Linnea Selanne-Niemi (everflowing) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-02-22 21:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | #flashback, #solo, linnea |
Small confession - I think I'm starting to lose it
Who: Linnea and various NPCS (doctors, nurses, hallucinations)
Where: Detroit, MI --> The Sanctuary; Australia
When: 1998/1999
What: Linnea during her time in drug rehabilitation - which means yes, drug references.
Linnea was being sent away. She had no say in the matter, her opinion offering less of a barrier than a sheet of paper did against the wind. She was hardly even able to focus in on the words that were being said to her, but she knew that they involved leaving. And what did it matter? There was nothing for her here. No one who cared or paid attention or did anything but demand her attention every second of every day. Five children that she was trying to take care of with no appreciation, the oldest of those five hardly ever even reacting to anything she did. And him, oh she had tried her hardest with Leif and yet somehow she had failed. He was a miniature version of his father and hardly ever wanted anything to do with her.
His father who was now standing in front of Linnea, practically screaming at her. She was not reacting like he wanted. There was no desire to put up a face even though she could hear the distant sounds of someone crying. A baby. Satu. She wasn't much over a year old and Linnea could not even recall if she had spoken yet, or taken her first step. But she must have, right? Had she been there for that or had it been the nanny? "I can't remember," she said out loud, cutting off Jokull's flow. Without another word she turned and started for the sound of crying, the noise cutting through the fuzz in her mind with a clarity she did not even want. But before she could take another step, Jokull's hand was around her arm and he was talking again. His voice did not get through the fuzz and Linnea just went limp, knowing that nothing she said or did made a difference.
Because she was going away. There were bags right there packed with her things and something about a ticket and rehabilitation and Australia. And someone she did not recognize was there to take her. And she had to go, Jokull was ordering her to go... well, what did it matter? No one could care there as easily as they did here. Only something was tugging at her, like a bunch of little strings cutting right through her skin and she knew what they came from. She could hear the crying of Satu growing louder and other voices were joining it, older but just as insistent. The loudest must have been Kajsa and turning as she was guided out the door, Linnea saw the tearful hazel eyes that belonged only to her oldest daughter. "Kajsa..." But then she was being helped into the car and the door was shut and she couldn't hear anything but her own breathing. And nothing else mattered then, nothing in the next day mattered.
How long had she been in this room? Linnea did not know, had no way of determining how much time had passed. All she knew was that she was in hell.
Oh the view outside the small window of her room was gorgeous and she could hear the roar of the ocean in the distance, but she could not feel her element surrounding her and that was all she wanted. Never in her life had Linnea wanted to be in the water more than she did now. It felt like her entire body was being stripped of everything and the nurses who came in with their little cups and plates of food she couldn't even bear the thought of eating. The smells turned her stomach and so she turned her face away, though the pills she accepted because she had no other choice. However long she had been here for had taught her that to not take them willingly meant having them shoved down her throat. Oh they talked nicely and they let her have the brochures about what this 'retreat' was like once the initial treatment was over. But she had to get through the treatment and in her darker moments, Linnea did not think that she could do that. Why even try? Her body and mind were miserable and that did not seem to be getting better.
On another of the mornings something changed, something new. Her sheets being soaked was not new, nor was the fact that her feet and wrists were bound to the bed with well-padded restraints. That happened anytime when she had a particularly bad night. No, what had changed was the way the room looked. Everything was a little clearer, a little sharper and for a moment she thought that she could hear the sounds of birds chirping outside. Maybe even waves lapping up at the shore and her element calling out for her, a call that she returned without even trying. Thinking of the water and wanting to return to it helped stave off the thoughts that she did not want. The ones that reminded her that she was thousands of miles away from her children. At least the water was right there and it wanted to soothe her, not look at her with the tear-filled eyes that she was remembering.
"You always did love the water more than me."
No. That wasn't possible. That very familiar voice couldn't be there... but it was talking. Clearer in her ears than the voices of the nurses who came in several times a day and the doctors who told her she was improving and should be able to get up and walk around any day now. This voice seemed much more real than those even though it couldn't be there.
"When I was a kid I wondered why," the voice continued. It was accusing and trembling all at the same time, like the speaker couldn't decide how she felt. "Why does mommy like sitting in the pool more than helping me with my homework? And then Dagmar came along and started to get older and I figured it out when I saw how much she loved the water too. Heard you telling her that she's a water elemental just like you and you're so proud of her. And she has to have the same hair and the same eyes. Everyone in the family, even Satu! has those eyes."
