16.3. Discuss your expectations in a relationship.
I don't have expectations. I'm not looking for anything serious at this point in my life. Given my lifestyle - the odd hours and unusual cases - I don't expect anyone to stick it out. It isn't safe anyway. I've had friends get hurt when my business and personal lives crossed. There was a guy once who might have been able to handle it, but he left without a proper explanation.
What? How did I feel about his leaving? He had worlds to save and it was a long time ago. I'm over him. It's not as though I ever had any expectations that it would be forever. That would be silly. He was at least seven hundred years my senior and apt to live another seven hundred or more. I was a mayfly compared to him and I don't imagine he wanted to stick around and watch me grow old and die.
Of course I don't resent this. It's not exactly something I could change. People have lives of their own. Look at my aunt. She flitted around the world doing scientific research while I was left at boarding school.
My parents? They died when I was five. No, my aunt didn't send me to boarding school when I was five. This was after my friend Andrea died. She got a job in Switzerland with a boarding school nearby and she left me there when she got a research position at Columbia University in the United States. Didn't want me picking up an American accent, I suppose.
Oh, for heaven's sake. People leave you. They die or they move on. Nobody sticks around forever and it would be silly to expect them to. Forever's just an illusion created to sell diamonds and greeting cards. Real life doesn't work like that. Happily ever after only happens in fairy tales.
Cynical? I'd call myself realistic. I've seen too much death in my career to think otherwise.
Abandonment issues? Don't be ridiculous. It's not as though my parents or Andrea chose to leave me. I do alright on my own. And now I've got Luke. Who will eventually grow up and go off to uni. I don't expect him to be tied to my apron strings forever. I don't even own an apron.
Now that just sounds ominous. How can this have given us more to talk about at our next meeting? I'm perfectly well adjusted and I fail to see what my parents' death has to do with getting over the Doctor. Frankly, I can't see how this session was any help at all.
Sarah Jane Smith
Doctor Who
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