#but i'm. wary of the narrative that he's 100% her perfect love and they are going to be together forever and ever.

[swiftiephobe]

have something i've been wanting to say for a while but have never felt like it's a good time so i'm just going to say it but it's going to be a tag post x

[bullet-prooflove]

Hi, Donna!  I hope you are doing well! 

What follows is my dissection/analysis of not only your latest incredible chapter, but the entire relationship between Reader and Will Halstead as it's depicted in this story. I'm picking apart/analyzing a relationship between two fictional characters based on your amazing writing.  This is a complete gas for me, and you've written one hell of a compelling and engaging story in which I'm fully invested. I'm delighted to write about it if you're all right with my nonsensical ramblings and opinions.  Because that's all they are. Just ramblings. Not empirical narrative that came down from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets carried in the arms of Moses.  Just me rambling.

Okay, here are my thoughts on "Memories" from your engaging "Survivor" series.

Paragraph 7 knocked me for a six. Will's grim acknowledgment of his role in her assault. This was described pitch perfect because he's not sitting on his "pity pot" feeling sorry for himself. The therapy sessions he's involved in are helping him understand the guilt and process it instead of making this situation all about him. He's not consciously doing this, but he tends to make a situation all about himself so he's the center of attention. We've seen this character trait on Chicago Med where Will displays his entire personal life in the store front window for everyone to opine on, discuss, and render verdicts on his choices.

With regard to what we can glean from his relationship to Reader, Will has a stunning absence of emotional intelligence. He can't read the mood of the room if it were written on the walls. Maggie has often mentioned on Med that Will is "a little awkward", meaning he often says and does all the wrong things, so this is a well-established character trait of his.

My attempt to understand what transpired between Will and Reader right before the attack stems from a need to know where the fissures were in their relationship before the attack even happened. Because Will's summary dismissal of her concerns indicates serious problems were already present in that relationship.

From my perspective, what happened to Reader was 100% preventable if Will had taken some action to protect her. There were a thousand things he could have done, but he chose not to pursue any of them. The only thing that makes any sense to me is Will must have learned from his disapproving father some rather appalling communication skills and that "putting a woman down" was the way to communicate.  He didn't know what to say to Reader in that moment so he just called her a "silly little girl" and washed his hands of it. Like his father did to him. It also illustrates that Reader may have come from similar family dynamics if she thinks being verbally abused is the way a man shows love for his woman. They're likely both from messed up families and just gravitated toward each other based on that familiarity. It's the old adage "she chooses him who must choose her".

I adore the character of Will Halstead, but he'd be a difficult person to be in a relationship with if he were real. I know many people similar to him in real life, and they're hard to get to know. Very wary of others, emotionally closed off, moody silences, mercurial, secretive. It's a credit to Nick Gehlfuss's acting talent that he's able to convey all of this through the fulcrum of a fictional character.

Paragraph 10 where Will's sees Reader in the cafe chatting with Kim for the first time since he left her apartment. Nice mention she cut her hair, too. Because of course she would. She's no longer that other person. Cutting the hair is just the beginning of her transformation.  I know Will must be wracked with guilt, but I'm so glad he didn't barge in and make a scene. Resisting the urge to make it about himself, because it isn't about him. He can't be the hero this time because he actually caused this and has to find a way to forgive himself. It's almost like Will became his own screwed up father in that moment when he called Reader the "silly little girl". Definitely something Pat Halstead would have said to Will's mother - and very likely did.

In the penultimate paragraph - "These pictures were memories of happier times, and he knew that he could have them all over again."  Okay, Will needs someone to smack him across the face here. He's incredibly ignorant (or in denial) for an emergency room physician when it comes to the sheer brutality of what happened to Reader. She was nearly raped to death in her own home and suffered a significant enough head trauma (traumatic brain injury) that put her in a coma

Not to get personal here, but something very similar happened to my dear sister a few years ago and I'll tell you honestly, she's not the same person anymore. Not at all.  She had a brilliant therapist just like Dr. Daniel Charles but therapy can only do so much restoration. All the king's horses and all the king's men cannot put a survivor of a brutal rape back together again in the way they were prior to the attack. It just doesn't happen like that in real life.

My sister doesn't like the same food, she cut her hair short, she went into a completely different line of work, she lost all her friends because they didn't know her anymore, she donated every piece of clothing she owned and bought all new clothes that didn't  remind her of who she once was. I convinced her not to go to the courthouse and have her name legally to something else because she was about to do that, too. The attack literally evicted her from her former life. The transformation was utter and complete and irreversible. I had to get to know this "new" sister all over again. And I did. And I love and adore her fiercely. But she's forever changed.

That's what is in Will Halstead's future with Reader. Should they decide to try getting back together, it will be like Will meeting someone completely new for the first time. Because she's transformed. He needs to accept that completely. There's no wishing this away. He needs to stop looking at the pictures of them in "happier, simpler" times because THAT IS OVER.  Reader is not broken. She's not damaged. But she is forever changed and Will needs to accept this. They both will have a massive undertaking in front of them should they choose to attempt to Tetris the broken pieces of their lives into something that may resemble contentment.

There, I'm finally finished!  Wow! I wrote a lot here.  If you want to, please let me know what you think about any of it.

Take care, Donna!

- Annie Radcliff

Hi Annie,

I hope you are well too! I look forward to your messages so please never worry about popping in.

I think it's important for people to understand therapy is about acknowledging things about yourself that are difficult to deal with and you have to work through it. I think Will feels very powerfully which is why his life spills out everywhere. I think this is part of the problem with his 'awkwardness' he just has a very limited sphere of focus and doesn't see the bigger picture sometimes.

I forget not everyone is in my head so this is what happened. Reader started to notice that things had been moved in their apartment and mentioned it to Will, who cast it off. He thought she was paranoid. She specifically mentioned something seemed off with her closet and he told her she was being a silly little girl, who was scared of a monster in her closet. He told her maybe she needed to get some help, because he thought the job was making her edgy. It turns out she was right and the property manager of the apartment block was entering her place without her knowing. One night when she was alone, he attacked and raped her.

I feel at the time, reader was already exhibiting some signs of struggling with the darkness that comes with her job and Will was ill equipped to deal with this, possibly because he was so wrapped up in his own professional troubles.

I don't really read Patrick as abusive, maybe more as a person who struggled to understand his children and I have experianced this a few times with people from similar backgrounds, sometimes they make up for it in later life. Age can help people reflect on their choices and ultimately change for the better with experiance. I feel the death of the Halstead mother may have helped soften him.

I think Will needs to mourn those memories because she isn't going to be the same person and he knows that. He has to come to terms that the plans they had and the future he envisioned isn't going to happen anymore and I know that that can be crippling. What happened changed the both of them.

Thank you for opening up about the personal aspects of this. The reason I wrote this was because I wanted to explore how it also effects the people around the victim. Things can never be the same for that person and the term 'evicted' is right.

I won't say what happens as I don't want to spoil it but I hope it does live up to the reality of the situation.

On a different note I have been working on Muffled Screams so we'll be seeing that coming up soon as well. It's been such a fun concept to explore.

All my love

Donna