This wasn't right. Tears filled Linnea's eyes and she bit at her lip, squeezing her eyes shut. That was the voice o her oldest daughter, her Kajsa, but she never said things like that. Linnea would never be justly accused of ignoring her needs or paying more attention to Dagmar. If anything it was Kajsa who got the bulk of her attention and it was because she was different. Completely normal with those hazel eyes that didn't belong to any Niemi or Selanne that she had ever known. No, those eyes came from her real father, the American who had taught Linnea English and that she was, no matter what Jokull said, attractive and desirable. Right until her husband broke his face. Kajsa had his eyes and she loved her daughter for that, for looking different. "No, Kajsa, it's not-"
"Not what? You can't even look at me!" And when Linnea turned towards the voice, eyes open and blurred with the tears that wouldn't stop, there was nothing there. The voice was now on her other side, taunting. "Too late, didn't want to see me and now you can't. Not that I bet it matters since you left so easily. Didn't even put up a fight."
"Too doped up to care," a new voice, younger and of a boy remarked. Valterri. He shouldn't know what that means! Was his knowledge of those words her fault? "Like she always is these days. I can't remember the last time her eyes weren't red or glazed. She didn't even remember my birthday until a week too late. Dad even remembers those."
Two was enough, Linnea could hardly handle hearing those two young voices accusing her, pointing out the truths she didn't want to hear. "Satu started talking the other day." There was the third voice, the breaker - Dagmar. The voice of a child that was somehow sharper than the others, carrying an edge that was so reminiscent of her father. "Know what her first word was? Wasn't like me or them, she didn't say 'mommy'. Want to know what she said, mom?"
"No." Linnea didn't. A terrible feeling was whelming up in her stomach and she wanted to bring her hands up to her ears to block out the voices. Not that that would have helped. Her children weren't really there accusing her like this. Had she thought she would have known how impossible that was. But Linnea wasn't in the position to think logically and so, to her, it was like her children really were there saying these things.
"Too bad," Dagmar said, and it was almost like there was a breath against her ear as she continued, "Satu's first word was 'daddy' because he's there for us. Unlike you." And then they were laughing and Linnea, who knew that wasn't true, who knew that Jokull couldn't care about any of them like they thought he did, felt her heart breaking. She had let herself fall so far because of that man and now she was paying for it.
"No," Linnea denied it, straining against her restraints at the thought of Jokull smiling and playing with their children. Right until he needed water elemental blood for his business deals. She knew the types he dealt with, had been forced to donate to them more than once, and some had developed a healthy taste for her blood. With her gone he would need another source and that source... the pale face of a girl who wasn't even ten, bright blue eyes and white-blonde hair... Dagmar looked so much like Linnea had when she was a girl. With the same blood flowing through her veins. He'd turn to her. Smiling one moment with a gleaming knife in his hand one moment and a bloody one the next while Dagmar cried. "NO!" This time it was a scream and it went on and on and on until the nurses came with the sedatives, horrified at the blood slipping out from where she had rubbed her wrists raw trying to get them free.
At least, in the drugged silence of sleep, she didn't hear her children.
The nurse who always smiled and tried her best to draw Linnea into conversation when she came said that it had been over a month when Linnea asked. Today was an important day because the worst was, according to everyone, behind her. Now she was being moved into one of those small but nice homes on the beach that she had been promised. But with that move came the therapy she had not been looking forward to near as much. Therapy meant talking and figuring out underlying issues and, as good of an actress as she was, Linnea wasn't sure if she wanted to act her way through this. When she dreamed now it was of her children and how terrible everything must have been for them. To see their mother spiraling down and now have her sent away. And the baby, her little Satu, she didn't even remember the last time she held her. Linnea wanted to be better so that she could go home to them and be the mother that she had played at being before. Better, she wanted to be better.
Which meant not being addicted to drugs and all those other things.
"So, Mrs. Niemi-"
"Please," Linnea interrupted, her usual politeness a little jagged and worn down from her weeks spent alone detoxing. "Call me Linnea." It wasn't a lack of boundaries that encouraged it so much as not particularly wanting to hear that name associated with her. She had to put up with it enough when she was around the man. When he was not there she could at least have this little bit of freedom.
A scribble in the pad he was holding. Dr. Robins had a very kind face but his eyes had that look of someone who had done this for long enough to catch little clues. For someone like Linnea, who had never been all that good at things like that, it was unnerving to realize that everything she said and did was being observed and remarked upon. "Linnea, then. How are you feeling?"
