And I'm sick of being insecure, I want to be more comfortable

Amelia wasn’t really sure what to think when she saw Gina, Mary, and Dawn standing in front of her room with expectant looks on their faces.

…Well, Mary’s face was expectant. Dawn’s expression was a lot more exasperated. And Gina was impossible to read, looking like a bizarre mix of hope and abject terror.

“…You want to be more mature?” She asked for clarification, raising a quizzical eyebrow as she tried to process what the punk girl had just said.

“I-I do!” Gina nodded. “I really, really do!”

Not sure what to say to that, Amelia just bluntly asked her why.

And it all came tumbling out. Everything Gina had confided to Mary last night, all the dark emotions and fears that had been building up in her, and all about how much she hated her current self, even more than the self-loathing she’d felt before, when she blamed herself for Dakota’s ****.

Even Dawn was shocked by some of that. She’d suspected part of it, given the context of their earlier discussion, but a lot of the key details had been left out of Mary’s brief summary.

Amelia listened to everything Gina had to say without judgment, and calmly waited until she was finished talking before responding to the distressed girl.

“…Would you like to come in?” She asked gently, surprising Gina for a moment.

“Err… uh, yeah, I-I would,” Gina said, nodding. She stepped into the Garden Suite, and was immediately embraced by the tranquil atmosphere of the beautiful room.

“It’s really nice in here,” Mary murmured, looking around.

Dawn nodded. “Peaceful,” she agreed.

Amelia glanced at Octavia, who was standing awkwardly in the corner of the room. Without Vivian to wait on, the butler seemed completely out of place.

“Octavia, please leave,” Amelia said, trying to sound gentle. She would have sounded even better if she’d used her words to better explain that she wanted privacy for Gina’s sake, but fortunately Octavia was used to following orders without question.

With a polite nod, the silver-haired woman stepped out of the room, leaving the girls alone to their discussion.

“Would you like some coffee?” Amelia offered. She’d brought in a mug from the lounge and had set it on the carved oak table. All the furniture in the Garden Suite was made out of freshly-carved wood, so shiny it seemed like it was still alive.

Gina quickly shook her head. “No, I don’t like- …Um, actually… yes, yes, I would like some coffee,” she decided.

Amelia blinked. “…Whether or not you drink coffee does not have an impact on your maturity,” she informed the punk girl, who blushed and then looked down.

“Err… I… still, I would like some,” Gina said, turning and walking over to the table.

SMACK!

Gina flinched, and stiffened up straight, letting out a gasping moan in surprise.

Dawn and Mary both stared in shock.

Amelia was stunned. She looked down at her hand, which was lightly tinged in red, and then looked at Gina’s ass, which she had just struck.

“I… I did not mean…” Amelia cleared her throat as the pinkness of her cheeks faded and she quickly regained her composure. “I apologize for my indiscretion. I do not know what came over me.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Gina said, smiling an awkward smile. “It’s, um, one of my transformations. People are compelled to spank me. Don’t… feel bad or anything.”

Amelia adjusted her glasses. “…I see.”

Of all the ways to begin the conversation, that was probably one of the worst. Nobody knew what to say at that point, especially not Gina or Amelia.

Gina may have been smiling, but the fact that she’d just been spanked by a woman who knew her in elementary school was really hard to properly address.

It was Dawn who had to break the ice, since Mary was just as petrified with embarrassment as the other two women. She cleared her throat loudly and stepped forward.

“Amelia, I was the one who suggested Gina come seek your advice,” she said, looking over at her former roommate. “She’s really been struggling with these issues, as you heard, and I thought that since you’re an adult, and you have a lot of experience in helping young women find their way, that if anybody could help it would be you.”

“Oh!” Gina’s eyes widened. She’d completely forgotten that Amelia was a teacher at a finishing school. That was even better!

Amelia looked somewhat perturbed, however.

“…Thank you for your consideration,” she said with a slight nod. “But in spite of my experience, I am afraid I may not be as much help as you would like.”

“Oh, no… really?” Mary frowned.

“I am a teacher, but I am no therapist,” Amelia pointed out. “The issues you’ve raised, Gina, are things that will not improve without making a serious effort with a qualified counselor. As a mere instructor, I can’t be sure my advice would do anything but bring more harm.”

She reached out and caressed Gina’s cheek, a gesture of comfort extended to a girl who she saw as close to a daughter.

