Re: NM: Cat & Leena
"I need something that lasts." And as good as Cat's less legal solution might have been, she needed something that could do that. "I realize it's healthy, but it feels like shit a lot of the time," she said quietly. It wasn't a critique of her therapy, they were doing a damn good job but the constant churn of emotions was exhausting. "It's like standing in a sea of shit and all you can see is shit, and all you can do is add your shit to the shit you're knee deep in, even though you know there has to be a shoreline somewhere." It was one of the most apt descriptions she could give it.
"I'm not -- I don't like blaming people." It didn't seem to get anywhere, or help anything, it just made things worse. She could blame the facility for quite a lot, but in the end it was her memories, and her body, and blaming hte facility wasn't going to help her deal with her problems.
Of which, Stephanie was not one. It was a side effect of other things. "I'm not saying I don't want to get to know her, I just need time so she can be familiar to me too. But this -- this only talking to me like once a year? It's not helping." And then there was Eddie, who she still had a problem with.
"I don't know what Damian and Eddie said to one another, but I've had my fill of cruel men." Maybe there would be forgiveness sometime in the future, maybe not. But, Leena didn't expect, nor want, to hear from Eddie. Maybe that would make things difficult on Stephanie, but she didn't know the other girl well enough to know the answer to that, or really to care too much about it.
"She was just--" she stopped, pinching the bridge of her nose and then rubbing at the center of her forehead, irritated. "She was trying to say that I could talk to her about anything, how she knew what it was like to be in a place like that, and I thought she meant a facility like-- where -- before --" she stopped, frustrated, and gave Cat a pleading look to understand. "But I think she meant here." A quick, startled shake of her head, because it had gone downhill so fast, and now she could see that Stephanie wasn't talking about the same things that she thought she had been, but the wording was awful.
"I started to hyperventilate and Damian was good, he was like, stop talking to her if you don't want to, and so I said my congrats and ended the conversation and I'm sure she thinks I'm some kind of weirdo but I couldn't. I couldn't," she said all in a rush and slumped against the edge of the door leading outside. Whenever she finally decided to talk, it all came out like the dam finally cracked. "I never do what people want me to do and it makes a lot of people mad, I think," she said quietly, and abruptly pushed away and swung the door wide.
Outside was easier, outside was better, and she sucked in a deep breath of fresh air. "I can't -- I can't fix things with Stephanie until I fix some things with me," she finally said slowly. Rote, but true.