seem right. I don’t know, I don’t think her behavior in these instances can be considered OCD. She has an interest in cheerleading, which she isn’t even involved in anymore. She’s an alcoholic, which is addiction. She’s in a toxic, semi-abusive relationship with relatively normal behavior when not around Ruth… no, I’m sorry, but she has other issues not pertaining to OCD, at least from what I’ve seen.
This makes key making something she is specifically obsessed with, which doesn’t automatically qualify her for having OCD. To be honest, this information sort of came out of left field, especially since she’s picked Ruth’s lock before and already has more than one key. It’s just… odd, considering her previous behavior patterns. While this could be a sign of OCD, the other behaviors you mentioned don’t match up, and I can’t think of anything else she really did to point us in that direction.
ischemgeek
Being super into a recreational activity, or having an addiction does not mean OCD. Neither does New Relationship Energy mean OCD.
ischemgeek
… occurs to me that I should probably explain what OCD actually is like.
(full disclosure: I dunno if I have it. I am enough like OCD that people with OCD and pros alike have advised me to get evaluated for it and my freaking anxiety jerkbrain that may or may not be OCD won’t let me initiate the process. Anyway.)
Basically, your brain latches on to something upsetting and won’t let go. If you’ve ever had a playful kitten do that thing where they wrap themselves around one of your limbs and try to bite and tear it to shreds and are impossible to pry off? That’s kind of like your brain with the thought line. For me, it’s disasters. If I’m at home, it’s what if a plane crashes in my neighbourhood? If I’m driving, it’s what if there’s a pileup? If I’m at the grocery store, it’s what if the boiler explodes and the building collapses? If there’s a blizzard it’s what if my roof collapses under the snow? I could go on.
But basically your brain latches on to that thing and won’t let go. And you can’t stop thinking about it. And something about it provokes an anxiety response – this can be the thing itself, like with me worrying about disasters, or it can be your fear of acting out the thing (like with people who have OCD about an urge to self-injure when they are neither depressed or suicide) or it can be your fear of how others will respond to you as a result of the thing (people who have stigmatized obsessions can run into this). People who just have this have obsession-type OCD.
Some people find things that help alleviate the anxiety their obsessive thoughts cause. For me, it’s disaster planning. I need to have a plan for the possible disaster and I need to follow preventative tricks. I shut off and unplug all appliances before I leave – even the stove, drier, and washer. I never do laundry at night and get very upset with anyone who does it if they let the laundry machine run while everyone is asleep. I check the fire extinguishers daily, and the fire alarms. I have one fire alarm per room, spares, and spare batteries. I could go on here. And for literally every single disaster I can think up, I have a plan. If I don’t have a plan, I need to stop everything I’m doing until I do. This is a problem if a potential disaster becomes obvious to me at work, for obvious reasons (I’m paid to work, not to plan what to do if a truck careens into the building from the highway). This is the classical obsessive-compulsive type.
Then there’s people who only have compulsions, but I’m not really sure how that works but I know they exist.
Anyway, underlying thing is: You don’t do OCD stuff because it makes you feel good, you do it because it makes you stop feeling awful. Briefly. Until your brain starts on the obsession again.
By all accounts, Billie did her cheerleading stuff because it made her feel good about herself. She stays with Ruth because the NRE makes her feel good. She drinks probably for a similar reason to why a person with OCD does their compulsion, but in that case it’s addictive behavior, because she’s not responding to a specific stress (i.e., the obsessive thoughts), she just drinks in response to stress in general. The keys might be an OCD thing or they might be her correctly anticipating that Ruth would try to push her away again, we don’t know.
Bottom line is: Doing stuff with great enthusiasm or even uncontrollably does not OCD make, and it’s a misconception that irritates the hell out of me.
Yup. Billie has an addictive personality. A really bad one. It leads her to things like alcoholism and makes it extremely hard for her to quit on her own. It leads her to being extremely codependent in her relationships (Alice noted that Billie had a way of making the two of them both of their entire world while simultaneously denying how serious it was). It leads her to cling to cheerleading and trying to resurrect the memory of it for the same sense of self it used to give her.
And it’s sabotaging her constantly, both in her relationship with Ruth as well as her self-esteem and self-regard.
She’s dead on that Ruth and the keys are just as much an addiction as the alcoholism and it’s one of the things I noted early on in their relationship as a major potential problem in that because Billie is addicted to Ruth and has made her her new cheerleading that she needs to cling to to ever get a rush of happiness, it makes her more and more prone to putting up with abuse and bullshit in order to “save” Ruth.
Yes, listen to this more-informed person. They have a grip on what OCD can be like. Billie doesn’t have the behaviors that reflect what OCD really is.
