Elizabeth doesn't know who she's becoming (manylighthouses) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-01-18 21:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, elizabeth comstock, irene adler (destiny) |
Who: Elizabeth, Irene Adler
What: A therapy session.
When: Sometime last month.
Where: Irene's Office!
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, warnings and triggers for mention of incestuous thoughts.
Status: Complete
After everything Elizabeth had read and experienced in the dream world (and it’s variations), she had a very low opinion of psychology. That was, of course, back when the ideas of ‘modern’ psychology were absolutely terrifying. She hoped that most of those theories had fallen to the wayside. Everything she’d read about it here in real life seemed to be leading in a less frightening direction, anyway.
And she needed help. She couldn’t deny that. The dreams had changed her, torn her up inside, and completely ruined her outlook on life. She pretended things were normal, but they weren’t. Living with Booker again only made it all harder, and now Lina was away.
So she’d finally taken that step to arrange an appointment with Dr. Adler.
Now she was sitting on a couch in the doctor’s office, fiddling at her pinky finger, “I’ve never really done this before, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
Irene smiled at Elizabeth’s admission. “There’s not really a set script for these sessions. In this case, perhaps a good place to start would be to give me an idea of what life was like for you before you began having dreams of an alternate life,” she said. Irene still wore her sunglasses during sessions with clients; it was familiar, and it was easier to to keep her Sight seeing under wraps that way.
“Or you could talk about the dreams, what parts trouble you the most. Or anything that comes to mind, really. This is for you, after all.”
It was, but Elizabeth still wasn't sure that it was safe to openly talk about anything. However, that's what she was here to do and it wasn't like these sessions were free. She chewed on her lip a bit, then nodded. The fingers on her left hand were still twitching at the pinky finger on her right. It was a nervous gesture, one she wasn't always aware she was even making.
"I suppose we should start with the fact that I grew up not knowing my biological father. I didn't even know that the man I was calling father wasn't my own. His wife couldn't have children and they paid someone a lot of money to steal me away when I was a baby. They were both so paranoid I'd be found and they'd be caught that they were very protective. I spent most of my life on our property, either in New York or Paris. And it wasn't a bad life, it was just... very sheltered. But I don't think either of them really loved me like parents should. I think they let their fear control them. I guess now I sound like I'm defending what they did-- You don't judge any of this, do you?"
“No judgement,” Irene said. “It’s your experience. You’re the only person who can say how you ought to feel about it. I’m here to help you work on figuring that out, if that’s part of what you want and think it could be helpful to you.”
She paused for a moment, head tilted slightly. “How did you feel when you first found out all that, if you feel like answering?”
"At first I was very upset. But it was like a whirlwind of emotions!" Elizabeth sat up a bit straighter and held her arms apart, like she was trying to show the emotional spectrum she'd been feeling, "There was a lot going on at the time, Father - the one who raised me - was on his death bed, and it was a huge confession of his. It tore our family apart, and my mother was so angry at his decision to tell me that she left. I was hurt, and confused, and I wondered who my real family was. But it made sense, too. All the arguing, their behaviour. By then I'd read every book in the library, even the ones on psychology. You could tell they had some deep dark secret they were hiding."
She twitched some hair behind her ear, "So... yes, there was a lot to feel and a lot to think. Father gave me most of the money as a kind of... reparation. And a name. But it took me a few years to come to terms."
“Mm. That was a lot to deal with all at once,” Irene agreed. “Did you seek out your birth parents after you came to terms with things?” It was a complicated set of circumstances for anyone to have to deal with. And then to end up with the OC’s dreams on top of that...well, Irene could see why Elizabeth would want to talk to someone, even before being giving all the story.
"Oh yes. I wanted to see a little bit of the world, first. I'd spent so much time behind closed doors or stuck on our property, I never got to experience much of anything else," Elizabeth replied, nodding a bit. She decided for the time being it was better not to mention all the illegal activity she'd gotten up to just for fun.
"Searching out my birth father lead me to Orange County, actually. Booker DeWitt..." She raised her eyebrows a bit. Booker wasn't a father figure, and her situation with him was complicated. She was sure her particular fondness for him was going to make it into her speech. "Well... he wasn't what I was expecting, that's for sure. Nothing about Orange County really was. And my mother, Annabelle, is gone. I found out she died giving birth to me. He's so hurt inside, and he turns to a lot of escape mechanisms. But deep down in there is an amazing man and it's not hard to see myself in him."
“Finding your birth father led you to our land of dreams, then,” Irene said softly. She could tell Elizabeth cared deeply for Booker, but she doubted things were simple, both because of the years apart, the death of her mother in childbirth, and--of course--the dreams. As well as Booker’s methods of coping, from the sound of it.
“Had you found him before the dreams began?” That could certainly have an impact on things.
Elizabeth blushed a bit, and nodded her head, "I knew the name I was looking for, though at first we met on the internet and he... hit on me. It was actually kind of funny. But then I realised the kind of man he was and I was a little disappointed, at first. So I didn't tell him. I just... kept it to myself. Then the dreams started."
She folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them, "They really changed things. Not at first, but after a little bit."
Irene’s eyebrows raised slightly. “Reality can take some adjusting to when it does not mesh with expectations. Or with hopes.”
She shifted to lean more on the arm of her chair. “Might I ask if there was some version of Booker in your dreams? I realize that may be jumping ahead in the flow of the narrative, but it is also a fairly common occurrence. And can be one of any number of complicating factors.”
