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 So, Raf's primary diagnosis is paranoid personality disorder, which is characterized by severe mistrust towards others driven by paranoid thinking. In Raf's case, he genuinely mistrusts the notion that anyone actually loves him or cares about him as a human being, and that people go only through the motions of pretending they do in order to exploit him; fear of being abused is implicit. The more vocal and insistent they are about how much they love and care for him as a person, the more likely he is to suspect ulterior motives. (He’d later learn from his therapist that he inherently assumes people are “love bombing” him—a tool of emotional manipulation that his mother had frequently employed against him during his upbringing.) He is additionally diagnosed with co-morbid anxiety disorders (C-PTSD and OCD) which interface with his personality disorder in some complicated ways.

He spends a disruptive amount of time and emotional energy trying to determine what specific people want from him. Initially, it was his attempt to determine how to could interact with someone in the 'safest' way possible. Sometimes that meant telling them flat-out that he will not do/provide the thing he suspects is the other person's goal (with the intention of making them leave him alone), or (if it's someone who's company he likes) he'd deliberately attempt to give the impression that there's a chance they'll get what they want out of him--for as long as he is able to bait them with it until the 'inevitable' falling out occurred. His inherent mistrust and desire to avoid getting himself hurt meant that while he had a lot of nice acquaintances, he had no actual “real” friends.

Raf generally, to anyone acquainted with him, just comes off as a very aloof, quiet, and private person with a busy personal life that everyone else is simply on the outside of. He goes out of his way to preform kindness to anyone he interacts with, regardless of the situation, because relentless amiability was always conditioned into him as a core trait of his curated persona growing up. It has always worked very well for him. But also--he doesn't fall onto the default belief that all people are bad and unworthy of kindness. "No one cares about my wellbeing and are just here to get something from me" hadn't become synonymous with "everyone is a bad person". It just meant that "everyone will eventually be bad to me if given enough time".

This was his unchallenged reality from late teenagerhood until some several months(maybe even a year or so?) after he had graduated from university and moved in with his uncle. His uncle recognized that Raf was very skittish, anxious, distrustful and prone to 'jumping to the worst possible conclusion' about certain things--which would often lend to some very tense interactions. His uncle, however, chalked this up to Raf having grown up under the thumb of an extremely manipulative, emotionally neglectful, and exploitative mother. The situations where Uncle Bill would have to calmly and patiently prove to Raf that he wasn't gaslighting him over his wildly inaccurate assumptions/interpretations had become a more and more common as their relationship otherwise grew more and more warmly familial.

Things came to heads after the realization dawned on Raf that his uncle intended on using him as the ticket to win his mother's endearment. If Bill could successfully deliver Raf back into his mother's grip, that would easily be currency enough to convince her to reinstate Bill as a core member of Ephrem Records--thereby ending his uncomfortable estrangement with the family. And Raf would be back to living his life as his mother's preforming puppet; no autonomy, no control over his own life, no rest, an absolute nightmare.

Raf had grown too comfortable and complacent--his uncle had given him literally everything, from a place to stay, to a job that treated him well, to all the space, peace, and quiet he wanted, and with absolutely no obligation. Raf didn't have to work, he didn't have to pay rent, he didn't have to do anything he didn't want to do--uncle Bill had been willing to accommodate it all. Uncle Bill had once 'admitted' to Raf that 'guilt' was a factor motivating his charitable kindness. It hadn't quite sat right with Raf at the time--and now he knew why.

And, when it was made plainly obvious to Bill that Raf wasn't sticking around just to be hand delivered back to Monaco, Uncle Bill continued the charade, offering to provide Raf the car and cash he'd need to move as far away as he wanted to be. And--it wasn't until the morning after his first full day of driving across boarder into the states, on his intended route to Mexico, that Raf got into the car, sat there...and remembered that his grandmother, the largest financial owner of Ephrem Records, had been trying to entice his Uncle back to Monaco, back into the family--non stop--for years. Bill could go back literally any fucking time he wanted to, with or without Raf. And, Bill hated his mother--or so he was consistent in suggesting as much. Why would he want to endear himself to her in a manner that played to the traits he disliked about her?

Raf called up his uncle, tried to make head and tails of things over a long conversation over the phone, and--upon...not quite having enough shamelessness to straight up ask if going back to his place in Vancouver was ok, his uncle offered Raf the option to return--on the sole condition that he'll accept psychiatric help. With hesitation, Raf agreed to it.

Raf would consider bolting again a handful more times over the next few years, and each time, the 'situation' would pass with no horrible consequence for stubbornly electing to 'wait and see', or 'resigning himself', instead of repeating his mistake from the first time. It left Raf feeling more and more convinced that he cannot trust his own perception. Between this and therapy, Raf became pretty adept at not saying/doing anything that would be acting upon his suspicions/fears until he's had time to dissect the situation and get a second opinion from a designated “person of trust”--specifically, his uncle.

