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

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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.

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Layla cried the entire speech

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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.

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Layla has never dealt with anything in her life. As in….she’s never coped. While typically applied to the death of her mother, which is true and becomes especially relevant after the break in at her house, she has also never dealt with Olivia’s overdose.

It seems cruel to put the focus on herself, so she accepts the fact that olivia pulled away for a little while. Once she decides that it’s been too long and she doesn’t understand why ( and doesn’t think to ask ) Olivia pulled away…she decided she wanted her back as her best friend.

Striving for everything to be normal is how she “coped” with her mom’s death, but it’s also how she’s dealt with the fact that Olivia almost did. The two happened in such close proximity, causing her to lose two of the most important relationships in her life within two years. So its fitting that its the anniversary of her mother’s death is what causes her to reach out to olivia again.

It doesn’t occur to her that olivia herself has become a trigger to her. Part of why shes so quick to put olivia back into situations that could trigger her is because she just doesn’t realize that it will – at least when it comes to partying. The targeted rehab attacks are much more sinister but also come from the fact that she has never dealt with anything including the fact olivia almost died. So remembering that she went to rehab is remembering that. Its easier to attack it than to confront it.

As layla’s depression worsens, so does this. Constantly pushing down her feelings and hoping that they go away has devastating consequences…and its also part of why the attacks are so personal. Its grief that has been bottled up and stored away without having been dealt with.

i don’t have a home. i don’t have a place where i feel safe. all i have are memories of a mom I lost and even less memories of a father who abandoned me.  

the keating home hadn’t been safe for layla for a while, but until the break-in, she wasn’t able to put a name on it. she was constantly surrounded by memories of how her life used to be, and she could never escape how it was now. she was left alone with just her thoughts and her memories. she didn’t have an escape. her referring to it as a glass castle is so important. she’s trapped and it took one moment for it to completely shatter the house. she’s on display for everyone to see there, and she cannot hide from herself.  

you’re supposed to be my friend. my real family. and you betrayed me.

it’s more than just the failed intervention. everything that layla has set aside ( including asher, which was just.... a mess of feelings when that came out ) is at the forefront of her mind. more importantly, this...fight...for lack of a better term...traces back to layla feeling abandoned by olivia. it’s not fair, but her feelings surrounding by both her mother and father have been placed on olivia too. she almost died ( like her mom ) and then she disappeared from her ( like her dad ). she was left in that big, empty house feeling and being more alone than ever. she couldn’t understand why olivia left, and then when she finally gets her back, she finds out that it was because she slept with her boyfriend. then flash forward to the intervention, and layla feels cornered. there’s a spotlight on her, and she’s being told what is wrong with her. the worst part? her dad. olivia & spencer calling her dad drove that abandonment home, and nothing that either of them could say would come through in that moment. she felt betrayed. 

layla didn’t feel safe at home so she got a hotel room. she came home one day to find olivia and spencer in said hotel room. she might have known them and they might have been the people that she is closest to, but that didn’t stop her from feeling like they were infringing on her safety. they still broke into her home ( not that she considers it that ), and so she reacted. again, nothing that they could have said or done would have helped. 

but olivia....the bakers. but mostly olivia. is her family. the person she loved most, in so many ways. and the person that has also hurt her the most, despite and in part because of her good intentions.