"Oh..." Elizabeth trailed off, sounding suddenly very sad. She nodded her head at Irene, and added, "That's... exactly the complicating factor that I'm here for. Because Booker IS in my dreams. We share a dream world that's dark and impossible, and he saved me. He saved me from turning into someone later on that I truly believe would have destroyed the world. But she would have been dead inside. All the darkness of that world, it would have eaten her and then filled her up. Booker came and took me away from all of that. But when he arrived, neither of us knew."
That they were related. That they were going to develop feelings for each other. That any of the things that would happen to them, would happen. It was all a mess. And as sad as Elizabeth sounded, she couldn't keep her feelings for him out of her words, either.
Oh. That was certainly a reason to seek out someone to talk to. Irene nodded slowly. “That does make for a complicated situation. Dream emotions and feelings can be very strong indeed. Combined with not knowing all the facts in the dreams...and with knowing what you know here, in this world…” Irene let that trail off. “It is good for you to seek help in dealing with this.”
"I don't know how I'm supposed to deal with it at all..." Elizabeth admitted, after a long sigh. "I fell for him almost instantly. He was the first human being I'd ever even met, in that dream world. I had spent my entire life alone in that tower. Except for Songbird."
The mention of Songbird made her eye twitch and she quickly changed the subject. Dealing with him was another thing entirely, and they were approaching the heart of the reason that Elizabeth had come in. She didn't want to get distracted, "He saved me, and then he disappointed me, and then he saved me again. We didn't know, and by the time we did know, it was too late. Here in the real world, of course, there's nothing we can do about how we feel. We're related and we know it. There are laws against that kind of thing. It's wrong. And I know that it's wrong. But Doctor... fighting these feelings has become nearly impossible. And I'm scared. I'm scared that both of us are just going to end up alone and bitter, wanting things we can't have. I'm scared any other man I fall for is just going to be compared to the one I already... I love him. I'm in love with my own father."
And it felt good. It felt wonderful to finally be able to say that, in a room where no one would hate her for it. She let out a long sigh of relief.
Irene was relieved for Elizabeth’s sake that the young woman was able to verbalize exactly what was troubling her. Speaking a thing out loud acknowledged it’s existence in a way that carrying it around in one’s head did not. Once spoken, it could be addressed as it could not before.
“Feelings developing for people who turn out to be close relations is not as uncommon an occurrence as most people might think. There have been a number of documented cases of siblings separated at birth who only discover they are siblings after being married to each other for a number of years. With the increase in the use of sperm donors, the chances of this increases...exponentially.”
Irene leaned back in her chair. “It’s good that you can say this truth out loud. There’s something freeing in that.”
She took off her sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “As to the part where you worry about how your feelings for anyone else you may fall in love with will compare...one never loves two people quite the same way, ever. They are different people, with different things to love about them, and different ways to love those things. Sometimes there may be someone you never stop loving, though the ways you love them may change, and there may be others you love as well, though never in quite the same way.” There was a faint smile on her lips as she talked, and a measure of affection in the way the words came that showed she was speaking from experience.
Elizabeth fiddled at her pinky finger as she listened to the doctor speak. She did feel better when she heard that there were people that this had happened to before. And she could tell that Irene had some measure of experience, at least when it came to love. More than she had, anyway, which wasn't much to begin with.
"It feels wonderful to just be able to say it somewhere. I've been so afraid for so long that if I admitted it to my friends, or this... one important friend of mine who is more like a big sister to me. I was scared she'd hate me. Hate us, since she knows both of us. And you can't even say things like that online. But... I don't know how to make it go away. Even if I did... find someone else. Someone I could actually be in love with."
That part seemed impossible. Her love for Aramis had taken hold before the dreams, and she'd never been able to hit it off with anyone ever since.
“Give yourself some time,” Irene said. “By which I mean don’t try to rush finding someone else, but also don’t try to rush trying to move away from your feelings for Booker.”
She stood up and moved to a chair a little closer to Elizabeth. “Try to think of it as a process--take things a day at a time. Some days may be easy, and some may be difficult. Just don’t beat yourself up when the difficult days show up, hm? Acknowledge the difficulty and the pain--allow yourself to get frustrated and find something to do to vent. Music, art, exercise--anything cathartic.”
"One day at a time..." Elizabeth repeated, mumbling to herself a bit. It didn't seem that easy to her, but she knew there were things she could do to vent with. Like playing that sheet music that Neal had brought her, or learning how to read the stars. Keeping her mind off Booker on bad days would probably help, and music was always cathartic.
"But you don't think I should try to stop... feeling the way I feel? What happens if it never goes away? What happens if it doesn't change into something more... appropriate?"
“I would say don’t try to force a change, but do your best to redirect your thoughts when it comes to mind,” Irene said. “I can’t promise it will ever go away. Feelings can, in a way, be a little like an addiction, if you’ll pardon the analogy. The lure of the substance an addict has an addiction to doesn’t entirely go away, but sobriety is possible, especially if one acknowledges that the lure could still be an issue.”
Irene smiled sympathetically. “This is not an easy situation, and there are no easy answers. But there’s nothing you should beat yourself up over.”
"It's not a pleasant analogy, but it does make sense," Elizabeth admitted, with a nod. "But I think that's what I needed to hear, most. That I wasn't some horrible person because of this. I've been mentally beating myself up over it for so long now. It's good to have hope that things will get better."
Ever mindful of the fact that they only had so much time to speak to each other, Elizabeth checked her watch, "I'll try to redirect my thoughts, and we'll see how it goes, I guess. I know we're running out of time, but I already feel so much better. Thank you!"
Irene smiled. “I’m glad I could help you,” she said. “And I’m glad you’re already feeling better about things going forward. Any time you need to talk, I’ll be here.”