Chapter Text
I believe that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered into our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing. For this reason the sadness too passes: the new thing in us, the added thing, has entered into our heart, has gone into its inmost chamber and is not even there any more,—is already in our blood.
-Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
***
Pearl didn’t choose her therapist; the young woman sitting before her with legs crossed and a notebook in her hand was the only therapist at this practice available in a time slot that worked for Pearl’s very busy schedule. Still, Pearl read her biography on the therapy center website and found several appealing phrases, like “family-oriented” and “evidence-based,” and a number of specialities that, after some research, seem as though they may be relevant.
“So Pearl,” the therapist says. Pearl rearranges herself a little on the couch; the impulse to fold her hands together and plaster on a service smile is sudden and strong. She focuses on the therapist instead. Her name is Jennifer, she remembers. She’s small and slender, brown-skinned and dark-haired with tight curls like Garnet’s that spring out angelically around her face. Her expression reminds Pearl of Garnet as well; calm, serene, kind but a little unreadable. “I had a chance to read through your intake paperwork. It seems like there’s quite a lot of background for us to talk about, and that’s something we can start to do in this first session and continue with if you choose to. But I’d like to hear from you about what you want to work on, and what brings you here now.”
Pearl’s hands fiddle a little in her lap. “Well,” she says, “For one thing, I’d like to get better at sleeping. I’m...not very good at it.”
Jennifer jots something in her notebook. “How so?”
“I don’t find it restful. And I have dreams. Nightmares. I don’t mind the nightmares usually, I rarely remember them, but they…” Pearl lifts a hand to gesture to her gem, then thinks better of it. “They’re disruptive, to my partners.” Jennifer nods out of the corner of Pearl’s eye, and that’s when she realizes she’s been looking into the middle distance; with an apologetic smile she tries to refocus. “Steven’s had such success with therapy here, he suggested I might try it as well. So, here I am!”
“You mentioned Steven often in your paperwork,” Jennifer says, nodding with an air of friendly interest, “is he part of your family?”
“Oh.” A more genuine smile tugs at the corners of Pearl’s mouth. “Yes. Steven is--well, Steven is my...hmm. That’s a very complicated story.”
“We can get into that if you want, but we don’t have to right now. You clearly trust him and value his advice.”
“I do, yes. Let’s say...I was one of his guardians, when he was a child.”
Jennifer’s eyebrows raise in understanding. “So you’re a parental figure to him?”
“Well, he’s not...biologically, I mean—” A little twinge of discomfort in her finger startles her; Pearl realizes she’s twisting her hands together in ways that wouldn’t be possible for a being with a skeletal structure, and tries to straighten them out.
“He doesn’t have to be biologically yours to be your child,” Jennifer suggests. Kindly, as though it’s that simple. “But it’s for you to decide if that’s an accurate description.”
“He...Yes. All right. He’s my…” she swallows, a foolishly human gesture, but her throat feels strangely tight. “My son,” she chokes out. Her voice is a wisp.
It sits in the air for a moment, the word, her having said it. Jennifer is watching her attentively. “It seemed like that was hard for you to say,” she offers, and Pearl nods.
“I wasn’t really expecting to—” she feels the sharp prickle of tears behind her eyes, and closes them. “I thought I’d go at least one session without crying.”
“It’s all right,” Jennifer tells her immediately, gently, and the gentleness of it makes it harder to keep the tears back. “Would you say you’re an emotional person?”
That startles a laugh out of her. She covers her face with her hands for a moment, wipes two fingers beneath her eyes. “Yes, I’d say so. Where I...ah...grew up, showing emotion was very dangerous. Once I stopped holding that control, I found I couldn’t really go back.”
“That sounds very difficult; strong emotions can be uncomfortable.”
“I suppose they can sometimes,” Pearl agrees, settling her hands in her lap again. “Though I find it rather freeing.”