Leorale
((Trigger warning to your potential OCD.))
But, what if your untreated possibly-OCD gets worse and worse? It can, over time, especially when left untreated… You’d better go get professional help for it before it gets *really* bad, eh?
ischemgeek
It’s a matter of convincing myself that not-doing is worse than doing.
(I don’t get into new things through “what’s best for me” but usually through brow-beating myself until the anxiety of what happens if I don’t do the thing that makes me anxious is worse than the anxiety of doing it. It’s a process. I am trying. It’s probably gonna take a few more months, though.)
Leorale
Good luck!
Oberon
That seems more like an anxiety disorder, rather than OCD. I’ve heard some people WITH OCD describe how they are often late for work because they had to rearrange their sock drawer 12 times (or some similar, trivial behavior that you or I might just go “f-it, it can wait until I get home.” Or in the case of a sock drawer perhaps “f-it, who cares if the socks are not arranged in perfect black descending to white chromatic order?” is a lot more accurate) before they could get themselves to leave their home.
I understand that Billie is afraid, after Ruth stayed in her room for three days just drinking. Ruth is suicidal, and I see why Billie wants to keep an eye on her.
But, yeah, it’s also super creepy. They’re codependent. They don’t trust each other. And they are so many personal feelings involved, they’re likely to bail on each other at their lowest. Like, of course Ruth was upset when Billie broke her promise, but relapsing on an addiction is so common it’s almost inevitable when first trying to quit. So something that should be completely expected in the rehabilitation process left both Ruth and Billie feeling betrayed and with support – that is a horrible situation for everyone. Billie needs to realise that her additions and issues are hers alone. And they both need help from people with less at stake in this equation.
I think I see the thought pattern that would lead to her having multiple copies made. She starts thinking of Ruth in there either dying of accidental alcohol poisoning or an intentional suicide attempt, and what if she can’t get in and save her? Sure, she’s got a key. What if she loses it though?
So she gets a copy made. And the copy makes her feel better. Until the thought creeps in again, and the only way to make it go away is to get a copy of the key made. And the thought just keeps coming back.
That’s possible. And/or, she could be remembering the time that Ruth first trusted her with the key. That was a big moment. Getting a new key might help relieve her stress and ping that good feeling.
I don’t find it creepy or a breach of trust in this case because the entire reason Billie was given a key was in case Ruth wouldn’t answer the door because she’s tried to kill herself by drinking herself to death again.
Ruth’s depressive tendencies WARRANT Billie keeping a few extra copies so that she wasn’t able to push her away and piss her off to get the key back because well, as we can see here, that was entirely a strategy Ruth was capable of deploying
Personally, I feel like Ruth has done more to hurt Billie than the other way around. Ruth has arguably crossed the line into being abusive more than once.
However, I think that we can all agree (and please correct me if I’m wrong here) that both Billie and Ruth have done some shitty things to each other, both before and during their relationship. I don’t think it’s productive or healthy to keep track of who has hurt who more. If you love someone, you have to forgive and forget in order for the relationship to survive. I would even say that if you truly love someone, you can’t help but to forgive and forget, regardless of whether or not you SHOULD forgive him or her.
Also, I know I’m probably in the minority here, but I actually think that their relationship has helped them grow into better people. At the very least, the relationship has forced them to confront some of the not-so-good parts of themselves, and THAT caused them to become better. If it wasn’t for the rampant alcoholism (and, holy cheezus, I know that’s a huge “if”), I’d be able to endorse the relationship wholeheartedly. As things are right now, I think that one or both of them has a better chance of having an epiphany about the booze while they are together rather than on their own. I think it’s easier to pretend you don’t have a problem when you aren’t watching someone you care about struggle with the exact same thing. That’s my take on it anyway.
My point is: despite all of the shitty things that they’ve done, I still think that Billie and Ruth are good people at heart and that they can make this thing work. They both have serious problems that need some professional help, but I don’t think breaking up will help them deal with those.
It’s worth noting that Billie is recognisably mentally ill too (depression, although not as intense as Ruth’s and maybe a soupçon of self-esteem issues). Is she blameless? No but I would argue that she is not as self-destructive as Ruth and that she genuinely wants to help, no matter how bad she is at it.
As others have noted. They’re both massively mentally ill with addiction problems and depression (albeit in different flavors) and while they have done some things to mutually support each other, they have also intertwined their lives in deeply unhealthy and stress-enducing co-dependent ways and have massively bad relationship practices (Ruth started the relationship with rather intense emotional abuse, Billie has had a habit of creating really unhealthy self-destructive co-dependent relationships as she did with Alice, and both see the relationship as something to save them rather than a connection between two people who are hurting and have strong attraction and care for each other).
