Chapter 19

Truths Revealed

Mental Health is so important…. I hope everyone out there is taking care of theirs.

True to his word, Jason showed up every afternoon to see the boys before the appointment. At first, he hung back and was just a presence in the household. He didn't want to overwhelm the boys and he wasn't sure what exactly they wanted from him but he knew he needed to be there. He promised Cameron after all. It must have worked because after a couple of days, Cameron asked him for help with his homework and Jake and Aiden wanted him to watch TV with them. Jason could see that Elizabeth was still guarded during those evenings. Don't get him wrong, she smiled and said all the right things but he could sense her anxiety. He just wished he understood what was causing it. If he did he thought, he could probably break down the last of her walls. Today's therapy appointment might just be the key to unlocking her but he wouldn't push. This needed to be as much for her as it was for him.

"Jason, are you ready to go?" Elizabeth interrupted his thoughts as they stood waiting for the elevator to take them up to see Dr. Monroe.

"Yeah, let's go," He started to say when Elizabeth put her hand on his arm, "are you sure you're okay? We don't have to do this if you don't want too?" Elizabeth didn't want to put any pressure on him. She was afraid as much as she sensed he was. It would hurt but Elizabeth would deal if he couldn't handle going.

"You changed your mind?" He asked.

He sounded resigned she deduced. Given everything that they had been through, it wasn't hard to figure out why. They had been through a lot over the past 19 years, but nothing was going to prepare them for talking about their relationship with a stranger.

"Nope, but maybe you have?" She threw the ball back in his court.

"No" he sighed. "I'm just not that great at talking about myself and I was trying to distract myself thinking about the kids." He told her a half truth. Elizabeth swallowed the lie for now because she could see how uneasy he was. Trying to offer comfort and acceptance, Elizabeth just held out her hand and waited for him to grasp it and that's how they got on the elevator and pushed the number 4 for the Psychiatric Offices. There wasn't anything awkward about the silence that enveloped the small space. n fact it was comfortable. Side by side they stood leaning back against the wall of the elevator with their hands holding tight to each other. United.

As the elevator dinged above them, they both took a deep breath. "Here we go" Jason thought as he allowed Elizabeth to lead him to Dr. Monroe's door and knocking on it.

"Jason and Elizabeth, its' good to see you again!" Griffin greeted the couple as he opened the door and ushered them inside. "Please sit" he offered pointing towards the cushions that were on his very comfortable looking couch. Elizabeth, he noticed went right to one side of the couch like she did every time she was in his office for the last two months. In those sessions, they had really started going through Elizabeth's childhood and first relationship: Lucky Spencer. An Idiot to go a long with the name is what Griffin thought, but he had kept quiet and stayed true to his roots about not giving personal opinions. However, in their sessions, they had yet to reach the beginning of Elizabeth and Jason and Griffin knew that was where the "meat" of Elizabeth's problems ran deep. While Lucky may have "saved" Elizabeth after her attack in the eyes of everyone in Port Charles at the time, Griffin saw an emotional abuser at best who made Elizabeth completely dependent on him.

Jason he mused looked torn between sitting next to Elizabeth or at the other end of the couch. It appeared as if he wanted to sit next to Elizabeth but was feeling shy or maybe even nervous, but he seemed to make up his mind and plop down, right next to her and take her hand.

"So," Griffin made himself comfortable on the chair across from them… "Why don't we start by taking it easy? Why don't you guys tell me how you met? I am not from here, so I don't know anything about your history.

"We've been each others lives for 19 years and it all started in August of 1999.

"Well, there's the day we met and then there's the night we actually started talking." Jason began.

"Jason, what can you tell me about your first impressions of Elizabeth on the day you met?"

"I thought she was beautiful, but she seemed shy."

"Elizabeth, what was your first impression of Jason?"

"I thought he was handsome and a little intimidating."

"Okay, what about the night you two actually started talking?" Griffin and Elizabeth had touched upon this in their own therapy sessions and gotten into some heavy material. He was hoping that Elizabeth would share some of that with Jason today.

"Jason saved me from a handsy guy at Jakes (which is now known as the Floating Rib) and I told him off." Elizabeth replied.

"Why were you at Jake's in the first place?" Griffin again noted as they both winced simultaneously, and he wondered if they even knew the other one did that.