"Better than I did when I came here." Which wasn't hard to accomplish. Those first few days had been... she didn't even try to remember them now, knowing they had been the definition of misery. And the weeks that had followed hadn't been much better with the hallucinations. Though those were getting better because she knew them for what they were.
"Physically you are doing much better," Robins agreed, looking at papers on a clipboard. Her charts. She wouldn't have said no to a look of her own at those. "But that's for the medical doctors to concern themselves with. I'm here to talk about your emotional well-being, see to it that you find the reason for your addiction and work away from that. Emotionally, how are you feeling?"
"Better than I did when I came here," Linnea repeated. Or worse, it depended on how you looked at it. On one side she actually knew how she felt instead of being numb... but on the other she was no longer numb and that meant she had to deal with everything. She'd been taking the drugs to avoid that exact outcome. But I have to face it so that I can go home to them. Her children, not her husband. Without Jokull around she never would have ended up here. But then she would not have Dagmar or Satu... or Leif, but it was harder to be concerned with that when, even as just a teen, the boy expressed the same views as his father. She hadn't been able to stop those from taking over - curse of the father.
"Being difficult about this is going to make this process much longer." His accent was odd, some of the words a little harder to understand than the ones Linnea had gotten used to in the States. Australians really did have strange accents, it appeared.
"I'm not trying to be difficult."
"Okay. Then tell me how you feel right now."
"If I'm difficult now it's because that's a difficult question. I'm feeling quite a lot, like thoughts are jumbled together inside my head and my emotions don't know which way to go."
Robins nodded. "So if you had to use one word to describe yourself, just one... would it be confused? Jumbled?"
Linnea turned to look out the window, seeing the waves crashing against the shore. The Pacific ocean... she'd never seen it before now. As far as her eye could see it went on, like it would stretch all the way around the world. But it wouldn't take her home. "Lost." The word was quiet. "I feel lost."
"Expand on that - lost."
Talking about her emotions wasn't something Linnea was used to. She hadn't been raised to do it and the years of her marriage hadn't exactly encouraged emotional sharing. The exact opposite in fact. Her own elemental nature combined with her environment had led to Linnea preferring to keep everything bottled up until she exploded or collapsed, more likely the second, submerged in a body of water or maybe with her head on someone's shoulder. But she never talked about it. "That's hard for me."
"You were raised to not talk about these things?" Robins guessed, to which Linnea nodded. "No one's judging you here, Linnea." That was a lie. He was writing down notes on what she said and how she acted to give an assessment. If that wasn't being judged then nothing else was. "I'm just here to help you, we're not releasing any of this to your family or husband. Completely confidential."
Nothing was ever confidential in this world. If Jokull were to walk through that door right now then he'd know everything that was in her mind if he could sort through the tangle. Anyone could be a telepath and know, even this man right here. A complete invasion of privacy that she was all too used to in her life. "My life's not what I wanted or expected," she said slowly. "Can I have a glass of water?" Robins nodded and reached for a beaded pitcher, pouring her a tall glass of water. She didn't drink from it, dipping her fingers in instead with a quiet sigh. Her emotions smoothed out just at that little contact with her element.
Robins made a little motion with his hand. "Not what you expected or wanted. A lot of women feel that way as they grow older. Goals that they didn't achieve, dreams that haven't come true... they find things to fill these holes."
He had no idea what he was talking about. Linnea could have lived with herself if she just hadn't become an actress or a master of her element. She could have carried on day-to-day life without blinking an eye. It was who she was married too and the control he had that she couldn't - wouldn't because of all that she was raised to be, the values instilled by her parents - break. Also because breaking them would mean her death... and more. Her children's. "No, not that. I'm lost because I let everything overwhelm me, slipped into addictions I shouldn't have touched. It's like I'm floating in the ocean, pulled by a current that's taking me away from what I want."
"And do you know what it is you want?"
There actually wasn't a lot. Her children. Love. To be home again and feel safe beneath her roof without worrying that Jokull would come home drunk or tell her that there was a client who needed her blood. Most people wanted money or fame or something like that, but Linnea had wealth and knew it was true - money didn't buy happiness. But her children? "I want to be back with my children. Be the mother that they deserve."
Robins was nodding and scribbling in his pad. "Do you think that you can be the mother they deserve?"