And yeah, Billie making so many copies of keys is critically demonstrative of how Ruth is not the only mentally ill person in this relationship with poor boundaries. And some of it is understandable given that Billie is terrified that Ruth will kill herself the second her back is turned and what that would mean to her already shattered self-esteem and belief in her own power, her desperate need for power and a feeling of safety given the abusive beginnings of her relationship and Ruth’s habit of pushing away and shutting her out, and her addictive personality.
And that last part is key. It marks it as something she did to regain power for a potential future power play like this and since it gave her a fleeting rush of that power feeling, she’s now just stuck doing it over and over chasing that initial rush while simultaneously knowing it’s unhealthy and kinda super creepy.
And I don’t think that that final line is about Ruth giving her addictions, but rather being an addiction. That Billie is unhealthy and an addict and is addicted to the NRE of being with Ruth and how that makes her feel valued to someone at least. Which makes something positive in her life into something that’s also partially toxic and fucked up. Which is the central tragedy of Billie. Anything that can make her feel good is something her addictive personality is going to sink its claws in and poison in much the same way as Ruth’s suicidal depression poisons her side of the relationship.
And I’m not sure that it’s her lack of trustworthiness that’s on display here. Billie lied about breaking the addiction, yes, but that’s because she’s in denial about how badly addicted she is (honestly, this is the first time she’s actually acknowledged it as an addiction she can’t stop rather than a simple thing she could stop at any time if she wanted to that isn’t as bad as everyone is making it).
So when Ruth tried to make it a mutual pact, Billie found herself physically unable to keep up with it (I think Billie and Ruth have mirror intensities of addictive personalities and depression. Ruth’s depression is much more intensely consuming of her life and impossible for her to resolve even with love and care and reasons to hope, whereas Billie can at least forestall the worst of it with unhealthy coping strategies that prevent it from being as all consuming. And they’re the opposite for addiction, with Billie utterly helpless to keep it from just consuming her life without aid and (probably) rehab whereas Ruth can at least make genuine efforts to quit cold turkey from time to time).
Everything else hasn’t been a genuine breach of trust (the Becky thing was not her truth to tell and expecting her to betray a confidence is a shitty thing to do and the key thing is not her breaking a trust, but rather an initially rational response to Ruth’s habit of pushing people away and then attempting suicide that has turned utterly awful due to Billie’s addictive personality.
Overall, this comic really highlights both their central tragedies. Ruth cannot consistently value the positives that Billie brings to her life because her depression is too prone to viewing every slight bit of motion as a means of abandoning her and to pushing away Billie as much as possible through abuse and cruel comments (the fact that Billie has decided that this is flirting doesn’t exactly make the comments less acerbic in intention). And Billie is wrapped up in her addictions and their poison leaks into her dynamics, keeping her from establishing more healthy dynamics that would make less of her self-esteem tied into things like saving Ruth despite herself, putting up with awful treatment, and making seventy billion keys as a means of trying to grasp the eel of elusive power.
And here is where we see if they have the power to bring their demons into the foreground and let them be part of the discussion rather than the true ringmasters of the circus that is their relationship.
Am I the only one that noticed this is the first time Billie has recognized her drinking as an addiction? And she probably realizes the key thing is super creepy, but that doesn’t mean she can do anything about it yet. Addiction is strange.
Anyone who finds one gets to go on a tour of the dorms with her, and are promised a lifetime supply of booze. Over the course of the tour, all but one of them will suffer horrible accidents. The final winner gets to be the partner in her next unhealthy relationship.
287 thoughts on “Stash”
Ana Chronistic
well, now Ruth has more options if she’s ever locked out
Wolf
Maybe stealing that cheerleader uniform wasn’t a bad thing after all….
Or I’m just messing stuff up like I normally do.
Oberon
It’s really still just one option: Billie. Billie has an option, however. She can just grab a key which is close, or she can invite Ruth into her bedroom to “find a key.” 🙂
TheNinthShader
‘key’ being Mike’s penis.
legobil
for a nickel?
TheNinthShader
With the lock being your mom, of course.
Ctrl+C D@
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me but this comes off as extremely creepy. I’ve never heard of anyone just making multiple copies of keys to someone else’s room, even if they were dating them. It’s like “Billie, you realize you just ruined any chance of Ruth ever being able to sleep soundly at night anymore right?” I feel like this will become a plot point later on, like somebody finds one of the keys, or multiple people find them, and then Billie has to go around getting those keys but also try to remember where she placed the others.
It’s another string of trust from Ruth that Billie just cut. She keeps doing these things that are pushing Ruth further and further away, and each time acts surprised that Ruth would get mad. Newsflash, nobody likes the idea of their partner breaking their promise to lay off booze, nobody likes it when someone their dating makes twelve damn copies of a key to their room and then hides them all over the place.