"I was missing Lucky, who had recently passed away in the fire, and I just was missing him so much that I wanted those feelings to go away. I remember I had been listening to a song he had wrote me and going through my clothes, but they all just reminded me of him, of my time with him. So I changed my clothes, put on makeup and went to Jake's."

Elizabeth's voice cracked as she said 'my time with him' and both Jason and Griffin caught it.

"Elizabeth, why did your voice crack?" Griffin asked her.

"I'm not sure why that's relevant." She studiously pulled her hand away from Jason's and started wringing her hands together, like she did every time Griffin asked her questions in their sessions that she didn't want to answer.

"Jason, do you know why Elizabeth's voice might have cracked just now?"

"I have my theories…" Jason said.

Griffin just smiled.

Elizabeth turned white as she started to clench her fingernails into her palms.

Griffin waited to see if either of them were going to speak but they didn't. In fact, he watched as they both shifted a hair away from each other. Again, in tandem Griffin noticed.

"Elizabeth", Griffin would start with her, "Do you understand where I am going with this"

"Nope."

"Then why did your voice crack?"

"It didn't." She was being stubborn, and Griffin knew the answer, she had said it before to him, but he was picking up on the fact that she didn't want to say anything with Jason in the room, she just needed to be pushed and he was betting Jason could push her there if given the right motivation.

"Jason, you said you had a theory?"

"Not so much a theory as a memory. Elizabeth once said "she missed lucky so much that she wanted to trash herself."

"That's an interesting expression….'trash herself," Griffin leaned forward pausing and he watched Elizabeth tense out of the corner of his eye but still she said nothing. Jason noticed her tense too and immediately grabbed her hand again.

"Yeah, I figured at the time, she meant that she was tired of being sad and wanted to feel something else, which i is understandable right, I mean she had just lost the person she loved."

"Someone who gave her life meaning right?" Griffin asked and noted that Jason seemed really in tune with Elizabeth like when he grabbed her hand. Almost as if he could read her feelings. Something that he noticed in his sessions with her, that Elizabeth doubted. Griffin was going to let Jason prove her wrong.

"Is that what Elizabeth meant by saying she wanted to 'trash herself'?"

"No, I think Elizabeth meant that literally."

"Care to elaborate? You can be honest."

Jason closed his eyes "I remember she was so angry that day, how she said having someone to fight right then would feel like a relief. . How she said, that I never had someone come along and show me what the point of being alive was. I remember thinking not only that she was really angry and hurting but the more we talked that night, I remember thinking that their relationship didn't sound good. I mean I had just learned what a healthy or non-healthy relationship looked like and it sounded like Lucky had made himself her whole world, and she literally didn't want to continue living after he was gone. That just didn't sit right with me so by the end of the evening, I just wanted to get rid of that empty look in her eyes.

"Wait, you really thought that?" Elizabeth interjected. "Why didn't you ever say anything."

"Elizabeth, you were 17 and just lost your first boyfriend. I knew you loved Lucky and missed him, and I wasn't going to make that worse by letting you see and hear what I thought. We barely knew each other at that point."

"What about later though? After we became friends, why didn't you say anything? You listened to me talk about him all the time. You must have been so sick of it."

Griffin sat back and took notes as the two of them kept talking like he wasn't even in the room.

"I was sick of it" Jason exclaimed. "You acted as if nothing mattered anymore except him, you were so blinded by your grief that you couldn't see that your relationship wasn't perfect to begin with."

"Lucky had saved me, and." Elizabeth was on auto pilot at that point, retreating farther into her past.

"Oh for the love of God, Would You Stop Saying That!? Do you know how sick and tired I am of listening to you prop him up? He didn't save you Elizabeth, he was the reason you were in the park in the first place, and he just made you into his own perfect image of what he wanted in a girlfriend after that. All you have done for years is prop him up and make excuses for him. Why, Why can't you see that he made you so dependent on him and made you feel like you didn't matter unless he was right by your side?

"BECAUSE I DIDN'T MATTER TO ANYONE BUT HIM! EVERYONE ELSE SHIPPED ME AWAY OR TREATED ME LIKE I DIDN"T MATTER, ESPECIALLY YOU!" Elizabeth broke into tears.