Basically, for better or worse, Raf has decided not to trust his own reality when it comes to his own (specifically negative) understanding/'interpretations' of his relationships and interactions with others, and has instead elected to replace it with whatever his uncle's is (a position of trust that Magritte eventually inherits). Raf figures his life is basically in his uncle's hands anyways--considering he has convinced himself not to leave Vancouver (he -did- move out into his own apartment, however) and has repeatedly resigned himself to being "cashed in” for whatever personal gain his uncle might be gunning towards with him.

And so, when Raf outwardly vouches against someone's character with as much straightforwardly committed plainness as "If you hire that guy, I will quit", that guy has committed a transgression that is awful beyond any reasonable doubt.

This is also why, as Raf and Magritte became more and more friendly over the course of their weekly jam sessions, Raf suddenly going chilly and quiet on her was a recurring problem that she began encountering with more frequency.

At the core of his instincts Raf will always, beyond conscious thought, believe that people can only see him as an exploitable resource and will, without fail, harm him accordingly. But--there's now a layer of increasingly thick vellum that's been laid overtop of that core--a contradicting truth that's been asserted to him, that he is being asked to put more stock into and to internalize. He slips up, there are many many times where he doesn’t catch himself on time, or is feeling too strongly to employ meaningful countermeasures. When a situation aligns in a manner that allows his paranoid thoughts to really sinks its teeth into him, he can still have catastrophically ugly, fear-driven moments...but he's been working really, really hard to manage it. He wants that lightly obfuscating vellum to become so thick that it's opaque. He wants to believe that what Uncle Bill and, eventually Magritte, say is real is real, that they love him, that they’d walk through hell for him the same way he would for them—and want nothing for it. He can't believe that, but he will anyways. He has to believe that love is an action--a deliberate choice, and if love’s an action then so, too, is trust. Because regardless if they can really love him, he has decided that he really loves them.

And the reality can reward or punish him for it as it sees fit to do so. An endless frightened loneliness is worse than dying.

Raf’s Comorbidities: a unique mess

Firstly, Raf's paranoia isn't commonly accompanied by narcissistic traits. That is to say--he's not especially prone to believing that people have him on their mind all the time. If he walks past two people laughing, it's not his gut instinct to think that they are laughing at him. However, it is certainly his gut instinct to assume that they are laughing at someone.

But, unless they deliberately pause to regard him in an off putting way, his brain isn't gonna jump to the conclusion that he's the topic of their little chortle.

In fact, Raf rarely feels like he is being deliberately belittled by honest remarks when they are simply worded poorly. In some ways, he greatly prefers being called a jackass, to his face, in flat tones--than to receiving sweet, placating platitudes in a kindly tone. No matter how genuine the kindness may be behind the latter, Raf generally tends to interpret it...poorly. It gives him a really bad gut feeling, like they're buttering him up, mincing their words in a shallow attempt to gain his good opinion...all so that he won't suspect them later. Suspect them of what? Who knows. Something bad, something exploitative, something abusive. To him.

Raf doesn't suspect that everyone is out to use or exploit him. He fully believes that most people are capable of not thinking about him at all--even if he is physically present around them, such as in a busy train station. However, he does suspect that everyone who goes out of their way to interact with him, and especially everyone who wants to get to know him only do so in order to use or exploit him. And his basal understanding of human behavior is, generally, that kindness and good manner are most frequently used as tools of manipulation for personal gain rather than as an expression of genuine love and care. And he recognizes that this is only possible as a successful tool of manipulation because, just like him, everyone else wants to be genuinely loved and cared for.

Even his uncle, whom Raf does genuinely loves and trust, is suspected of being as kind and accommodating as he is to Raf only because doing so soothes his uncle's guilt and gives him a moral leg up over the rest of Raf's family. And part of Raf's initial willingness to trust his uncle is that his uncle never really...denies that this is, at the very least, a part of it. And--if that's all Uncle Bill really wanted outta Raf, then that was a perfectly livable arrangement.

Raf's C-PTSD, on the other hand, generates the shame that serves as the crux for a lot of his self-critical introspection. Even before his diagnosis, he was harboring a sense that something was really, deeply wrong with him--like he wasn't a real person. And so, it felt radically audacious to assert that he deserved to behave as a real person; which included the right to feel and act upon anger and sadness--and to have those emotions received and treated with any level of respect by those around him. Until his final year at Juilliard, he was kind of in a placid(listless) state of learned helplessness. He'd do what ever he had to do to meet the expectations of his peers and instructors (namely, amphetamines. So much amphetamines). It was just barely enough to get him his degree, and it ran him ragged and beyond resentful. He fully left Juilliard with the mindset of "I'm entering my villain era, I'm fully committed to being a Bad Guy, I am ok with everyone hating me now". And the "bad guy" behavior was just...saying no to stuff he didn't want to do, self-isolating, and outwardly expressing/lashing out when something viscerally upset him.

