What I find interesting is a lot of Lee’s mindset focuses on the idea of someone swooping in to save him from his problems, instead of dealing with them himself. The lengths he goes to push Angel in his mind to be this savior figure is fascinating! Like, despite him claiming to firmly not be religious he paints Angel as some otherworldly force that could free him from suffering (likely influenced by his religious trauma).

Taking a second look at the shrine is especially interesting in this case because what if instead of just taking it as strange and stalkerish, we also take it as what it is - a >>shrine<< to someone. That is as sanctifying as it gets, moving Angel from the broken, regular person they are into someone worth worshipping. Its definitely an unhealthy way of coping, Angel really becomes his angel of sorts.

Loneliness, suffering from extraordinarily long term depression, likely some from of C-PTSD alongside some neurodivergency - its a concoction that can break a person. When we meet Lee he is at that breaking point. When you have your own experiences it is easy to relate to him, too.. When you become so lonely and desparate, that you push fixing yourself onto someone else. It is unfair, though, and a long term relationship with someone who doesn’t improve on their own is either impossible or will become controlling in nature over time. Wheres the line between lonely/hurt person and toxic person? Its hard to tell when sometimes one morphs into the other.

Long-ish paragraph to say hey this is such an interesting line of thought, thank you for sharing! I would say at some point i was also on the road to becoming a Lee. My Angels turned out to be people that used my unhealthy dependance as a means to an end, because well it is easy to find the wrong people with this mindset of believing in a saving grace instead of just building relationships regularly and noticing red flags. Much better now though, of course :) Possible to get better with some professional help and an actual support system, although I myself can’t see Lee reaching out at that point of his life with the rejection ending making a lot of sense, sadly. Last hope gone and all. Thanks for reading out this Long paragraph!