Jason was stunned. Is that what she really thought….. "How could you think you didn't matter to me Elizabeth?" He asked softly

"You left me. Just like everyone else did. Just like everyone does." Elizabeth said with so much resentment in her voice, it took Jason's breath away. Clearly she was harboring a lot of anger towards him and not just from recent months.

"I was starting to fall for you, but I knew you didn't see me like that so I thought that being your friend was enough until you found me in the snow and I told you there was no word for what I felt for you. I meant that literally. I didn't know how to describe the feelings I was having and you know what happened next."

"I wish you had told me how you felt instead of leaving. I never understood why you did. It hurt like hell."

"This is where I need to stop you guys," Griffin jumped in. "I think we just touched upon the root of one of the problems, Elizabeth you have major abandonment issues from your family, and I don't think you have ever dealt with them. Your parents shipped you and your sister off to your grandmother's where your grandmother treated you like the problem and so did your sister, and as I mentioned before this is probably why you held on to Lucky for so long. He made you feel like you mattered. More than anyone else had at that point. You were already feeling bad about yourself after your attack on Valentine's Day. As I am sure Jason can agree, what happened that night was not your fault" Griffin paused and looked at Jason to see him nodding. "You carry so much guilt, blame and self-loathing for what happened, that you couldn't imagine how anyone else could care about you, so when Lucky comes along and does what any good decent human being would do and helped you up that night, of course you feel indebted him. But Elizabeth, the right thing to do would have been to do was to get you help. He might not have understood that at that exact moment and unfortunately it is why you struggle so much today. Elizabeth as I mentioned in our last session, you have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, that coupled with abandonment issues is what's going to make working through all this much harder for you."

"Now Jason, I think we touched upon a deep-rooted issue for you. You have always doubted Elizabeth's feelings for you and while you did leave, I think its because you figured, "" I'll leave before she leaves me and I get hurt.' Am I right?" Griffin didn't need to hear his answer because his body language screamed it. "I think in time with some more counseling on your end, you will see that you too have some abandonment issues that you might need to deal with as well but seeing as how we are out of time, Isay we postpone the next part until next week. In the meantime, I want you both to do something for me."

"I am not sure how much more either of us can handle. " Jason said tiredly. His head was swimming with a lot of thoughts."

"I agree with Jason…I am not sure if I can handle much more." Elizabeth breathed out.

"Just turn to each other, and I want you to say one honest thing about what you love about each other. Jason' why don't you go first?"

"I love how you smile. Your face shine and your eyes sparkle. It always takes my breath away." Jason said easily and it gave him satisfaction to see Elizabeth blush.

"Now Elizabeth, your turn"

"I love how I can fit into the space just below your collarbone when you hug me…It always makes me feel safe."

"That was the easy part you two… the hard work is just beginning, but you both love each other so much. That is plain to see otherwise all of this wouldn't hurt so much. We will end every session like this from now on, as a reminder of what you are fighting for. Now, I'd like you both to make individual appointments. I don't typically see couples individually but in this case, I feel like it could help, so Jason what do you say?" Griffin asked.

Jason thought about it, maybe Dr. Monroe was right, maybe he too had some abandonment issues he needed to work on. "Sure, yeah I'll do it."

"Excellent, now here's your homework," they both groaned out loud. "I want you both to do something for yourselves tonight. Elizabeth, I want you to try your hand at painting, Jason-Elizabeth says you like to ride your motorcycle, so do that. Now while you're both doing these things I wany you to ask yourselves this question: Would I want that person next to me right now? Take your time, be honest with yourselves, and then when you're ready, before the next session- I want you to share those feelings with each other. It might be best if you wrote them down and then shared it with each other. It doesn't have to be a whole page, it could even be one line about how you feel, just something to get you two to continue the conversation we had here today. Can you both do that?"

They nodded.

"I will see you next week then." Griffin clapped his hands together and wrote on pieces of paper and handed it to them.

Elizabeth and Jason looked at each other and silently nodded before walking out. As they were getting on the elevator, they both were quiet. Only this time, the silence was uncomfortable. They were both lost in their own thought and their own hurt, but one thing stayed the same, their hands were still clasped. The difference was, their hands held each other tighter.

R and R Please.