Which...thanks to the personality disorder, meant he became prone to yelling at people and accusing them of hurting or betraying him when they, in fact, did not. Especially...almost specifically the people closest to him, who cared the most about him and whom he cared the most for. And that's quickly what lead to his diagnosis, which kinda put an end to his 'villain arch'. So now he's back to reckoning with that sense of "something is really, deeply wrong with me", but at least now he has a growing understanding of what that is. And also the notion of "I have the 'bad person' disease--I am a Bad Person if I act on my core suspicions and beliefs, I cannot fucking trust myself, I can't trust my own perception of people or events." And now he's gotta balance that with whole "I deserve to feel safe, comfortable, and respected" alongside the critical notion of "but so does everyone else".

He hates it when people try to get to know him, he is fundamentally mistrustful of people. But at the same time, he has a lot of difficulty balancing his boundaries against the infringement of other people's boundaries--and the root understanding of "Something is wrong with me, I'm the problem, the fact that I think other people are the problem--is part of the problem that is me." is what motivates him to delay acting upon his negative impulses as much as is is able to, and to exercise kindness even when it feels like he's walking directly into a fire.

So, his overall kinda...thing is "I don't trust any of these guys, they clearly want something from me, and if I let them get close enough, they won't care if they have to hurt me to get it[PPD] but I'm a fundamentally busted person with a fucked up perspective and thus it is actually safer if I prioritize their comfort over my own[CPTSD] within certain parameters[therapy]"

and, idk...the big flashing red "ISOLATE, ISOLATE, ISOLATE" sign shows up in there on a frequent enough occasion that he just...has no real friends, despite a billion "good" acquaintances.

Despite all his mistrust and suspicions, the feelings of being fundamentally unlovable for willfully/protectively limiting the range of his 'usefulness', and his terminally pessimistic outlook on the nature of human beings--he craves so tremendously to be loved and cared for and held and reassured in such a way and to such an extent that could never be fully sated, I am sure. But he couldn't stand to receive it from someone he can't believe in.

Margie accidentally hack speedran his C-PTSD coping mechanisms so hard that she clipped through his paranoia until the collision error launched her into Trusted Person status. And he's just mostly confused and a bit anxious over how it all happened so fast.

[that's a joke...kinda]

Funnily, he believes the validity of his C-PTSD and comorbid OCD diagnosis—those ones make a lot of good sense to him. But he remains quietly unconvinced about the validity of his paranoid personality diagnosis. Specifically, it’s because a lot of his suspicions and assumptions are informed by his real, lived experiences. And—in his view—a lot of his suspicions about people’s motives, etc, end up being proven true [though this perception may very well be warped by some heavy pessimistic biases]. On top of this, the behaviors that have been identified as symptoms of his paranoid personality disorder could, according to his own research, be explained by other disorders as well—or even just covered by the C-PTSD umbrella. Specifically, there’s a lot of similarities in Raf’s paranoid behaviors to that of borderline personality. And that diagnosis was probably considered. But it’s worth noting:

-His paranoia isn't something that creeps up once on a semi regular basis to ruin his day. Rather, it's an ever-present thing that informs a lot of his core behaviours and how he structures his life. Depending on how tired, distracted, or vulnerable he is, symptoms may be easier or more difficult to manage, which can have the outward appearance that his paranoia "comes and goes", but no--it's always there.

-He has a very strong sense of self and identity, he knows who he is he and who he wants to be, and is consistent in his expression/presentation of himself [with the exception being certain CPTSD episodes wherein he might seem to behave a lot more furtive and childishly]. He is just very, very critical of himself and very conscious about how his behaviour affects those around him. He has deliberately constructed a very likable, charming, emotionally "bulletproof" persona to help him navigate and manage his day-to day interactions--but he knows that this is a character he performs for the benefit of the people he interacts with. There's no confusion of it with his actual self-identity.

-He doesn't experience "splitting" nor does he tend to fall wholly into black and white thinking. Even if he were actively in the process of dealing with someone who was treating him poorly and very angry with him [like, say--a bad breakup], while he may absolutely think "they've always had it out for me, this whole situation was inevitable from the start and I failed to stop it on time, I never should have given them the chance to betray me like this, I should have listened to my gut on this one", he can still also identify and consider their good qualities. It's just that "trustworthiness" is not among them. Trustworthiness is really the only "off or on" switch--but unfortunately, it's a big one that is almost synonymous with "safe or unsafe", and once someone is found untrustworthy, it is very nearly impossible to ever fully [or truly] claw their way back into being trusted again. But that doesn't make them a villain to him. it just means they are kept at a safe arms length--because they can't be trusted not to hurt him. If they were someone who had gotten to see his more authentic self rather than his "public" character, he likely may never want to see nor hear of them again (they will, no doubt, tell everyone they know what he's really like, and paint him in the most negative possible light[PPD] and he doesn't want to even think about it). But otherwise, if they've only known him as an acquaintance, then they get to remain an acquaintance. Forever...so long as they don't hurt anyone else in his vicinity.