A wave of disappointment washed over Gina’s face, but she quickly pushed that away and shook her head.

“N-no, it’s fine,” she said firmly. “I trust your judgment, Amelia. I’m not… it’s not like I’m asking you to fix all my problems or anything like that. I know how stupid that would sound.”

Amelia raised her eyebrow. “…Oh?”

Gina shook her head. “I just… I just want… I just want to know how I can grow up. How I can stop being this huge mess of a person! I’m 27 years old, for Christ’s sake!”

“Gina!” Mary snapped at her, scandalized.

But the other girl wasn’t even paying attention to Mary at this point. She was staring at Amelia with nothing short of desperation.

Amelia bit her lip, and then sighed.

“This… is exactly what I mean, is it?” She said, shaking her head.

Confused, Gina blinked. “Huh?”

Amelia’s expression hardened. “Those things you ask, you may think they have simple answers, but they do not. You are not in any position to improve yourself in those areas at this point. Not with any advice I can give you.”

“Wh-why not?” Gina wailed.

“Because I am not a therapist.”

Her verdict came down like the slam of a judge’s gavel, and Gina shook for a moment. She looked crestfallen and shrank back, like she’d been slapped across the face.

Amelia was immediately heartbroken herself. “I… that did not come out as I meant it,” she stammered, trying to properly express her feelings. “What… what I meant to say is that Gina, you… you are in a very dark place right now. And mere advice is not what you need. You need to seriously examine yourself and why you feel the way you feel, and take steps to heal. It is not something so easily done.”

She looked down contritely. “I know that better than most,” she murmured so softly the other girls barely heard her.

Gina raised her head, slightly relieved that she hadn’t been judged so firmly after all. It wasn’t as though Amelia was chastising her, she just wasn’t sure how she could help.

That came as a genuine relief.

“Is there nothing you can do?” Mary asked, frowning. “I mean… you’re so wise and mature, so…”

Amelia shook her head. “I am neither of those things,” she stated. “Like you all, I am just a woman trying to do her best.”

She poured herself a cup of coffee and took a long sip, leaning back in a carved oak chair. A grim shadow crept its way across her face.

“Gina… you’ve made a lot of mistakes in your life.”

The bluntness with which she said that was actually refreshing. Gina sighed and nodded in recognition of her position.

“I know, I have… and I really, really want to make up for that!” She held her hand over her chest. “I want to do better! I want… I want to be better!”

Amelia leaned forward and studied the other girl carefully. “What does that look like to you?” She asked.

Gina blinked. “…Huh?”

Dawn glanced at her. She’d had the same query, but hadn’t felt comfortable verbalizing it.

“You told me you wanted to be a better person. You wanted to be more mature. So what does that look like to you?” Amelia repeated herself. “I understand why you don’t want to be the person you are, or were, you made that very clear when you explained all the painful thoughts you had last night. But what you never told me was who you wanted to be.”

“I… I guess…” Gina looked down, not sure what to say. She hadn’t actually given that any serious consideration. She’d been so determined to change her ways and stop being a bad girl, that she hadn’t really thought about who she would be instead.

An image of her other self flashed through her mind. Regina, who had a successful music career and a loving family who supported her. Was that who she wanted to be? Who she wished she’d become, instead of her present self?

Seeing that Gina was stuck, Amelia sighed and stood up. She walked over to the flustered punk and ruffled her hair, surprising both of them.

“…It is alright if you do not know the answer to that question,” Amelia said, measuring out each word precisely so she wouldn’t be misunderstood. “You are still a young woman. You do not need to let your mistakes define you so heavily.”

“I… I’m not that young,” Gina replied, wiping a bit of dripping mascara from her eyes. “Like I said, I’m almost thirty.”

“And I am over thirty,” Amelia replied. “Do you think I have not made any mistakes in the last ten years?”

“Err… w-well…”

“I assure you that I have.”

Yeah, that wasn’t so farfetched.

“Amelia’s right, Gina,” Mary nodded. “I made a lot of mistakes, too! I got so angry at Nick, I judged him without ever hearing his side. But even though I made a big mistake, Nick still forgave me. And now we’re married. That could be you, too.”

Gina laughed and shook her head. “Come on, seriously? Marriage? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“You shouldn’t deflect real emotions with a joke,” Dawn chastised her. “That’s just another form of running away.”