Also damn, that final line in the second panel. That’s what she’s doing to you Billie? Giving you addiction after addiction? But then you still say that neither of you really want this over?
No, it’s just you Billie, it’s just you. You’ve taken a person’s trust multiple times and shown that you don’t value it. At the end of the day there’s really only one thing left to say.
Forget you.
And thank you all for listening to this long, LONG rant of mine. Needed to get that off my chest. Know some people aren’t going to agree with me here, but that’s what dialogue is all about. Can’t wait to discuss this one with ya’ll.
Also do you think I gave Cerberus a run for their money with panel by panel analysis? 🙂Eric
Uh, no. Billie and Ruth’s relationship is built on them lying to each other about alcohol use. Billie does not want Ruth to kill herself, and is legitimately worried about such a thing. I think your analysis is completely wrong.
Ctrl+C D@
Ruth gave up the booze at one point because she thought Billie was too. Then she found out otherwise. That doesn’t sound like she cares enough to stop her addictions. This relationship isn’t healthy in the least, not from beginning to end. Ruth was literally fat shamming and destroying pieces of property that belonged to Billie when they first met. But then they’re in the hallway and Ruth plants a kiss on Billie and that’s when the relationship started.
These two are not good for each other. And I get it, they’re a good ship because they give plenty of decent banter and create some good situations for the story, but they ARE bad for each other.
Freezer
“Ruth gave up the booze at one point because she thought Billie was too. Then she found out otherwise. That doesn’t sound like she cares enough to stop her addictions. ”
Because addictions are just that easy to give up.
Ctrl+C D@
Of course they’re not, if they were then there wouldn’t be counselling and therapy for that stuff.
But the main issue here is that Billie lied to Ruth. If she had just come out and told her that she was having trouble staying on the wagon, they could’ve worked it out and helped each other.
But it’s once again something that Billie thought she could just keep from Ruth. If she wants to save Ruth then she needs to be honest.
I may be looking too deep into this, but I’d say Billie’s biggest enemy besides herself is her pride. SHE can save Ruth. SHE can stop drinking anytime she wants. SHE can keep secrets because she knows that’s the right thing to do.
Look, I think a lot of people here seem to think that I hate these characters. I don’t, well I dislike Ruth a little but who didn’t at first, what I can’t stand is that we’re shown these two people’s lives, their relationship with one another, and it’s just pothole after pothole of sadness and anger. I can’t see what other people see, that Billie is trying to save Ruth, because all I’m seeing is two alcoholics who promised a suicide pact, and both of them are too stupid to just admit they can’t handle this by themselves and seek help.
Newsflash Billie and Ruth, the world is heavy, and it’s issues tend to lighten up when you have some other people on the outside to help you.
mendel
This relationship doesn’t work by pretending to curb your urges orhiding them. This relationship is about being broken, about admitting to each other about being broken, and about having acceptance anyway. “Outside help” is acceptance for money.Itis necessary for both of them to feel accepted, and while that may help sustain addictions,it also provides for a basis to not deny them to themselves.
I think up to that point Ruth has not realized how important she is to Billie because (like Billie) she’s putting herself down. Billie’s words (and her key fetish) make her realise that, and they make her feel what she’s putting Billie through by forcing her to move out again.
Dr. Smart
pretty sure she was bluffing and only had the one key…
Lily
Hasn’t Ruth already changed her lock on Billie once before?
SUGauthor
She said that Ruth WAS an addiction, not that Ruth was giving her addictions, though I guess that means she gave her at least one.
Yet_One_More_Idiot
I can just imagine how this might go:
“Hi there, my name is Billie and I’m a Ruthaholic…”
Cacturne
Hi I’m Billie and I’m an alcohoLESSIC
Cerberus
New Relatonship Energy, it’s a helluva drug.
Given the massively codependent style of their relationship and their addictive personalities, I can definitely see one or both of them seeing their attraction for each other as yet another addictive behavior they can’t quit no matter what… which is super healthy and not at all bound to blow up spectacularly when the NRE fades in another couple of weeks.
LimeSheep
i mean i get where youre coming from, but… billie started doing all of this in the first place because she wanted to save ruth.
she lied about quitting drinking because she couldnt manage it, but she wanted ruth to quit. getting copies of her key is a little fucked up, but she did it because of that time she found ruth drunk and unconcious in her room.
LimeSheep
also ruth has been way shittier and abusive to billie literally the entire time theyve known each other
Ctrl+C D@
Not gonna’ argue with you there, if it weren’t for the magical hallway that makes you kiss the person you currently throttling who knows what might’ve happened.
