#i really hope PM gets it like the temps and CG do

[bklynmusicnerd]

"It's easier to be alone, because what if you learn that you need love and you don't have it? What if you like it and lean on it? What if you shape your life around it and then it falls apart? Can you even survive that kind of pain? Losing love is like organ damage. It's like dying. The only difference is death ends. This? It could go on forever." - Meredith Grey (Grey's Anatomy)

So I definitely feel like today was the best in terms of the writing for Trina's grief so far, just because it finally grounded it in a clear direction, survivor's guilt. Trina's grief manifesting itself as survivor's guilt makes so much sense for her character because it's the natural culmination of her savior complex.

That inherent belief that it's her job to save the people around her, the foundation of many of her key relationships and her status as a heroine, is also the belief that leads her to coming to the conclusion that she wishes she had died instead of Spencer.

I feel like it's easy to write that line off as a classic "soap heroine can't live without her love" moment but I actually think it's a little deeper than that for Trina, I think she's basically drowning in this idea that she doesn't deserve to be the one who lived. I've said it before, but this isn't just a sense of loss for Trina. It's a sense of failure.

Spencer having to sacrifice himself for her, in Trina's eyes, is her failing to protect him and be his "hero" (one of the "last" things he said to her before he went overboard). It doesn't matter if that's a completely irrational conclusion, it speaks to how Trina burdens herself. She won't take the compliment when it's given to her but she'll always take the blame, even when no one gives to her.

Cause no one else is burdening themselves with the "loss" of Spencer to that extent except maybe Nik, who turned himself in and is doing penance in the local clink like he's not an incredibly wealthy and powerful man. But to get back to the Trina of it all, she goes to the gallery seeking a sense of usefulness, gets triggered by the first painting she holds, is taken back to a moment of bleak helplessness, and is completely overwhelmed by the anxiety she experiences over the memory of Paris alone (TA played not just the grief but the hints of ptsd so smoothly). This is the kind of fluidity in Trina's grief that I was hoping for as opposed to the one-note, generic "boo hoo" stuff.

She can't move on because she can't forgive herself, and Ava just gets that immediately and starts listing all these people who need her to stay alive for them, herself included. She tells Trina that she's grateful to Spencer for what he did because she needs her, and cuts through (however temporarily) Trina's sense of not feeling worthy of it.

In general, I love how dark things got with Trina's pov today, I don't think we've ever seen her come this close to suicidal ideation before, but I think it works. She's mentally stuck in this moment where she had to watch someone she loved die for her and it all happened so fast that there was nothing she could do to stop it.

The panic, the frustration, the despair Trina displayed today, all makes sense in accordance with this survivor's guilt arc. The only problem is that's a heavy story that requires way more screentime that it's currently being given to be told properly. But, I do think it's interesting that Trina is sort of stuck in grief even though she doesn't want to be.

She's punishing herself by putting her education on hold, and the gallery isn't the reprieve she's used to it being for her during hard times. How far is Trina's survivor's guilt going to go and how far is she going to take this idea of punishing herself? Trina is a character that likes to have control over her life and right now, in the aftermath of all of this, she has none. She can't move on and there's nothing and no one for her to save (yet) so she's just stuck in this moment of failing to be the hero.

This is why Trina's admission to Ava that it "feels like [she] can't breathe" hit as hard as it did. It feels like we're watching Trina succumb to a darkness that Spencer credited her with saving him from. That's the tragic irony of this whole thing, it's not in Trina's instinct to give herself credit for all the ways in which she saved Spencer, but she will replay on a loop the one crucial time she thinks she failed him. It's important to remember that Trina felt this sense of responsibility toward Spencer way before she knew she was in love with him. She was always going to lash out at herself the most.