#developments.

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wait ur telling me i didn’t see [redacted] bc of who i have blocked. interesting

While Lena was never abused in the physical sense she was outright neglected in every other one. As a child, needy and yearning for attention, Lena looked to her adoptive parents for approval and encouragement, the sort of kid who had been told that one day she’d have a family and people who wanted her. Naturally the Luthors taking her in seemed to fulfill that wish-- the thought came upon her immediately when she was shown to her enormous new room. She’d have a mother and a father and a brother who would love her for the first four years no one else really had. This declined rapidly when she was ignored most of the time in favor of Lex, four years her senior, difficult, arrogant, and remarkable. For someone small, only four years of age, Lena fell into Lex’s shadow almost immediately in spite of his place in her life as the only one to make her feel wanted inside the equation. Being utterly love-starved as a child has made her into a cold adult who, in spite of a fervent desire to love and be loved, has no idea how to set that across. She’s learned she’s expendable, second-best, and frequently blames herself for any moment she believes otherwise. Lena maintains a harsh sense of self handed over by Lionel and Lillian and a chronic uncertainty she buries beneath her ego and intellect, but in truth, she’s hardly that.

Lena is terrible at displaying affection in an emotional manner or conveying how she feels in any given situation. Growing up in a household raised by parents largely absent, busy, or negligent of her in favor of Lex, she wasn’t ever one whose emotional needs were met in childhood, and as a result adulthood has made her cold, awkward, and more than a little halting. Lena’s methods of conveying care or love generally involve purchasing things or, at the purest, trying to make sure the other person’s needs are met in an understated way that requires security. She’s not very good at reading people on basis of listening intensely or paying attention, and in spite of her upbringing Lena has the ingrained makings of what was once a spoiled child, denied nothing monetary. Over time she learns how to care for someone else, but the process is a very slow development, and often she doesn’t realize the harm her distance can cause when in reality her distance is her painstakingly trying to make everything perfect for them. Often, Lena forgets she is a factor in the equation of someone else’s happiness.