Hang on I’ve just figured out a way to settle the Carla/Mary debacle.
Emperor Norton
I can honestly not see anything going wrong with that ship.
Mainly because the about 340 million things that can and will go wrong are blurring by so fast that I cannot see them.
Cerberus
Totes. Ruth has been pushing her away for a while now, but Billie is fully aware that she’s been doing so largely to create a firm justfication for finally offing herself because “no one cares”. Additionally, Billie has decided it’s 100% her responsibility to stop this offing by any means necessary and even if Ruth actively pushes her away or hurts her to try and get her to stop being a thing holding her to the Earth. And Billie has placed her own sense of self for fighting her own depression on “being able to save Ruth” and thus is terrified of failing as it would mean in her eyes that she’s a failure who can’t get anything right (this is not true, this is just what she believes).
Add a bit of addictive personality and an already born fear of losing access to things caused by Ruth’s early abusive and gaslighting behavior where she regularly stole things from her and changed her locks as a response to Billie breaking a major promise to her as well as kept her constantly in a whirl on whether or not she was at suicidal risk or liked her at all, and…
Well, you get Billie reflexively and unhealthily creating key after key for a desperate illusion of control and power. Like, if she had more of them, ones that couldn’t disappear, then Ruth couldn’t ever make her fail and she would still be head cheerleader, problem solver.
I guess what I’m saying is that these two are the healthiest. Super, not at all fucked up beyond belief.
StClair
very well said.
TheOthin
Last time Billie ran into trouble with Ruth, Ruth immediately changed her locks. Billie was aware of this and figured out how to pick it.
So I’m not sure why she’d say this, but I’m pretty sure she’s bullshitting.
Ctrl+C D@
Hopefully she is, because having twelve damn keys just scattered about is super unsafe.
Dr. Smart
at least 24 actually…
Russ
It’s not just you, the keys thing is mad creepy. You can justify ONE, because Ruth may kill herself if they break up, so it’d be good to have. After that it gets weird and creepy.
I do agree with Billie in her last panel though, considering that they’re both shitty to each other and Ruth isn’t being honest as to why if she actually wants a break up. At this point Ruth has been saying that they need to break up, but then blaming Billie for abandoning her? That’s… approaching abuse territory?
Point is shit’s bad and neither of them are good for each other. It started in a toxic way where Ruth forced a kiss on Billie after insuring her, so it won’t end cleanly either.
Ctrl+C D@
Ruth blaming Billie might just be her way of making it easier for Billie to leave, because if she says “We can’t keep being together because it’s not healthy.”, Billie would just try to cut the booze again and most likely fall off the wagon. This way Ruth gives Billie something to hate.
Russ
And then she can.. drink out of spite? You may be right! But it’s still not a very good excuse, and may not even work if that were the case.
mucklegallooly
It’s not her way of making it easier for Billie to leave.
It’s her way of making it easier for herself to believe that nobody loves her, so she can kill herself.
If you drive away the people who care about you, you can’t kill yourself because nobody cares about you.
If you convince yourself the people you drove away “abandoned” you, then you can totally tell yourself that nobody cares about you, then kill yourself because nobody cares about you.
Leorale
+1 to all of this
Leorale
(er, I mean +1 to all the points in Russ’s post. Not to how Billie and Ruth are together. That is a -100.)
Russ
I’m picking up what you’re putting down. And that is a point. For me, not for toxic relationships. Thanks!
Disloyal Subject
I’m guessing she bothered with more than one mainly because Ruth had already demonstrated a penchant for finding and taking things when she stole and desecrated the Dragons uniform.
Russ
ehhhhhhhh, even then, that was when they were “enemies”. I don’t think Ruth has stolen from Billie since they’ve been together since they shared a dorm for like a week anyway and all of Billie’s stuff was in there. Plus, the uniform was something Ruth knew about, and knew it’s emotional importance. an extra key hidden away wouldn’t get found, let alone stolen
plus Billie could pick the lock anyway, since she’s done that exact thing before. this isnt for a practical purpose. this is some sort of compulsion. not healthy
Oberon
It’s not creepy so much as OCD. Billie has been OCD since forever. Cheerleader OCD, alcohol OCD, Ruth OCD, and now key making OCD.
Russ
That… doesn’t seem right. I don’t know, I don’t think her behavior in these instances can be considered OCD. She has an interest in cheerleading, which she isn’t even involved in anymore. She’s an alcoholic, which is addiction. She’s in a toxic, semi-abusive relationship with relatively normal behavior when not around Ruth… no, I’m sorry, but she has other issues not pertaining to OCD, at least from what I’ve seen.
