In My Blood (Posie)

When You're Ready

Maybe I had too many drinks, but that's just what I needed.

Penelope Park had always used alcohol as a way to escape her problems. About a few months after Josie had officially broken off all contact with her, she'd spiraled out of control. She woke up in the hospital after having to have her stomach pumped from consuming an excessive amount of alcohol. She couldn't quite remember the days the leading up to that and if she did, everything blurred together. Since then, with the help of her not-girlfriend, Davina, she'd starting laying off the alcohol.

Davina had been her friend to help her through it all. When Penelope started drifting away from Hope, she leaned towards Davina. She related to her, connected with her. Davina was trying to get over her ex-boyfriend Kol and Penelope was trying to get over Josie, so they just naturally used each other as warm bodies. There was nothing more to it. She'd post about her best friend all the time, but it was just to show her gratitude and appreciation for the girl who stuck by her side. She let people think that her and Davina were in a relationship because she didn't have the heart to tell anyone they weren't. She saw the way that Josie was happy with Hope. She thought maybe it'd make her jealous and have her come back to her.

Penelope thought it was funny how she asked Josie to love herself when she didn't love herself either. Her mind had been in a dark place.

Penelope started going to therapy. Although scary at first, she opened up to her therapist about her commitment issues and her drinking. Her therapist was able to dig out her issues that she'd buried deeply inside her core. It was a horrible experience to relive the trauma her parent's constant fighting put her through. She remembered when her parent's marriage first started falling apart and how her dad would smoke his lungs out and have a bottle of beer in his hands to accompany it. She remembered how her mom would take on more hours at work, often times returning back home at 2am just so she didn't have to put up with her dad. Their marriage was on its last thread, and when it finally snapped, she'd never forget how her mother would scream at the top of her lungs at her father. She'd remember how even though she was eleven at the time, she was constantly used as a messenger because her parents would refuse to speak to each other directly. She hated how poorly they'd speak of each other. Her friends at the time also had parents going through divorce. As she got older, she noticed that the majority of her friends too had either divorced parents or absentee parents. She'd jump from her father's house to her mother's house after the divorce because the judge had ruled they'd get shared custody. Her mom's boyfriends came and left. Her dad kept moving apartments, never satisfied with his living arrangements. She never was able to have real stability in her most influential years of puberty. As a result, she thought that that's how love ends up like. She made a vow that she'd never want to ever fall in love with anyone.

Her vow was broken when she declared her love for Josie their sophomore year of college. Josie had effortlessly brought her walls down and shown her that love wasn't anything like how her parents had shown her. Her previous relationships may have been like that, but love between her and Josie was kind, gentle, invigorating.

Then, when her friend had brought up marriage when Penelope and Josie were in their third year of dating, her irrational thoughts about marriage and commitment surfaced again.

When her therapist was finally able to uncover all of this information, she was able to reassure Penelope that this wasn't the case for all marriages. Love isn't always like that. Penelope told her therapist about how she started acting nearing the end of of her and Josie's relationship. Her therapist pointed out how Penelope had started to do the same things her parents had done, coming home late from work, the alcoholism, the picking a fight. But there was no real rhyme nor reason. For her parents, it was necessary that they broke up because things would've turned nasty and violent. However, in Penelope's case, it was only because of Penelope pulling away because of her subconscious commitment issues.