#dyn: i miss my best friend (layla x olivia)

[lingeringscars]

Layla does and will always love liv, but she's at a place in her life where she will call jordan and patience her best friends.

[lingeringscars]

Layla cried the entire speech

[lingeringscars]

more little layla things: layla takes a break from her friendship with olivia ( @doomdays ) alter everything they’ve been through though after what happened with spencer becomes a breaking point for layla because it was another boyfriend who wasn’t faithful and she couldn’t handle olivia not telling her about it AGAIN. in interactions outside of cj i do keep the relationship between spencer and olivia because of how drastically it impacts layla. 

during the time where olivia was at rehab and post layla losing her mother, layla became close with carly ( @terrifyingstories ). very close. they, for varying reasons, stop being as close because of outside family problems. however, layla does come to see carly as her best friend ( and develops a very large crush on her ) and stops thinking of olivia as her best friend. 

after carrie, layla continues to push people away. this includes carly, who she also thinks abandoned her after everything, just like everyone else she calls a friend. in fact, carly doesn’t even know about carrie because layla didn’t tell her. then i godmod jordan a lot bc given s4 it feels v right by saying he’s the one who ended up telling carly about it bc he didn’t know what else to do w/ layla pushing everyone away. this leads to them reconnecting <3

what this all boils down to, if i ever mention carly in a thread, you now know who <3  

[lingeringscars]

Layla has an intense amount of compassion, but she is not good with empathy. While the two typically go hand in hand, for her, there is a disconnect. she is able to feel sympathy for people, but she is not able to put herself into their shoes. She is not able to see why it might be hard for Asher to admit that he lost his money, but she is able to understand that it is hard for him. similarly, she is not able to understand why Olivia can’t just ... not drink. she doesn’t get that being around alcohol + the party environment is a trigger because...  the solution seems simple. 

While she loves Olivia’s heart and her ability for empathy, she is also envious of it. It is something she doesn’t possess. ( Especially when she is blinded by her own pain and fear ). While Olivia can see people struggling and put herself in their shoes, Layla sees them struggling and can fall back on the mentality that they made their decisions. With Asher, Layla does not understand why Olivia spent her morning getting him ready for the Combine because...that was Asher’s responsibility. As someone that has torn herself apart for responsibility, she couldn’t understand it falling on anyone else to help them out of it. 

In a lot of ways, Layla was struggling in silence. It is not on anyone else to have seen it before it became obvious. But in the pilot episode, Spencer mentions that Layla is lonely, and she automatically pulls away. It goes against the image that she has perfected, and it is part of why she is so desperate to get back in Olivia’s good graces. However, she doesn’t realize that things have to be different between them because she just cannot empathize with everything Olivia has been through. Partially because she is so outside of it all, as Olivia pulled away after it all, but also because she just doesn’t understand what that is like. she also just...doesn’t have the capacity to get it. Olivia could explain a million times in a million different ways but ... it most likely will not stick because it goes against everything she knows. 

This link between her compassion and empathy is especially strained right now because she has depression doing it’s own damage on her brain. she’s afraid. after her house was broken into ( another sign of her compassion for asher not extending to empathy. as much as she hates being alone in her home, she also didn’t want to share it with asher. she did not want that extra layer and burden and didn’t understand why it was falling on her. regardless, she feels a responsibility to asher as her ex and someone that was very important to her, but it is a lot harder to hide how upset she is when someone is sharing that space with her ) she felt this fear even more intensely, and she felt completely alone. she blamed asher, something that she does regret, and she hasn’t been able to completely come back from it. 

with her father throwing money at the problem, she fell inside herself. she destroyed her home again when finally realizing how alone she was. she blamed it on a second break in because she didn’t want to have to explain what was going on inside her head, and as people pushed harder and harder... she started crumbling more. she couldn’t see that they were trying to help her-- all she saw was them trying to infringe on her personal space. the more into her head she got, the worse it became. the more she started pushing against them because they were getting too close to unraveling what was left of her. they were pushing, and if she cannot hear what they are saying right now. she does not have that ability to hear that they care about her; instead, she is going to push them away first. 

this is where things..get really hard. Layla knows Olivia’s heart, and she is able to see things. Not to mention she has a history of projecting and pushing too hard ( see: the hottub scene in s1 ). she had to keep it together with asher for image reasons, on top of just clinging to this idea of him being this safe space: a memory. they grew apart, but she wasn’t good at admitting that. then she goes after Spencer because...she realizes that is what she wants and it is one of the decisions she makes for herself. but she is unable to see how that might impact or hurt Olivia, especially after learning about her & Asher. 

Instead of empathizing with Olivia and being able to see that it is connected into her addiction, all she feels is betrayed. and she lashes out about this because she is unable to see clearly. flash forward to current events: Olivia stages an intervention, with Spencer’s help, and they called her dad in. her dad, an automatic trigger for her, actually shows up this time, but it took the choice out of her hands. everything that she has been doing has been her grasping for control after her life spiraled out of control, and now spencer & olivia have broken that tenuous hold that she had.  she had already hurt spencer in the best way she thought possible. she broke up with him, yelled at him to leave, and then broke down herself when he actually did. while not fair for spencer, at all, it was confirmation that she was alone. and then they go to show that she isn’t, and she cannot see that, at all. 

and because of that heart that she admires so much in Olivia...she knows how to hurt it. while not knowing how bad her actions and words can spiral, she does not have the foresight to see that collateral consequences. All she can see is that Olivia hurt her and she needs to hurt her back. she feels betrayed and broken and, much like a caged animal, is lashing out because she feels backed into a corner with no control. and so she crosses line after line in an attempt to break olivia because then she’ll leave her alone. only then. and just like with spencer... it will be like confirmation that she is truly alone. she is not in a place to see anything getting better. she is not in a place to see that she really does need help. she is also not in the place to accept it. 

her kiss with asher is more layered that just hurting olivia, though. while this is a primary motive....it isn’t the only one. it is no coincidence that she does this only after seeing spencer with someone else. asher was this safe place for her, for a long long time. that ended, and there are no residual feelings there, but she hurt asher with spencer, and now she can hurt both spencer and olivia with asher. while kissing spencer was putting herself first, this was a last-ditched effort at control. she kissed asher because he reminded her of what it was like to be secure. she clung to him after her mom died because that was what was expected of her, but now... now it was just that place that used to be safe. that, obviously, did not work, and it caused even more damage. 

she has made multiple mistakes and has crossed lines that she will never be able to uncross and...honestly.. she doesn’t want to right now. more, she isn’t able to right now. until she realizes what she is doing/has done...which would be hard for her without depression on top of it, she doesn’t want to see it. she isn’t being perfect anymore, but admitting that there is something deeper going on that she is not in control of... she won’t do that. until she does, she won’t be able to mend these relationships, but more importantly, she won’t be able to help herself.