Not Everything Done In The Dark Is Shameful Barson Story

Chapter 3

Within seconds Barba was sitting beside Olivia Benson. He wondered if she was crying and he prayed she would look at him soon, but he didn't want to push. A few quiet moments past, she uncovered her face, but did not look at him. She looked straight ahead. "In my experience everything done in the dark is shameful. Bad things, in between things, non-consensual things, even consensual things have a degree of shame, sometimes a lot of it. I have always felt this way, How could I not?" She turned toward him and her brown eyes finally met his green ones. You're lucky your mother loves you, she likes you too. Mine hated me."

"Liv" He said softly, a look of shock on his face.

"Oh I'm sorry I forgot you don't already know, sometimes it feels like everyone I work with knows. I'm the product of my mother's rape, I was a reminder of her shame and at some point probably at the moment she gave birth to me I became a shame to her on my own. She was a brilliant woman, but she never fully lived after that rape. Besides me she had no one, her only loves were work and the bottle."

"What was her chosen career?' Barba asked because it was the easiest question he could think of.

"Ah she was a professor. I always felt she didn't love me, but she didn't tell me that she was raped and that I was the product of that rape until I was in my teens, and after she told me I rebelled, not that she noticed much. I started to date a student of hers. He wanted to take me away, to marry me."

"I take he was quite a bit older, and you were not 18."

"Correct Counselor. My mother found out my plan, she said she wouldn't let me marry this person. She was so drunk."

"Liv, maybe by telling you, you couldn't marry this man, she was showing love.

"I wish, she just didn't want me to have what I wanted, and what I wanted was to be away from her. I didn't really want to marry him, I didn't love him. That's shameful, my mother kept a dark secret from me. What did I do when I found out ? I acted shamefully. I couldn't love the man, I didn't trust him."

"How old were you?"

"I had just turned 16."

"How old was he?"

"20" she answered.

"You were right not to trust him."

"I know and he didn't touch me, I wouldn't let him, even then I have tried over the years to have successful relationships but... It never works, I don't trust often at all. All the men I have worked with have bad relationships because they choose woman who don't understand the job and don't want to, I don't blame them, but they can't handle what we see, what we do. As a woman doing this work I have other problems. I start dating a guy who seems normal at first glance, but then when he finds out what I do for a living, he is too interested, he asks too many questions, to be honest he is perverted, so I kick them out and go on." She took a deep breath. "Every shirk I've seen says they start to get somewhere with me, and then they hit a wall. So why am I sitting here telling you all this? Her voice was so soft as she looked into Barba's eyes, for some reason she became instantly calm.