couples_therapy 25.2
How well does your partner fit into your life?
At first, there was no fitting in. I had everything in my life all figured out, narrowed down into fine little pieces that fit into each other, making a picture that I thought was perfect. I didn't know what I was missing, only what I thought I wanted and what made sense at that time. What, through my eyes, was built to be the life I wanted.
The part of the story I'm not telling is that before I came to Washington there was a man. A good man in many respects, despite the circumstances of our being together, a man that I had considered spending the rest of my life with. He showed me the good I could do in the medical field when I was his student, and through all of that I fell in love. I know it isn't pretty but most things often aren't. I was young, and I was in love with a man who wanted me to be something more than a woman who cooked and handled the laundry. Daniel opened my eyes to the kind of passion that only, he said, came from medicine, from being able to take the things I'd learned and apply them to enhancing and saving the life of another person. For awhile, I thought I'd be happy like that. But eventually, I couldn't do it anymore. He had a wife, a daughter, a family, and my being there was driving him to betray them. I've never been the kind of person to put my own happiness first, and so I left. I packed my things and moved to Washington and swore I'd never look back.
I didn't think I'd fit into anyone's life after that, not because I thought myself incapable but because I didn't want to. I didn't want to fall into that kind of position again, where I was vulnerable, where I’d have to slacken my defenses and indirectly prepare myself for a chance, a time, that it might end the way it had before.
But with Mulder, as cliche as it sounds, it was different. I didn’t fall into a neat, open spot in his life, it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t effortless. I had to fight and narrow my eyes, dig in my heels and force myself to hold on, and while there were times that letting go seemed the most logical thing to do, I never did it.
Then he never let go of me, and somehow we managed to fit.
Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Word Count: 418