Jennifer nods at that. Thoughtful. “Tell me about how you cope with your emotions. It sounds like it’s changed from how you coped in your upbringing.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it an upbringing,” Pearl says, “or, not in the traditional human sense. I’m...ah...I don’t suppose you have any background on me from Steven’s therapist.”
“That would violate patient confidentiality,” Jennifer confirms, “but I have followed some of the local news in Beach City.”
“I see,” Pearl sighs. “That makes it a little easier. I’m not human. I’m a Gem, and Gems—with very, very few exceptions—don’t grow up. We aren’t born. We come into existence knowing what we are and what we’re for, and how to fill our place in Gem society. It’s…” she shakes her head. “It’s very stifling. Things are changing now. But when I was made, I was made to obey, to be still and silent unless called upon.”
“That sounds more than stifling to me. How do you feel about that part of your past?”
“Where would I even begin? Traumatized. Enraged. Ashamed. I suppose we’ll get into those things.” Pearl sighs again, feels herself slouch a little. Ignores the instinct to straighten up. “But...what I’m trying to say...I didn’t cope with my emotions, for a long time. I just didn’t...allow myself to feel them. But Rose always wanted to know what I thought, what I felt, wanted me to tap into those things. So I tried. I was angry a lot, and cried a lot, and sometimes I was happier than I’d ever thought possible, all just sort of—” with a swirling gesture of her hands, she searches for the right words— “muddled up together. Any moment could be a new feeling.”
“Overwhelming?”
Pearl nods. “Yes. Disorienting. I’m a little better at it now. I try to press on, you know? While feelings are happening. There just isn’t time to get lost in it, so I keep on, if I’m able, and...take myself out of things a bit, if I’m not.”
Jennifer scribbles out another note, reads over what she’s written. “You mentioned Rose.”
“Ah,” Pearl says, surprised. “I suppose I did. Rose was Steven’s mother. Biological mother,” she adds, watching Jennifer take that in. “We were very close. That’s...I’d rather not get further into that right now.”
“All right,” Jennifer says, placid. “I think I’m starting to get a picture of how you deal with things. We could talk a little more about that if you like, or just more about your family and your support system, that’s something I try to get a sense of in early sessions with someone new. But I’m wondering if you might like to try a mindfulness exercise to process some of what you’ve gone through today. What you’re feeling right now, or the unexpected emotions you had when we talked about Steven.”
Pearl considers; Jennifer’s expression is open, waiting. She’s tried meditating with Garnet once or twice, is mindfulness like that? She wasn’t very successful at it, but maybe somehow this time will be different. “That sounds nice,” she offers, hesitant, and Jennifer nods.
“It can be. This exercise is called RAIN; it’s an acronym for Recognizing, Allowing, Investigating, and Nurturing. For the first step, you’re going to try to name what you were feeling when you had that reaction, and tell me where in your body you felt it. Does that sound all right?”
It sounds a little simplistic, she thinks, but she’s trying to be open to change. She nods. Brings Steven to the front of her mind, though he’s almost always there anyway. Thinks about calling him her son, anywhere outside her own head, outside this room. In front of Garnet and Amethyst. In front of Greg. She thinks of saying it to Steven, and feels her throat close up.
“Fear,” she says instead, very quietly, studying her hands as they wring in her lap. “I’m not...enough.” Good enough. Worth enough. Close enough, she doesn’t say. Can’t say. “Selfishness.” None of you had what we had. “Hurt.” She closes her eyes, takes a breath in. Thinks of Steven. “Love.”
Jennifer watches her for a long moment, giving her space, but there’s nothing left to say. “Where in your body do you feel those things?” she asks at last.
Pearl takes another breath, touches her throat. “Here.” Touches her chest. “Here.” When she looks up, Jennifer is still watching her. “Why? There’s nothing there. I don’t need to breathe. I don’t have lungs, I don’t have a heart. I don’t understand.”
“There doesn’t need to be a reason,” Jennifer says, a calm reassurance. “Allow yourself to feel those things, wherever they are. Sit with them. You can tell yourself that it’s okay, or just let them happen quietly.”
