AN: Sorry this took so long, life happened. This chapter is very navel gazey too, if you dislike that sort of thing, my apologies. I have run out of steam to find a more creative way to demonstrate Darcy's new understanding of himself. So a lot of telling, not a lot of showing. The work is complete, though I am still trying to find a way to add a chapter with action set in my favourite place in the world, probably, definitely in Australia, Rottnest Island, but I don't want to add it in after the last chapter, I think the ending is neat where it is, so I'm tossing up adding another chapter earlier in the piece. Or I'm going to let it go as now that it is finished (6 chapters left to post sometime soon) it's time to get the other one up to scratch. Thanks as always for reading and reviewing. Oh and apologies for the unnecessary acronyms making it hard to understand, thanks for so kindly and gently pointing it out tnet, I will go through and change them all sometime.
Chapter 22
Sally Ye Man sits across from me, waiting patiently for me to respond. We are nearing the end of our sixth therapy session, and she has expertly cut to the heart of all of my issues. I can't explain how she does it, but in a mere six hours, spanning nearly two months, she has dissected my fears; explained my childhood trauma; empathetically, and yet dispassionately, brought to the surface my long repressed memories of my mother, allowing me to examine them, detach them from the trauma, my disorder and my grief and find the joy in them; uncovered my misplaced guilt associated with my father's fall from grace, and his passing; and is beginning to give me the tools to manage my disorder properly.
I knew it was not an option for me to become another client of Gardiner & Gardiner, and after exploring the different options Elizabeth had given me, I discovered Sally was the perfect choice for me. She had not been first on Elizabeth's list, but she was Georgie's former psych, and had been Elizabeth's mentor during her final practicum placement before she graduated. It helped me that I didn't have to explain everything about Georgie as part of the therapy, but I doubt it would have made any difference to Sally.
I am particularly jubilant today. Matters with Wickham have finally been settled, with speed and extraordinarily little inconvenience to us. Reporters came sniffing around, but George kept mum about what happened at RISDe. It didn't help his defence at all to mention what he tried to do with my sister and the prosecution were able to amass enough evidence of his depraved proclivities that Georgie just became a number, too young to name, among his other indictable offenses. The trial is scheduled within weeks of his arrest, and his defence team push the character assassination angle with Lydia, though of course they could not publish her name, trying to frame her as the seductress, and George as the innocent dupe just looking for a partner. He is convinced long before the trial date to plead guilty to all charges relating to Lydia, and because of that, his defence team brokered a pretty cushy deal with only a minimum 2 years in prison, including time served, with good behaviour, and barring any more related arrests or convictions, could scrub his name off the convicted child sex offender register in a minimum of 10 years after his release. Wickham is serving his sentence, in a protected facility, because even criminals despise people who mess with kids.
Sally notes this and starts exploring that relationship, wanting me to unpack the genesis of our enmity, attempting to bring me to a place of empathy, I think. It makes me angry. I am not ready to forgive, and I cannot forget. I want to exult in his downfall, not pity him. Sally circles back to my aunt, drawing parallels in her controlling nature to my own desire to control everything around me. My disorder conflates control of external circumstances with stability and wellbeing, but this is ultimately self-defeating as it means reliance on things that are ungovernable, in every sense of the word. Catherine's need to control everything made her unable to exist in the world properly and was passed on to her daughter in the form of a crippling agoraphobia. I know that my coping strategies allowed me to appear to function normally, but my desire to control everything around me ensures that anxiety attacks will continue to be how my body responds when the world reminds me that I can't control it.
I am suddenly disheartened on so many levels, fearing the work I must do, fearing the ties I must sever to aspects of my personality that are inhibiting my growth. I do not want to lose control, the anxiety begins to build just at the thought of being a person who does not have walls between him and the world. But I also want what lives outside those walls. If not Elizabeth, then the chance to find someone else who can give me that future. Who am I kidding? Right now, the only person I can see in that future is Elizabeth. The question bursts out of me. "How do I know if what I had with her will last through this? I want a future with her, I'm doing this so I can have that with her, or maybe someone else, but how do I know if our connection has more to do with what's wrong with me, than what's not?"
"Do you think your disorder defines you?" Sally is not surprised by the conversational leaps I made, and yet, manages to surprise me with this question.
"Uh, I think maybe it used to? It defined all of my interactions. Until I met her." She simply nods, sagely, in that open and infuriating way psychologists have. I focus on a speck of dirt on my left boot. "I didn't allow my disorder to define me the moment I met her. Which means it doesn't have to define me. I don't have to be bound by it. So, on some level, it has always been a choice. I have tendencies, I have had them since birth it seems – I like order, I like the security of controlling my surroundings – so I have chosen to make these tendencies dominant to make me feel safe, but they have in fact bound me, limited me. It didn't feel like a choice to me though – I was so young – how could I know there were other ways to live, I was just surviving with what I had!"
"You are in no way to blame for the circumstances of your childhood. It was not fair what happened to you, but this world is not fair. However, just as you have grown from child to adult, you put childish things behind you. You can choose to interact with the world in different ways. Your condition is not so entrenched, you can choose to step away from it. I'm not saying it will be easy, nor that suddenly you will have all that you lack. The world is still not fair. You will overcome one obstacle only to find another in your path. Put simply, that is living. If your disorder does not define you, it need not define any of your relationships. But not all relationships are the same. Not all relationships demand the same level of intimacy, of personal access. It is ok to have special relationships with special people, and to limit contact with others. That is not a disorder, so I don't think it's all or nothing. If what you have with Elizabeth is special, that's ok. You may need to seek help if things don't work out, but I am confident that you now have the necessary self-awareness to admit when you need help. You can only prepare for suffering. You can't alleviate it before it occurs. You can't avoid it when it occurs. You can neither live your life waiting for it to happen nor expecting it to never happen. To live well is to know suffering. I've heard it said before, all joy comes from love, and the price of love is grief. Work out what that means in your life, and then live it."
She nods her head in a curt dismissal. My time is up, and unlike our previous sessions, she has not mentioned setting up the next session. I can't help but begin to ask, but she cuts me off. "You're ready to live, Darcy. You know the answers. You know what you want. Another hundred sessions with me will not give you the security you crave, against the fear of the unknown. Most people fear the unknown. Why? Because we fail to appreciate that suffering is not an unknown. Suffering is to be expected. To avoid suffering is to avoid life. We love. And we lose the things we love. Live your life. I'm here if you lose your way, but I don't believe you will need me.