Gina flinched, revealing that the cat girl had accurately hit a nerve. She looked away from Dawn and sulked.

“I… it was just an attempt to lighten the mood,” she muttered.

“Was it?” Dawn pressed. “Or were you presenting the idea as being absurd in order to comfort yourself, because deep down you think it’s not possible for you to achieve?”

“Wh-what?!” Gina didn’t even know how to respond to that- she wasn’t even sure what some of those words meant.

Dawn didn’t care, though. “That’s how you feel, isn’t it?” She narrowed her eyes and studied the other girl’s flustered expression. “You’ve convinced yourself that having the things you want is impossible, so you make jokes, pretending like the idea of it happening is laughable. All of a sudden, it doesn’t hurt so much anymore. Because you can laugh at it. Isn’t that right?”

“I… that… you don’t know anything!” Gina snapped, slapping the table. She glared furiously at Dawn, who returned her glare with a cool, detached stare of nonchalance.

“Getting angry? Not very mature of you,” Dawn prodded, setting Gina off even more.

“Dawn, stop it!” Mary wailed. “You’re not helping!”

“No,” Dawn snapped. “She needs to hear this. If the truth is just going to make her upset, well, maybe there’s no point in her pursuing this ‘maturity’ nonsense, is there? Because mature people don’t fly off the handle just because they hear a truth they don’t want to accept.”

Gina balled up her hands into fists but she restrained herself. Because as much as it hurt to admit, Dawn was right. She wasn’t being mature in the slightest- just the opposite, in fact.

She was behaving like a petulant child.

“I… I don’t… I don’t want to be this way,” she gasped out, her voice cracking. She tried to stop her makeup from running but it was a fool’s endeavor.

“…I know you don’t,” Dawn said, her voice softening. “But Amelia is right. This isn’t a problem you can just fix with a little hard work. You’ve got some serious issues you need to fix, Gina, and that’s not something you can paper over with a few platitudes.”

“That is all I was trying to say,” Amelia confirmed with a nod. Still, she spared a disapproving look for Dawn. “…However, I did not intend to do so with such harsh words.”

Dawn didn’t falter. “She needed to hear it,” she replied. “You should know better than I do that some people will look for any excuse.”

Amelia didn’t say anything, but she couldn’t deny Dawn’s words. The more she’d gotten to learn about Gina, the more she saw some of her biggest failures in her. Students that she’d tried her best to help, but had been unable to do anything for.

Because those girls simply hadn’t wanted her help.

Oh, they would all say the same things. “I want to improve!” “I want to change!” “I want to put in the hard work to do better!” And most of the time, they would really mean it, too.

But changing was hard. Not everyone could do it.

“Gina… I want to tell you a story about a girl I knew once,” Amelia said suddenly, startling Gina.

Everybody looked at Amelia, not sure where this was going.

“…To be clear, this is not one of my students,” Amelia clarified, adjusting her glasses. She poured herself a cup of coffee. “This is someone I went to school with. Her name was Milly. She came from a very wealthy family, and had never wanted for anything. But she always kept getting into trouble of one sort or another. Not because she was a bad person, or because she fell in with the wrong crowd, or anything like that. No, like you, she just kept making mistakes.”

“She did?” Gina sat down at the table and leaned in, listening carefully. Dawn and Mary were curious about where she was going, too.

“One of our teachers noticed early on that she was having problems,” Amelia continued, thinking back to those days like they had just happened. “Her grades were slipping, she was ignoring the lectures, and talking back to the faculty. This woman, she was quite the young idealist, you see, and believed that any student could be helped if you just listened to them and did your best to help.”

Amelia couldn’t believe someone could be that naïve.

“Let me guess, she failed?” Dawn winced.

“The fundamental problem with her assumption is that Milly didn’t want to be helped,” Amelia explained. “She would say she wanted to do better in school, but then she’d refuse to ask for help when she didn’t understand something. For example, one time our teacher had us write a paper on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Well, right away Milly started complaining. Talking about how the book was boring, how she didn’t want to write it, how she was too stupid anyway so why even bother? Now, the teacher tried to work with Milly and give her all the support she needed, but it didn’t matter. Because Milly had already decided before she even started that she was going to fail.”

“Self-sabotage,” Dawn realized. Mary and Gina both looked at her, not sure what that term meant.