This makes key making something she is specifically obsessed with, which doesn’t automatically qualify her for having OCD. To be honest, this information sort of came out of left field, especially since she’s picked Ruth’s lock before and already has more than one key. It’s just… odd, considering her previous behavior patterns. While this could be a sign of OCD, the other behaviors you mentioned don’t match up, and I can’t think of anything else she really did to point us in that direction.
ischemgeek
Being super into a recreational activity, or having an addiction does not mean OCD. Neither does New Relationship Energy mean OCD.
ischemgeek
… occurs to me that I should probably explain what OCD actually is like.
(full disclosure: I dunno if I have it. I am enough like OCD that people with OCD and pros alike have advised me to get evaluated for it and my freaking anxiety jerkbrain that may or may not be OCD won’t let me initiate the process. Anyway.)
Basically, your brain latches on to something upsetting and won’t let go. If you’ve ever had a playful kitten do that thing where they wrap themselves around one of your limbs and try to bite and tear it to shreds and are impossible to pry off? That’s kind of like your brain with the thought line. For me, it’s disasters. If I’m at home, it’s what if a plane crashes in my neighbourhood? If I’m driving, it’s what if there’s a pileup? If I’m at the grocery store, it’s what if the boiler explodes and the building collapses? If there’s a blizzard it’s what if my roof collapses under the snow? I could go on.
But basically your brain latches on to that thing and won’t let go. And you can’t stop thinking about it. And something about it provokes an anxiety response – this can be the thing itself, like with me worrying about disasters, or it can be your fear of acting out the thing (like with people who have OCD about an urge to self-injure when they are neither depressed or suicide) or it can be your fear of how others will respond to you as a result of the thing (people who have stigmatized obsessions can run into this). People who just have this have obsession-type OCD.
Some people find things that help alleviate the anxiety their obsessive thoughts cause. For me, it’s disaster planning. I need to have a plan for the possible disaster and I need to follow preventative tricks. I shut off and unplug all appliances before I leave – even the stove, drier, and washer. I never do laundry at night and get very upset with anyone who does it if they let the laundry machine run while everyone is asleep. I check the fire extinguishers daily, and the fire alarms. I have one fire alarm per room, spares, and spare batteries. I could go on here. And for literally every single disaster I can think up, I have a plan. If I don’t have a plan, I need to stop everything I’m doing until I do. This is a problem if a potential disaster becomes obvious to me at work, for obvious reasons (I’m paid to work, not to plan what to do if a truck careens into the building from the highway). This is the classical obsessive-compulsive type.
Then there’s people who only have compulsions, but I’m not really sure how that works but I know they exist.
Anyway, underlying thing is: You don’t do OCD stuff because it makes you feel good, you do it because it makes you stop feeling awful. Briefly. Until your brain starts on the obsession again.
By all accounts, Billie did her cheerleading stuff because it made her feel good about herself. She stays with Ruth because the NRE makes her feel good. She drinks probably for a similar reason to why a person with OCD does their compulsion, but in that case it’s addictive behavior, because she’s not responding to a specific stress (i.e., the obsessive thoughts), she just drinks in response to stress in general. The keys might be an OCD thing or they might be her correctly anticipating that Ruth would try to push her away again, we don’t know.
Bottom line is: Doing stuff with great enthusiasm or even uncontrollably does not OCD make, and it’s a misconception that irritates the hell out of me.
Cerberus
Yup. Billie has an addictive personality. A really bad one. It leads her to things like alcoholism and makes it extremely hard for her to quit on her own. It leads her to being extremely codependent in her relationships (Alice noted that Billie had a way of making the two of them both of their entire world while simultaneously denying how serious it was). It leads her to cling to cheerleading and trying to resurrect the memory of it for the same sense of self it used to give her.
And it’s sabotaging her constantly, both in her relationship with Ruth as well as her self-esteem and self-regard.
She’s dead on that Ruth and the keys are just as much an addiction as the alcoholism and it’s one of the things I noted early on in their relationship as a major potential problem in that because Billie is addicted to Ruth and has made her her new cheerleading that she needs to cling to to ever get a rush of happiness, it makes her more and more prone to putting up with abuse and bullshit in order to “save” Ruth.
Russ
Yes, listen to this more-informed person. They have a grip on what OCD can be like. Billie doesn’t have the behaviors that reflect what OCD really is.
Leorale
((Trigger warning to your potential OCD.))
But, what if your untreated possibly-OCD gets worse and worse? It can, over time, especially when left untreated… You’d better go get professional help for it before it gets *really* bad, eh?
ischemgeek
It’s a matter of convincing myself that not-doing is worse than doing.