It feels ridiculous to talk to herself out loud, so she doesn’t. Pearl folds her hands together in her lap again, feels her shoulders hunching. Her throat is tight with tears that surge and retreat like the ocean; there’s a sharp ache in her chest that radiates down her arms, to her fingertips. My son, she thinks, pressing on the bruise.
“The next step is Investigating. Where does the fear come from? The hurt? What makes you think you’re not enough?”
I don’t want to do this, she thinks, a sudden flash of panic. Don’t make me do this. But she can’t say it; she’s in it, now, she’s been asked a question, she has to give some kind of an answer. The seconds tick by, pressing, leaden—
“Rose,” she whispers, and covers her mouth with her hand. “I’m her—I’m a pearl. I can’t—” She shakes her head, squeezes her eyes shut. “I don’t know how to explain—”
“This is for you,” Jennifer says, still so calm. As though this sort of thing happens every day. It must happen every day, here in her office. “You don’t have to explain it to me. Maybe we’ll get there, but that’s up to you.”
Pearl is breathing without thinking now, deep and fast through her nose as her mouth trembles. She wasn’t planning to be turned inside out today. She wasn’t ready. Millennia of rebellion, nearly two decades of grieving and growing, and it still feels catastrophically audacious to dare claim Steven as her own. To translate everything Rose was to her, everything she was to Rose, into the vocabulary of the human family.
“Where does the love come from?” Jennifer asks.
Tears break through the seam of her eyelids, and she wipes her face with her hands. “Rose,” she admits, hates the way her voice wavers. “Steven. My...our family.”
Jennifer’s pen glides across her notebook. “Sometimes, when we feel very connected to other people, there can be a lot of strong emotions tied up in those connections. It sounds like you care about your family, and about Steven, very much.” She pauses. “It also sounds like some of the internal conflict you’re experiencing is coming out of your feelings about Rose, and your relationship to her.”
Pearl nods, slowly.
“Earlier, you spoke about her in the past tense,” Jennifer says. Very, very gently.
Pearl nods again. “She’s...gone. Seventeen years.” This is more familiar territory, and she smooths her palms across her thighs. “She gave up her form to have Steven,” she says, as she’s said before, to Steven himself, to anyone who asked.
“It sounds like that hurt you.”
“Of course it did,” Pearl says, blinking. “We lost her.”
“Grief can take a lot of forms,” Jennifer replies, “but when you named your feelings about calling Steven your son, you called it ‘hurt.’ Is that different from your grief?”
The ache in her chest flares again; she presses her knuckles against it. She always did what she wanted, Pearl thinks. “She wanted him...so much,” she says, hears it come out of her mouth as if from far away. “More than she wanted to stay with us. With me. I didn’t. I didn’t want her to leave me, but...she did.”
“Pearl,” Jennifer says, and her voice is solid, steady, as if she can tell Pearl is drifting outside of this conversation. “I want you to think about Steven. Your relationship with him. Seventeen years, you said.”
Pearl nods. She tries to do as she’s told; she thinks about the text Steven sent her yesterday afternoon, a photo of a long-beaked bird and a message that said ‘miss you.’ She thinks about him monstrous and pained, looking lost, pulling away; she thinks about him holding her hand as they walk on the beach, singing songs, making jokes. His nervous, elated smile the day he moved into the beach house. She can feel the hot weight of him in her shellshocked arms on the day he was born.
“This is the Nurturing step of the process. I want you to imagine what someone who loves you might tell you, right now. Some kind words, some comforting words. I want you to say those words to yourself.”
The kindest person she knows is Steven. What would he say? Or Garnet, or Amethyst? If Steven is her son, then he’s theirs too. What would Bismuth tell her, or Volleyball?
What would Rose tell her, if she could see her, right now?
Does that even matter anymore?
“I would tell myself,” she says, looking down at her hands, “that Steven is my son. That I’m allowed to love him like he’s my son.”