Amelia nodded. “That paper was a lot of work,” she said. “Milly could have done it. But that would require actually asking for help. And she was far too proud for that.”

A sigh escaped her lips and she shook her head. “Another memory that comes to mind, was when we were close to graduation. Several girls in our class were dating, and Milly wanted to date the boys, too. But even though she was quite pretty, she never got any dates, because she never left her house. She would talk on and on about how she wanted to meet a nice man, fall in love, and start a family, but she never actually did anything about it. That would have required actually putting effort into something, you see.”

“You must have really cared about her,” Mary realized, sensing the fondness and regret in Amelia’s voice as she spoke.

Amelia looked momentarily surprised. She adjusted her glasses and nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose I did, yes,” she replied. “But that isn’t the point. Do you understand why I told you about Milly?” She asked Gina, who looked a little confused.

“I… I don’t really get it, no,” Gina admitted, shaking her head.

“Saying that you want to change is an easy thing to do,” Amelia said gently. “Anybody can do it, it takes no effort whatsoever. But actually bringing yourself to do the difficult things, the things you don’t want to do, and changing, that is one of the hardest things a person can do. On some level, I believe we are all resistant to change. We grow comfortable with who we are, even if we don’t like it. So even though we know that we need to do something different, that change can be daunting, and we hesitate. We try to find some reason, any reason at all, to justify why we don’t have to do this difficult thing, and latch onto that.”

“I get what you mean,” Dawn nodded. “Like telling myself that since my body is so scrawny, like a child, I’ll never be able to find love. So I stopped trying.” She blinked away a couple tears as her pained memories of adolescence resurfaced.

Mary nodded. “I felt like that in college,” she said quietly. “I wanted to make friends, but my parents always said that liberal colleges hated religious people. That I would have to give up or hide my beliefs if I wanted to fit in. And I… I didn’t want to do that. So instead of trying to be myself and try and make friends anyway, even if I got rejected, I gave up on even trying right from the start. Since what was the point, right?”

If Holly and Nick hadn’t reached out to her at that party, she might have gone her entire college life without making a single friend, all because she’d been too afraid.

“It was the same with me,” Amelia said gently, placing her hand over Gina’s and looking the other woman deeply in the eye. “Many people who say they want to change do so because they feel like they should, not because it is what they want to do. But if you’re doing something because you think you should do it, all it takes is finding one excuse to justify why you don’t have to. Why you’re fine the way you are. Then they latch onto that feeling, and begin to make excuses. ‘I’m trying to change, but I can’t, because [X]’ and then eventually they stop trying altogether and just get frustrated with themselves. The people who change, who grow, they do so because they want to. Is that you?”

“Y-yes!” Gina exclaimed. “I… I want to change! I do! It’s not because I think I should, it… it’s…”

She was struggling to articulate herself. But she wasn’t the kind of person Amelia was talking about, right? She wasn’t a Milly!

Gina took a deep breath and then released it.

“I… I wanted… I wanted to change, because I wanted my mom to accept me,” she said quietly. “But that’s the wrong kind of thinking, right?”

Amelia nodded somberly. “It is. That is an external motivator. Not an internal motivator.”

“Then… is wanting to change so I’m remembered better… or so my mom won’t cry… those are external motivators, too?” Gina winced as she asked that.

“Of a sort,” Amelia said. “But external motivation can sometimes be the spark that spurs on a general internal motivation. Tell me, Gina, do you want to mature and grow up? Not for the people around you, not for your mother’s love, or respect, or peace of mind, but because you, genuinely, wish to be a different person than you are now?”

“I… I…” Gina looked down, her face burning with shame. “…I don’t know,” she admitted.

And then, to her surprise, Amelia smiled.

“Good.”

“Huh?!” Gina nearly fell out of her chair. “B-but… why is that good?! You just said-!”

“If you had been able to state with such certainty that you wished to change, after everything you’ve told me and how hesitant you have been up until this point, then I would assume you were lying to yourself,” Amelia replied. “Or just telling me what you thought I wanted to hear.”

Gina blushed. “O-oh.”

Amelia shook her head. “The fact that you aren’t certain means you are making a genuine attempt at introspection. That is one of the first steps to truly growing as a person. And that is a good place to start.”

Hearing that from someone she respected felt like a weight was being lifted from Gina’s heart. She smiled a shaky smile and wiped her eyes, and nodded. “Thank you, Amelia,” she said softly.