Endings: Dexter's Finale

It's a terrible thing:  Alas, no more Dexter 'til September, when Season 6 will presumably begin (huzzah for renewals!)  Season 5 has given viewers a lot to ponder, not least of which is the birth of Lumen's Dark Passenger. 

I won't bother to spell out the synopsis for Dexter's Season 5 finale; there's already a fantastic one over at Dark-Passenger.net. It was a good season and a solid finale, if it ended a little too neatly for my tastes.  However, I'm sure I'm not the only one who was heartily disappointed by Lumen's decision to reject Dexter after her ordeal had come to an end. 

My disappointment isn't so much in Lumen's rejection of Dexter, sad as it was to see him so hurt.  Rather, the disappointment is rooted in the writer's decision to make Lumen's passenger magically disappear after her ordeal ended. 

I'd like to believe it could work that way, but I really don't believe it does.  Post-traumatic stress disorder fundamentally changes the wiring in a victim's mind; it changes the way you think and experience the world.  I don't believe that killing her rapists would magically revert her wiring to normal functioning.  She knows what a knife feels like in her hand, the power it can hold, and I don't believe that she'll simply forget that.  All it would take is a reminder, something that ignites her darkness again, and she'll be picking up that knife and coming right back to Dexter.