Disclaimer: I don't own General Hospital. ABC owns it.
Summary: Elizabeth looks back on her life, and realizes who she has been lying to herself and decides it's okay not to be okay.
Inspired by: "Who You Are" by Jessie J
Timeline: 2011, after Jake's accident
Who You Are
For the past few years, Elizabeth woke up feeling like she was living in a fog. That each step got her nowhere except back at rock bottom, but something was different today as she peeled her eyes open. It was as if someone had flipped a switch on in her mind, and the fog lifted away leaving her to look upon the past with a crystal view. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, and for the first time in a long time she began to recognize the woman that she saw there. Her fingers brushed against the cool glass and wondered why she made the choices she had made. The answer was simple.
She wanted to belong. She wanted a home.
When she arrived in Port Charles all those years ago, she had been unwanted. By her sister, by her grandmother, and everyone knew she was nothing but a trouble maker. No one bothered to really get to know the girl screaming out inside. Then her rape had happened, and suddenly people saw her. They suddenly cared, but that care had limits. The limit was as long as Elizabeth was the girl they had wanted her to be, she had a place to belong. She had mistaken complacency for happiness. The freedom that had come to her as naturally as breathing air had been stripped from her and she had given up without a fight.
It was only after Lucky's death, when she had been practically left alone to deal with her grief because everyone else was lost in their own, Elizabeth rediscovered her freedom because of Jason. Jason showed her that happiness was different from being content, and she also learned that if was even harder to keep when the world seemed to turn against her. She had to fight for every inch, and she was almost free again. She had almost been herself again. Then Lucky had returned, and everyone stopped treating her like her own person and an extension of Lucky that didn't exist without him.
The worst part is that she let them. She had convinced herself that it was true, and it had taken her a long time to realize that this wasn't true. Then she had tried to rediscover that freedom with Jason only for him to make her feel like she didn't matter anymore. That time she walked away before she had to watch herself be forgotten, but ever the masochist, she had turned back to watch anyways. She watched Courtney replace her in every conceivable way, and that had left her vulnerable to a predator like Ric. He had twisted and turned, molding her into his perfect wife.
It had taken her several mistakes to finally see him for the manipulative bastard he was. Elizabeth had left town, wishing to be free from it all. So why had she come crawling back? Because the unknown had frightened her more than the hell she had come to endure. She had returned, and fell into old patterns with Lucky. Her and Lucky's relationship was the definition of insanity and Elizabeth felt herself release a long tired breath. She had fooled herself into believing that Lucky had grown up, but in the truth he hadn't. He never took responsibility for his own actions. Instead, he foisted them upon Elizabeth's shoulders without a second thought.
It was almost like he wanted her to be that broken girl he found in the snow all those years ago. He had cheated on their marriage with two different women, abused drugs, abused her, and had done so much more. So when she had went to Jason for comfort because somehow he had become her rock again, it was once again all Elizabeth's fault. Her biggest regret of that time was not seizing the chance to be with Jason at all cost. Jason loved her without conditions, and let her decide her own fate and she had mistakenly took that for granted. Now, their son…their miracle was gone and the connection that had been so strong between them felt like it was severed.
Everyday she beat herself up over Jake's death. Guilt consumed her and gnawed at her. The people around her looked at her apathy, and Siobhan had even accused her of not caring that Jake was gone. That it was a ploy to get Lucky's attention. Elizabeth felt anger and outrage boiling to the surface of her mind. The woman did not know her. She had spent most of her life standing on her own two feet, and all the times she had been with Lucky, she had been the provider. She took care of her children when their so called father had treated them like an obligation, she had been there to comfort them through all the bad times and good times. She did not need a man in her life that was willing to walk away at the first time his feelings were hurt, but expected Elizabeth to go through hoops to keep him together.
Jason was just as bad. He walked away using danger as an excuse not to be a family, then he had went back to Sam and now was planning a family with her. Elizabeth would never understand why he went back to her, but she went back to Lucky who wasn't any better than Sam. They had both let themselves be twisted and molded by the people around them in order to be accepted. Now, Jason was stuck in a marriage with Sam and Elizabeth had blown her world apart by sleeping with Nicolas. Deep down, Elizabeth knew that she could not trust Lucky with her heart again, but she had given into the pressure of the supposed love ones and took him back anyways.
Deep down, she knew she had used Nicolas to tear her world apart before Lucky got bored once again and did it to her. This way it had been on her own terms, and no one else. She had always taken responsibility for her mistakes, but the hypocrisy when Lucky and Lulu got in her face just made want Elizabeth cackle insanely. Then Monica telling her to stay away from Jason, even though Elizabeth had a fever and hadn't really even realized that Jason was in the same room with her. She thought it had been a dream and then the woman to accuse her of hurting her own children. Elizabeth was damned if she did, and damned if she didn't.
Elizabeth stared steadily into her own blue eyes, and realized that she had let herself believe that she had to punish herself for all her mistake and repent. Repenting, she realized, was overrated. Carly never repented. Sam never repented. Elizabeth tried to repent, and everyone just used her guilt against her. To punish her even worse than she was already punishing herself. Elizabeth had lost herself, and now she was beginning to realize that she had spent so long not being true to herself. To deny herself the right to feel angry, or upset over the injustice that had been dealt to her. Telling herself that she deserved all this.
She convinced herself that she had to have the perfect family, and life so everyone could be happy for her. Instead, that's whatever one else needed to be okay.
She had been so desperate in trying to belong that she had given herself up to do it. How long had she been lying? Not only to everyone around her, but only to herself.
Elizabeth had told herself that she need Lucky to have the perfect family. To give her children a perfect life. That Jason was too dangerous for her. Over and over again, Elizabeth lied to herself. It had taken her so long to realize that she just needed to be herself, and there was nothing wrong with that. She had spent so long trying to put on a fake show, and bright smile to fool the world, when she knew that it was okay not to be okay. As Elizabeth brushed out her curls, and got ready for that day, she made a vow to herself. To live her life for herself and her children and no one else. To let the past go, and leave it behind her because today was a new day.
It might be hard to follow her heart, but she was going to be true to who she was. She was more than the mistakes that she made, she was more than the labels that everyone tried to put on her, and she was finally shaking free from the shackles that this town had put upon her. She had her freedom once again and she would never let anyone take that away again.
Rrs are appreciated.
