Mario intuits Hal's hidden sadness; Avril names "disassociation from itself"

texture · 11 Nov YDAU, ~2100h

• When: 11 Nov YDAU ~2100h, Avril's office
• What: Mario, without naming Hal, asks Avril how to be sure someone is sad when they don't weep or mope. Avril works through the signs and lands on a "very strange type of sadness that appears as a kind of disassociation from itself" — persons afraid their own felt emotion would be infinite and engulf them, who go "blank, distant, muted, deadened," who "are not themselves." Mario then refines the question in a way that pinpoints Hal's specific presentation: what if the person is "himself even more than before a sad thing happened," not blank but hyper-present? This sibling perception of Hal's dissociated grief-sadness (JOI's death) sets up Hal's confession two scenes on. (Avril: "Is this about Hal? Is Hal sad and for some reason not yet able to speak about it?")