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♡♦♡ YOUR ATTACHMENT TO THESE TWO MEN WAS THE ROOT OF YOUR PROBLEM ♡♦♡
Healing from trauma is a long, complex process. Three important parts of the process are: a) remembering, b) forgetting, and c) knowing what goes in column b.
Another important part of healing is understanding the true meanings of things. For instance, take the word "asylum." Many people associate the word with an institution for the mentally ill or others requiring special care. But asylum-seekers are looking for a safe place, a refuge from privation, persecution, and fear — a haven, a sanctuary, a shelter. An asylum can be all these things, even Arkham Asylum, as Harleen Quinzel discovers during her time as a patient.
Joan Leland insisted on treating Harley herself. Harley wasn't sure about that at first; having a former boss ask her every day if she has learned her lesson wasn't terribly appealing. But it turned out to be nothing like that at all.
Harley asked Dr. Leland to take her off the heavy-duty pain meds right away, but the doctor refused. She would wean Harley off the medication when she feels the time is right. A few days after her arrival at Arkham is not the right time.
She told Dr. Leland about at least taking her off of the extra-strength ibuprofen; that she doesn't need it because she can handle the pain. Dr. Leland had responded with saying that nobody can handle the pain of falling mid-air in a moving automobile and into a violent river, and suggests she tries to think of her accident as falling out of love with the Joker — or Edward, who Harleen has recently talked to her about. It wasn't a bad idea, but Harley knows nothing is that straightforward.
The Joker's "reincarnation" has flushed up a string of emotions within her, and she no longer knows how to feel about his revival. This is heartbreaking for her, knowing that he and whoever else was involved behind his fake death has done this to her, but not nearly as aching as Edward's disappearance. Sometimes, his ghost will come and visit her at night, but as the days continue to pass, she finds that he shows up less and less.
There is a hole in her chest and neither Edward or Jack can help repair that. The Joker played dead and didn't come to her rescue, and Edward left her out for dead after claiming that he never truly loved her — that it was all a lie.
Sometimes she wakes up feeling self-possessed, strong, free of the mind reader's influence on her, and sure she'll stay that way. The feeling might last for days, long enough that she will begin to think, very cautiously, about the future. But then she'll be ambushed by the certainty that her life is empty and she'll spend the rest of it marking time until she dies. She can't even turn to her memories for comfort because the happiest ones were of being with him not knowing that all of their shared kisses were based on a lie and that he truly did not feel the same way she did for him.