Did she? Linnea knew that she wanted to be. But how Leif had turned out made her question that. The boy was truly his father's son. But the others. Kajsa was nothing like Jokull and everything that Linnea hoped for. Dagmar and Valterri showed the same promise, even if Dagmar had her moments where she had that same glint in her eyes as Leif and Jokull... and Satu, she didn't even know how Satu might turn out. But of one thing she could be certain. Without her they wouldn't turn out near as well as they would with her. She could be a better mother than Jokull could be a father and she could do her best to make sure that they all had the lives they deserved. Ones that wouldn't turn out anything like hers had. "Yes," her voice was confident and she could feel the water in the glass humming approval. "Once I can leave, once I'm better... I can be the mother that they deserve."
And she would be. That was her new goal. Not even to see Jokull pay for everything he'd done and would do wrong, she couldn't control that anymore than she could the tides.
"What about your husband, Jokull?" It was another appointment in mid-February. Back home there would have been icy streets and snow piled up, a delight for a water elemental and Finnish native such as Linnea. But here it was warmer than ever, the sun shining brightly as though to mock her. The ocean took away from the heat but Linnea was still a touch more lethargic and hated dragging herself away from the water for these little appointments. But Robins insisted and she knew, once she stopped sulking to herself about it, that it was for the better. As much as she didn't like them they were doing quite a bit of good. Though this topic... they hadn't broached this one. For a very good reason; it shattered Linnea's calm like a rock being tossed into a pond.
Linnea turned away from the window. Her pale skin was tinged with pink and it was apparent that she needed to remember to reapply her lotion more often. "What about him?"
Robins sighed like he always did when Linnea skittered around a subject like that. "You never talk about him. Always about your children and your parents and siblings but never about him. How long have you known him?"
"Technically all my life. But I first met him when I was thirteen or so, I believe." That wasn't a pleasant memory. The snow, the slap, the kiss she hadn't wanted and the knowledge her mother had kept hidden from her. Taking a deep breath she gave a slight wave of one hand, reaching out for the now-constant glass of water that was kept for her during these. "Our marriage was arranged by our parents before I was born."
An eyebrow raised. He hadn't expected that apparently. "I didn't realize that."
Linnea gave him a look. "Of course you didn't. Most people don't and I don't talk about it because it isn't common practice."
It took a few moments for the doctor to gather himself. "Do you resent your marriage?"
Yes. More than anything. Outright rebellion hadn't been an option or she would have done it and running away was another impossibility. The moment she had the thought Jokull would know and stop her. She'd learned over the years to simply not have that or to put up with the beatings that resulted. And she couldn't leave the children, and taking them with her wasn't an option because she'd have nowhere to go with no money to support them. She had always stayed as much for them as anything. "I don't resent being married."
"But Jokull, do you maybe resent him?"
There was no maybe about it. "It's hard not to resent a man who doesn't love you." Suddenly, that became the pinnacle of their discussions for a solid three months and no matter which way Linnea twisted she couldn't convince Robins that another topic was worth exploring. Which was probably for the better because he was right - Jokull was the core of every issue and the reason she'd turned to drugs in the first place.
Linnea called her family as often as she could, which was weekly. Unless Jokull picked up and started to speak, then she'd hang up the phone and not answer any return call for several days. She wasn't ready to talk to him. But her children... oh, she had missed hearing their voices. But they had changed since she'd been gone, perhaps the biggest change coming in Kajsa. Her voice seemed older and steadier, like she'd learned to calm down.
Though it wasn't until Easter, after she'd spoken to everyone and the phone was given back to Kajsa, that Linnea worked up the nerve to ask the question that had been haunting her since that day when her own mind had conjured up hallucinations of her children to haunt her.
"Kajsa... do you remember Satu's first word?"
"Of course," her daughter sounded surprised. "She said it before you even left, mom. Don't you remember?"
To her everlasting shame, Linnea didn't. "I don't... tell me what it was?"
"Same as all of us. She said 'mommy'. And don't worry, I'm taking care of everyone as much as I can."
And it was that, more than anything, that got Linnea through the rest of her time. Oh she was tempted to return to the drugs because they were comforting and left her in a haze that meant she didn't have to think. But every time she was tempted she would conjure up an image of her children. Kajsa with her hazel eyes, Dagmar with that excited smile every time she touched the water, Valterri skating around the rink and Satu reaching out to play with one of her toys. And even Leif with that sullen, challenging look who she could feel was becoming more like his father with every day. Even him.
That was inspiration enough.