Title: Sometimes Generosity Feels a Lot Like a Punch to the Gut
Fandom: Roseanne (revival)
Length: 443
Characters: Becky, Darlene
Content notes:  spoilers for "Roseanne", episode titled, "Eggs Over, Not Easy," aired April 10th, 2018; deals with grief; features one line that was used on the show (the only line of dialogue in the story)
Author note: Tag for "Eggs Over, Not Easy"
Summary: At first, she thinks Darlene's there just to mock her after she finds out that Becky can't have children and that her dream of being a surrogate mother is dashed.

 

Sometimes it's hard to recognize an act of generosity when it's sitting right in front of you, drinking margaritas, listing all of your faults, but, eventually, Becky realizes that's what this is -- an act of generosity, disguised as an act of unkindness because it's easier than speaking the truth about your feelings (something that runs in the Conner family).

That Darlene didn't join her for drinks just to beat her when she's down is something she had not counted on, not when she's beating down on herself.

Darlene's telling her the truth, no sugar coating, and it hurts so much, like getting punched in the gut. "End the misery, grieve and move on with life."

Becky isn't ready for this. Not ready for her little sister to tell her that it's okay to move on from Mark, that Becky doesn't need to keep her finger on the pause button. Mark's never coming back. He's dead.

Problem is, she's not ready to move on just yet, not ready to face the hard truth that her life is never going to be what she'd dreamt that it would be when she was twenty years younger, which is maybe why she's still acting like she's twenty-something rather than acting her true age. She wants to go back to when life was simpler and Mark was alive, and she could still afford to dream.

It's hard to even think about moving on. She's never going to have a house with a white picket fence. No two point five children driving her bonkers. No dog running around in the front yard, yapping at nosy neighbors. No Mark to grow old and senile with, to share memories that start with the words, 'remember when'.

She can't even have children anymore, can't afford to move out of the crappy apartment that she's living in, or do her laundry outside of her mother's home. Hell, she can't even keep a pet. In a word, she's a failure.

A failure still nursing a broken heart.

"End the misery, grieve and move on with life." Those words will stick with her for a long time.

Words to live by, she thinks as she takes one last sip of her margarita and follows her sister out of the bar to return to her childhood home, to memories of Mark, of a simpler time where she understood what it meant to love and be loved.

Maybe it is time that she moved on with her life. Maybe that's even what Mark would have wanted for her all along. But that can wait for another day when she's not nursing a hangover and a broken heart.