.

sorry i’m not done i just keep thinking of olivia growing up with that persistent, unshakable doubt that she’s not loved, not really, and how that feeling is born, at least in part, from the fear that she’s inherited some sort of sickness, and how that fear and that feeling is what shapes the trajectory of her life. it affects everything. it’s the reason she ends up at svu and by virtue of that, the reason she meets elliot. it's what leads her to this man that will crawl under her skin and make a home for himself in the very core of her being. this man that knows her! that sees her! that gets her! and then loves her unconditionally, in a way she’s never been loved before. this man who takes everything about her as it is and rolls with it – who loves her not in spite of it all but because of it. this man who looks after her and who does his best to show her that there’s no weight to those lingering doubts that have haunted her her whole life. this man who she'll grow to love back just as much.

everyone loves to talk about liv’s growth in the post-elliot years but the fact of the matter is that it’s elliot’s acceptance and support and stubborn, steadfast belief in her that helps her get over that first hurdle and start the journey of self-acceptance, without which a lot of the later developments could never have happened organically. i remember in april last year there was an article or interview where mariska said that elliot was the love of olivia’s life but then followed it by saying he was the “only man she ever trusted”, and it was the second part that truly knocked me on my ass because, like. so much of why liv’s feelings for elliot are as intense as they are can be distilled down to that sentiment. she’s never let anyone in the same way she let elliot in and she never will; she doesn’t trust anyone else enough to, even if she’s come close. like they really nailed it with that brian quote. she was never going to bare her soul to him and it is, at least in part, because of the way her relationship with elliot has (canonically!) shaped her ability to be intimate with people. (and there is something to be said here about how the way he left + how he fractured that trust affects all of this as well, but i’ve already written thousands of words of fic and meta on that, so i’m not getting into it here.)

what i mean is like. it’s no wonder he left such a big hole in her life when he vanished. she’s got all this love for him that’s intrinsically tied to her own self-image and there’s no way she can let it go. there’s no where she can put it. it’s why i think liv’s defensiveness when it comes to elliot always hits so hard for me. it’s like she takes (sometimes very valid) criticism of him as a personal affront, even if the criticism has nothing to do with her, and i mean. i get it. how can she explain to someone that it’s not just that elliot was her partner, it’s not just that they were best friends, it’s not even that they were ‘like a married couple’, it’s that for thirteen years they were quite literally two halves of the same whole. how do you explain that by the end of it everything was all so messy and intertwined and complicated and (disgustingly, gloriously) co-dependent that sometimes it was hard to discern where one person ended and the other one began?