Disney/Ricky Middlesworth
Since the tragic presumed death of her beloved beau, Spencer Cassadine, Trina Robinson has been struggling to move forward on General Hospital. On the Friday, July 19th episode of the show, those efforts become yet more challenging when she is faced with a fresh wave of grief. Tabyana Ali spoke with Soap Opera Digest about the sad scenes.
A Painful Reminder
Trina and Josslyn recently took up residence in new digs — and Joss presents Trina with a significant object that fell out during their move: the turtle dove figurine Spencer presented to Trina. This reminder of her lost love “makes Trina feel vulnerable all over again,” Ali sighs. “She’s trying to build herself back up, and then to see that turtle dove…. It breaks her a little bit. Well, not even a little bit — it breaks her just in general.”
Trina voices how frustrated she feels over how much the sight of the turtle dove affected her. Explains Ali, “It feels like it’s hard for her to build herself back up when things keep seeming so familiar, like Spencer is still around or he’s still near and it feels like he’s always trying to talk to her in some form of fashion.”
Which is not to say that Trina wants to forget Spencer or the love she feels for him. Says Ali, “She doesn’t necessarily want to ‘move on,’ because you never want to forget the person that you truly love or that you felt was your soul mate. I’m pretty sure Trina wants to be able just to get through a day without feeling guilty that she’s eating and he’s not, or she’s getting to spend time with friends and family and he’s not, or she’s able to get up in the morning and see the sun and he’s not.”
Life Goes On
In Ali’s opinion, Trina is dealing with a classic case of survivor’s guilt. “There’s a guilt that comes around being alive, I believe, when the person that you love isn’t,” she asserts. “Especially in Trina’s case, where she feels like he sacrificed his life for her. There is an immense amount of guilt behind that, where it’s like, ‘How can I even live day to day knowing that you sacrificed yourself, and now you don’t get to do all the things I get to do in my day to day life?’ She’s trying to move on, but there are all these little things that keep popping up that remind her of Spencer and it’s like a rock going through a glass window.”
A glum Trina laments that it seems like her grief just isn’t letting up — and a well-meaning Josslyn counsels her friend with some hard truths about grief, namely that it doesn’t ever truly go away. “Trina is annoyed when she says that,” Ali reports. “Right after, she’s like, ‘Well, thanks a lot Joss! Thank you for just rubbing that in my face. I wish you would just lie to me and tell me that everything’s going to be okay!’ Trina is like, ‘I don’t even care if it’s true or not — lie to me and tell that it’s gonna be fine, lie to me and tell me that this will go away, lie to me and tell me that this won’t always be as painful.’ ”
Time Heals All Wounds
In soaps, the grieving process is often sped up, with a mourning lover finding themselves with a new love interest in a matter of months. Ali says that she appreciates that GH is taking its time depicting Trina’s grief as opposed to rushing her into a post-Spencer relationship. “I think the show should take its time with this,” she declares. ” ‘Sprina’ fan deep. They were very rooted. They were soulmates. So you can’t rush something like that, you can’t just get over it quickly. This is something that builds and it takes time to get over, to visually see your soulmate die. Even as myself, as Tabyana, I feel like I would need so many years to get over that. I wouldn’t even probably entertain the thought of being with anybody else for a minute. Especially because it’s not like, ‘Spencer was a bad guy, he did bad things to me and so it’s easy to move on from.’ No. They worked up to the relationship they had and as soon as she had him, she lost him, in the peak of their love. I feel like that would take a lot of time to get over.”
As Trina navigates a life without the man she loves, she is remaining connected to other people who loved and lost Spencer, like his grandmother, Laura, which Ali is also happy to see. “I think that keeps the tie to Spencer going a little bit,” she observes. “And I think there’s something really beautiful about staying in contact with your lover’s family and making sure that they’re also okay. I think that builds a beautiful bond.”
ABC/Craig Sjodin
Forget Me Not: Reminders of Spencer (Nicholas Chavez) abound for Trina.
