Friday, 18 April 2014

Olivia Pope truly wore the white hat last night

Late rising this morning because it is a holiday here so I decided last night I was going to really enjoy myself with my new friends and old ones brought together by our mutual love for the TV show Scandal. Gladiators through and through under the stars at our wonderful host’s, Erica Symonds’, home overlooking the Sound on a picturesque Bermudaful night. Who could ask for anything more.
The backdrop was to die for as our team of Bermuda Gladiators assembled to watch the #Scandalfinale.  I dressed in Olivia Pope loungewear – well not exactly but close enough. Thinking that way if there was any hope of my couple, #Olitz, getting back together, I was in solidarity with them. Bringing more power into Olivia Pope to help her make decisions that were good for her and not for everyone else.
Instead I realized something monumental last night after watching Scandal. Though I was disappointed with the way it ended between Fitz and Olivia, I knew it could end no other way for now. Olivia for the first time in her life realized she was allowing herself to be “the help”. Not just for Fitz and his family but with her Gladiators as well – not us the watching Gladiators - but her staff at OPA. Everyone looked to her for everything and at first she needed that to feel connected. To feel needed. To feel important. Because as we all know, she does not come from the most nurturing family environment.
But over the course of Season 3, Olivia was forced to confront her own demons.  She came to realize she can’t be everything to everyone else without first becoming everything to herself. So she decided to run away much to Abby’s chagrin. Abby telling her she could not just run – gladiators don’t run. But sometimes even the strongest of us all need to run. To hide. To breathe. To take some time to understand who we are and what we are.
To decide if it is our mission in life to be “the help” unwillingly or if we are meant to be “the help” with total authority - embracing who we are with pride. Without apology. Without needing to justify who we are to anyone but ourselves.  So though Olivia and Fitz did not even kiss in this episode and though I was thoroughly devastated  when Olivia told Fitz about Mellie being raped by Big Jerry, I knew deep in my heart she did the right thing. She fulfilled her mission to bring others out of the darkness into the light in a way she least expected. In a way we least expected.
In doing so, she freed herself from the clutches of the darkness and moved closer to the light. And it was in that moment that I wished I had worn my white hat because Olivia totally embraced the white hat when she sacrificed her relationship with Fitz to allow the truth to come out. She knew if she and Fitz were ever supposed to be a couple, she had to tell him the one thing that could make him understand why his wife had turned her back on him. To force Fitz and Mellie to either take a step toward each other from a place of understanding or to walk away from each other from a place of understanding.
Olivia knew that if she held onto that piece of information, she would never know if Fitz really did love his wife.  She knew she had to be the biggest one out of the triangle. The light bringer even if it cost her the love of her life because what she realized was that if he was really the love of her life, no matter what news he heard, eventually he would come back to her if he truly loved her. Knowing that if he did not come back, he never loved her fully. Freeing them all from the bondage of a secret that kept them tied to the past that was destroying them rather than liberating them. Allowing them to move ahead freely.
Many in my group were disappointed with the ending. Thinking it fizzled out rather than going out with a bang but I could not see any other way the Season could have ended. Sometimes life fizzles and it is during these times that we are tested the most. Bangs and explosions are easy ways to make decisions because we are forced to do so by something catastrophic. But when we have to make choices because of mediocrity, that's when it is the most difficult.
To me to see the parallel between the euphoria Fitz felt some four years before when he was first elected as President to the man totally breaking down under the strain of what the next four years means for him as the President, as a man, was heart breaking. Watching him walking alone down the corridor while everyone else was celebrating while he was breaking with every step he took was very telling of the truths he was facing. The demons he was confronting about himself.
And not just because he is my man, my heart broke for him because he realized because of choices he had made or did not make but allowed himself to be coerced into making had culminated in so many people being murdered, maimed and more importantly he knew he was going to be imprisoned for four more years. The joy of being President not for him but for everyone else.
Mellie rushing in back in her power, First Lady mode, urging her broken husband to get up off the floor where he had crumbled realizing all at once, the one he needed the most, Olivia Pope, was not there. Realizing without her, he was nothing but it was too late in that moment because she was jetting down the runway trying to be in the light. To feel the light on her face with Jake, the man who she feels something for. The man who openly wants to be with her with no strings attached. But her face tells it all when the phone rings and I knew it would be none other than Mellie calling her because that’s what Mellie does, when things crumble,  she calls her husband’s mistress to handle it. To fix it. But not this time.
When Olivia decided to ignore the call at that moment, she was still torn because her face told it all. Torn between a love that is possible for her but does not totally fulfill her- Jake sitting beside her. Or the love that is forbidden but fills her every cell with love. We will see what she does but something tells me that airplane does not get too far off the ground before Olivia realizes though she may be “the help”, she is the greatest help ever. And no amount of running away physically is going to free her spiritually.
Teaching me that a fulfilled life, a life lived from a place of truth comes from the choices we make about who we are and who we are not. And learning to embrace who we are with conviction, forgiveness, compassion and vulnerability because by doing so, we give ourselves permission to go out into the world as bringers of light rather than takers. 
I think I know how Season four will begin but I don’t know how it will end but I am ready for Liv to don the white hat with pride and be who she is. Not who everyone else wants her to be.
I am ready for the break now from Scandal because I know love is always the answer we are seeking.  It is what brings us into the light. Always and it starts from a place within and lights our path wherever we go. Happy break cast, writers, producers and everyone else involved with #Scandal as well as to my fellow #Gladiators through #Gladiatorsunite and #GladiatorsBda. See you in September. Remember to breathe….

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