I want to hear about Catra in the middle ❤️
Well then. Given that every vacation begins with sizable travel time, I can answer this before I become thoroughly distracted for the next week.
Catra is a very good representation of who we are behind all our posturing.
Sure we can 'Hey Adora' all we want, we can puff our chest out and take on inordinate amounts of responsibility, climb the ladder, betray, pretend we don't care. We may even be successful at times. Get some solid connections.
But we're a prickly and insecure mass of exposed emotional nerves. Prepared to betray ourselves and others for a scrap of familial affection. To get that which we are long denied; even years after escaping that environment and finding new solid connections.
Catra in season 2 and season 3 of the show gets a measure of success that she self-sabotages.
She could have kept Shadow Weaver locked up but the idea of a mother's approval and affection caused her to betray herself. An act we know we would have done.
...an act we did in our early 20s... our own unforgivable action. One of many reasons a blood relative despises us and is right to do so.
In season 3 she could have been happy with Scorpia in the badlands but she couldn't sacrifice the identity that she had built up in her head, she couldn't let go of her bond with Adora, she couldn't choose to be happy.
The bridge with Scorpia and Entrapta is burned at the end of all, even after she goes through 'therapy' and actually manages her emotions. Scorpia may never forgive her and is RIGHT to never forgive her.
Sometimes accepting what happened and acknowledging the damage done is the ending.
There are people in this world we love so much it literally hurts and we hurt them in ways I am certain will never be fixed. In ways what we did is justifiable. Context states that it may have even been objectively the correct thing to do in our circumstance; but the fact is we took the most stable relationship we had ever deliberately constructed over a decade and deliberately burned the bridge to the ground because our ALL OR NOTHING brain couldn't handle the idea of anything less than 100%. Somehow it would have been better if that was in any way romantic in context but it was Chosen Family. We actively decided that if we could not be Family then we would be Nothing. Knowing what it would do to him.
Not even our cruelest act. But the one we regret the most.
Catra displays every single diagnostic criteria of BPD. (Copied from the DSM-5)
Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment (Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behaviour covered in Criterion 5)
A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterised by alternating between extremes of idealisation and devaluation
Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self
Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g. spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating) (Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behaviour covered in Criterion 5)
Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour
Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g. intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
Chronic feelings of emptiness
Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g. frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms
Honestly out of every character we have seen in fiction she is the most nuanced depiction we have ever seen because we get so much of her in posturing and isolation moments to see the way her identity diffuses. We see her build and destroy relationships.
We even get that therapy scene with Double Trouble. One of the most heartbreaking sequences for someone who at the time of airing was knee deep in destructive cycles and unable to find any direction at all.
We also match pretty much every one. Officially we are diagnosed with 7 out of 9, though we have done enough therapy to reduce it to 4 within a clinical setting. No further details.
Also, yes, there is a lot of overlap with DID, isn't there?
Both conditions are on the dissociative experiences spectrum and can be covered under CPTSD with differences in severity.
Here's the thing, though.
We are not evil. We are not good. We are not redeemable or any other single evaluation of a person that one can make.
We're a scared child who has been pretending to be an adult for so long that the masks are just our face. Beneath my flirting bravado, beneath Wynn's measured anger, Cammie's desperation to be loved, Craig's desire to be accepted internally and externally at the cost of his own identity, Camden's terror lf being abandoned and alone?
There's just this ball of emotion trying to manage itself and not fall apart.
We are trying to be better. We are trying so fucking hard. Every single day.
But beneath everything we're an ugly and broken thing. Maybe that's too hard on us, but we carry the weight of every sin we have committed, every relationship we broke, every home we have been expelled from, every mask we have worn and discarded.
I always ask myself, 'what would the people from our past think of us now we've done the hard work of therapy?' and we are convinced that every single one of them would assume we're faking, that we're a relapse away from ruining it all again... but we know the answer. It's the same as it ever was.