(I don’t get into new things through “what’s best for me” but usually through brow-beating myself until the anxiety of what happens if I don’t do the thing that makes me anxious is worse than the anxiety of doing it. It’s a process. I am trying. It’s probably gonna take a few more months, though.)
Leorale
Good luck!
Oberon
That seems more like an anxiety disorder, rather than OCD. I’ve heard some people WITH OCD describe how they are often late for work because they had to rearrange their sock drawer 12 times (or some similar, trivial behavior that you or I might just go “f-it, it can wait until I get home.” Or in the case of a sock drawer perhaps “f-it, who cares if the socks are not arranged in perfect black descending to white chromatic order?” is a lot more accurate) before they could get themselves to leave their home.
winter
I understand that Billie is afraid, after Ruth stayed in her room for three days just drinking. Ruth is suicidal, and I see why Billie wants to keep an eye on her.
But, yeah, it’s also super creepy. They’re codependent. They don’t trust each other. And they are so many personal feelings involved, they’re likely to bail on each other at their lowest. Like, of course Ruth was upset when Billie broke her promise, but relapsing on an addiction is so common it’s almost inevitable when first trying to quit. So something that should be completely expected in the rehabilitation process left both Ruth and Billie feeling betrayed and with support – that is a horrible situation for everyone. Billie needs to realise that her additions and issues are hers alone. And they both need help from people with less at stake in this equation.
winter
*without support
Proxiehunter
Has Billie shown any OCD tendencies in the past?
I think I see the thought pattern that would lead to her having multiple copies made. She starts thinking of Ruth in there either dying of accidental alcohol poisoning or an intentional suicide attempt, and what if she can’t get in and save her? Sure, she’s got a key. What if she loses it though?
So she gets a copy made. And the copy makes her feel better. Until the thought creeps in again, and the only way to make it go away is to get a copy of the key made. And the thought just keeps coming back.
Leorale
That’s possible. And/or, she could be remembering the time that Ruth first trusted her with the key. That was a big moment. Getting a new key might help relieve her stress and ping that good feeling.
Sam
I don’t find it creepy or a breach of trust in this case because the entire reason Billie was given a key was in case Ruth wouldn’t answer the door because she’s tried to kill herself by drinking herself to death again.
Ruth’s depressive tendencies WARRANT Billie keeping a few extra copies so that she wasn’t able to push her away and piss her off to get the key back because well, as we can see here, that was entirely a strategy Ruth was capable of deploying
Disloyal Subject
I think multiple dozens counts as more than “a few extra copies.”
Uniqueantique
Ruth can just get the lock changed.
pjeseb
Personally, I feel like Ruth has done more to hurt Billie than the other way around. Ruth has arguably crossed the line into being abusive more than once.
However, I think that we can all agree (and please correct me if I’m wrong here) that both Billie and Ruth have done some shitty things to each other, both before and during their relationship. I don’t think it’s productive or healthy to keep track of who has hurt who more. If you love someone, you have to forgive and forget in order for the relationship to survive. I would even say that if you truly love someone, you can’t help but to forgive and forget, regardless of whether or not you SHOULD forgive him or her.
Also, I know I’m probably in the minority here, but I actually think that their relationship has helped them grow into better people. At the very least, the relationship has forced them to confront some of the not-so-good parts of themselves, and THAT caused them to become better. If it wasn’t for the rampant alcoholism (and, holy cheezus, I know that’s a huge “if”), I’d be able to endorse the relationship wholeheartedly. As things are right now, I think that one or both of them has a better chance of having an epiphany about the booze while they are together rather than on their own. I think it’s easier to pretend you don’t have a problem when you aren’t watching someone you care about struggle with the exact same thing. That’s my take on it anyway.
My point is: despite all of the shitty things that they’ve done, I still think that Billie and Ruth are good people at heart and that they can make this thing work. They both have serious problems that need some professional help, but I don’t think breaking up will help them deal with those.
BenRG
It’s worth noting that Billie is recognisably mentally ill too (depression, although not as intense as Ruth’s and maybe a soupçon of self-esteem issues). Is she blameless? No but I would argue that she is not as self-destructive as Ruth and that she genuinely wants to help, no matter how bad she is at it.
Cerberus
They’re super unhealthy.
As others have noted. They’re both massively mentally ill with addiction problems and depression (albeit in different flavors) and while they have done some things to mutually support each other, they have also intertwined their lives in deeply unhealthy and stress-enducing co-dependent ways and have massively bad relationship practices (Ruth started the relationship with rather intense emotional abuse, Billie has had a habit of creating really unhealthy self-destructive co-dependent relationships as she did with Alice, and both see the relationship as something to save them rather than a connection between two people who are hurting and have strong attraction and care for each other).
