Ok, so I thought at the end of the last ep that going home is probably much much better for Elliot's psyche, but what about Kathy's? I don't think it's good for her. I think she needs to play it by herself a while, and not just because I'm an EO shipper.
First of all, I don't want any of this to sound like I don't still love him. Because lets face it, I always will. Whenever people say that they don't feel any love for their ex-husbands or ex-wives, I always think that it means they didn't love them to begin with. I was in love with Elliot for twenty years, and if you think a little thing like divorce can stop that, you obviously don't know anything about it.
But love—love's not the issue. I divorced Elliot because I was beginning to forget what he looked like. No lie, one night I realized that I didn't know the nuances of his face, the curves of his cheeks, the lines of his lips, nearly as well as I used to. And that thought, it scared the shit out of me. My parents, see, my parents stayed married and unhappy for years and years, until my dad died. That was old-school, real people didn't get divorced. They stuck it out, even when they didn't know what they were saving anymore. I didn't want to be like that. I didn't want to stay married to someone who I never saw, and who was just so angry, all the time. I couldn't do it. Elliot, he'll say that I fell out of love with him, but that's not the case. Everything is so black and white in his mind, if you love someone, you get married, you stay married, and if you get divorced, you obviously aren't in love anymore. I wonder if he uses that philosophy at his job, but I can't imagine that he does. I mean, all the crap in the world now, there's more gray than there is anything else.
When we first separated, I remember hoping, every night, that he would swallow his pride, come find me, and beg me to take him back. I thought that would be the end of it. He would say he was sorry, promise to change, and we would get back together, like we always had done. But he was prideful, and stubborn, and still had his job and his partner to hold him to earth. It was when those things-- the job and Olivia, started to get shaky, that he finally did come to see me, two and a half years later, wanting to come home. Right after he signed his divorce papers. And part of me, three quarters of me, was begging the rest of me to take him back, longing to take him back.
No, it's not that I don't love Elliot. But for the past two years I've hit my stride becoming someone I've never been—just Kathy. I've always been someone's daughter, someone's mother, someone's wife. But my kids are older now, and I'm free to do what I please, when I please, and however I please to. I feel like I would be a fool to give that up.
I'm going to invite Elliot in, and try to explain to him that his need to some home isn't that simple. I wish it were, I wish I had it in me to do this for him, and make him happy. I wish that I could still be the one to hold him to earth, but I can't do that for him anymore. I need to do something I've never done, I need to focus on my life, my job, my needs.
And I need to be something more that just Kathy Stabler.