And yeah, Billie making so many copies of keys is critically demonstrative of how Ruth is not the only mentally ill person in this relationship with poor boundaries. And some of it is understandable given that Billie is terrified that Ruth will kill herself the second her back is turned and what that would mean to her already shattered self-esteem and belief in her own power, her desperate need for power and a feeling of safety given the abusive beginnings of her relationship and Ruth’s habit of pushing away and shutting her out, and her addictive personality.
And that last part is key. It marks it as something she did to regain power for a potential future power play like this and since it gave her a fleeting rush of that power feeling, she’s now just stuck doing it over and over chasing that initial rush while simultaneously knowing it’s unhealthy and kinda super creepy.
And I don’t think that that final line is about Ruth giving her addictions, but rather being an addiction. That Billie is unhealthy and an addict and is addicted to the NRE of being with Ruth and how that makes her feel valued to someone at least. Which makes something positive in her life into something that’s also partially toxic and fucked up. Which is the central tragedy of Billie. Anything that can make her feel good is something her addictive personality is going to sink its claws in and poison in much the same way as Ruth’s suicidal depression poisons her side of the relationship.
And I’m not sure that it’s her lack of trustworthiness that’s on display here. Billie lied about breaking the addiction, yes, but that’s because she’s in denial about how badly addicted she is (honestly, this is the first time she’s actually acknowledged it as an addiction she can’t stop rather than a simple thing she could stop at any time if she wanted to that isn’t as bad as everyone is making it).
So when Ruth tried to make it a mutual pact, Billie found herself physically unable to keep up with it (I think Billie and Ruth have mirror intensities of addictive personalities and depression. Ruth’s depression is much more intensely consuming of her life and impossible for her to resolve even with love and care and reasons to hope, whereas Billie can at least forestall the worst of it with unhealthy coping strategies that prevent it from being as all consuming. And they’re the opposite for addiction, with Billie utterly helpless to keep it from just consuming her life without aid and (probably) rehab whereas Ruth can at least make genuine efforts to quit cold turkey from time to time).
Everything else hasn’t been a genuine breach of trust (the Becky thing was not her truth to tell and expecting her to betray a confidence is a shitty thing to do and the key thing is not her breaking a trust, but rather an initially rational response to Ruth’s habit of pushing people away and then attempting suicide that has turned utterly awful due to Billie’s addictive personality.
Overall, this comic really highlights both their central tragedies. Ruth cannot consistently value the positives that Billie brings to her life because her depression is too prone to viewing every slight bit of motion as a means of abandoning her and to pushing away Billie as much as possible through abuse and cruel comments (the fact that Billie has decided that this is flirting doesn’t exactly make the comments less acerbic in intention). And Billie is wrapped up in her addictions and their poison leaks into her dynamics, keeping her from establishing more healthy dynamics that would make less of her self-esteem tied into things like saving Ruth despite herself, putting up with awful treatment, and making seventy billion keys as a means of trying to grasp the eel of elusive power.
And here is where we see if they have the power to bring their demons into the foreground and let them be part of the discussion rather than the true ringmasters of the circus that is their relationship.
sambadaemon
Am I the only one that noticed this is the first time Billie has recognized her drinking as an addiction? And she probably realizes the key thing is super creepy, but that doesn’t mean she can do anything about it yet. Addiction is strange.
Leorale
Hey, that’s true, isn’t it. Step one!
Captain Button
“Billie, you realize you just ruined any chance of Ruth ever being able to sleep soundly at night anymore right?”
– Can’t sleep Billie will eat me…
– Can’t sleep Billie will eat me…
– Can’t sleep Billie will eat me…
thejeff
And the problem with this is?
Or does she just want to be sure to be awake?
LimeSheep
so theres copies of ruths key hidden all over the campus?
scavenger hunt time!
Doctor_Who
Anyone who finds one gets to go on a tour of the dorms with her, and are promised a lifetime supply of booze. Over the course of the tour, all but one of them will suffer horrible accidents. The final winner gets to be the partner in her next unhealthy relationship.
Kris
It’s called “Who wants to drink themselves to death!” And it premiers this summer on CBS daytime!
Zababcd
Much to Ruth’s dismay, the winner insists on bringing their family along to live with them.
TamiDOA
It’s the key to the Wonkavator?
Wolf
Whoever wins gets to own the whole university (Or at least her dorm and position) 😉
Needfuldoer
Take a drink
And you’ll sink
To a world of pure inebriation…
Tabitha Desanto
Lets hope mary does not find that key.
newllend(henryvolt)
Ruth will just change the locks again.
Disloyal Subject
Come to think of it, are there university regulations on changing dorm room locks?
trlkly