Cathy

Gliding the parking lot of a store, I remember how small and light I was swinging between you and mom, excited when my feet swayed off the pavement as if I caught the moment in slow motion. We witnessed a girl and her father standing near a white car. She was yelling at him. She had that biting tone. I felt pained suddenly for her father. You noticed them. Without looking at me, you said, "That'll be you someday." Offended, I resolved, "No, I will never be like that to you." You said that is what happens when children grow up.

Driving me back to mom one night, I saw a line of orange cones on the street. I understood what their function was from my own observations, but I was so inclined to hear it explained in thorough and complete description by you. "What are those for?" I saw you as a book of infinite guidance. Your interpretations gave print to my world of drafts. You said, "They're there for you to run into." I knew this was false. I challenged you. I demanded that you run into the cones. I then became conscious of the shortness of your answer, the subtle cynicism with which you delivered it. I yelled at you.

If this is what happens when children grow up, what happens to you? In my nightmares, you and mom no longer walk at any constant pace. I am dragging in between your uneven strides. Now there is no between. I am deeply shameful for secretly hoping you would arrive with a thanksgiving meal wrapped up all for me. One year you forgot cranberry sauce, so you rushed to the store and came back with a bag of frozen cranberries for me.

...........

They were the little things, and today was just another day, and he was a little too late, and he was never there, and now he knows how it aches to love when it was not given consent.

Remember when we were oh so inexperienced, intrigued with the revolting pleasure of what haunts us now?
Those were the good, sunny days.


In other news, my attempts to hit on a 70-year-old professor were dismissed and resulted in jocular sassiness and coy reactions. His large house and hollow photos and shy cat left me sad. But I survive, still. This.



Love, love, love,
Catherine


PS: Soon; the days come to it, soon.

Professors! How you intrigue me so!

When you add an exclamation point to the end of your own statement, do you ever feel immodest? I do.
I've become insecure with the usage of exclamation points. God.


I embarrassed myself in front of a potential professor today. I was in a trance. I tricked myself with some sensation of boldness and attempted to approach him and introduce myself. Only after a matter of minutes of gawking at him did I realize he was in the midst of an outdoor critique session for his class, and all of the unfamiliar pockets of students lounging about the Cove were awaiting their turn. I proceeded to awkwardly dismiss myself.


Was it confidence I once had, or conceit, or validation? Pft.

My mother is not dead. Am I a bad daughter for pretending she was dead during nearly three weeks of silence? Am I sick? I can't say that I would have attempted contact after an even longer period of unresponsiveness. Perhaps this is an indication of how emotionally detached I was to either parent even while living with them. Am I sad because of it? I can't say that I am.

I can't say that I fully understand the authenticity of my feelings at all, anymore. The desires stirring in my head have only fermented into a kind of chemical madness. I am madly in love, I am madly in hate, I am madly mad. I thought I was of two parts, only to discover a great number of well-defined fragments exist, each incapable of compromising with the other. I was enamored by the concept of connecting to many things at once, and now I have posed myself into a scattered mess of dots void of links. I need a line. I need continuity.
You drew it so faintly.

"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." Oh, Fitz. Well, well, well, I couldn't even tell you how obscenely enormous it is to me from this bed, the window, the whispers. Stroke me with words, beat me with reality.

I can't say that I haven't been filled with precious dreams only to have them abandoned and beaten until they are no more distinguishable as a diamond is to a corpse. Don't mind my own defense mechanisms. What a large world I see! How easy it will be for each of them to forget me.

Four years ago, soon. That pale, rude awakening. Often a thing will be said and it makes me wonder how we would have gotten along quite well by now.

I can't say it.

 2
1



0.

It's like how she sniveled about the basis of which their relation was prevailed upon trivial challenges.
Oh, how he said in the most unperturbed of ways it makes us, us.
And in the end we'll both win? She quavered then, for little shards of hope were all that remained in her spirit-- her big, careless spirit that was so inclined to grasp, with decadent expectation, onto any one moment of promise.
But she saw, as she must always be keen to see, the last of his words puffed out in a brilliant cloud, only to dissipate... one day... dissipate, dissipate.



Goodnight.

At work, there's a girl who has earned herself an unflattering reputation. She is almost always at the center of a social scandal, the repercussions of which are whispered throughout all 3 stores. Despite the couple of years she has accumulated such history, this girl is still around, still placing herself into gossip-worthy situations. 

Her greatest scandal has evolved over a year long relationship with a fellow employee. He and She began dating. To most of us, He made for a perplexing choice of interest. By the end of the relationship, our curiosity was solidified by his decision to leave the girl for yet another fellow employee. Another male fellow employee. He left her for him.

Then came chaos and the rapid degradation of this girl. This overzealous Christian girl, might I add.
Months have passed since then.

He came into the store tonight, catching both of us off guard. The two of them attempted cordiality, but they mostly bickered. I felt myself watching a show.
When he left, I remarked on their conversation. She explained, "That was us trying to be friends."
I said how I know. I think that's why she enjoys confiding in me so effortlessly, while the rest of the crew must pick up bits of information to string together. I'm given a full on confession because, I think, she enjoys the similes I tie to her feelings.
You think I'm crazy at home-- You don't hear the absurdities work provokes out of me. 
I didn't have a simile for her tonight when she said, "It's hard to talk with him when I'm still in love with him. And I know he is still in love with me."

At that point I resolved she was a nutcase to make that claim with such jarring confidence. I forced myself to keep from spewing, "How is this boy who is sticking his dick into another boy's asshole every other night still in love with you?" 

And then, suddenly, it dawned on me how jealous I was. Of her. I couldn't understand it, but I'm certain I do now.
Can you believe with such certainty that any given person loves you?
I doubt even the love of my parents, while this girl believes in the unspoken love of a boy who abandoned her for a boy.

Grant me some of that certainty.

Not drinking Sunday through Thursday. Attempting to sleep before 2am. Attempting to do homework. I don't have a car.

Call me boring or cause me guilt. Attempting to reprogram my soul. Sometimes this means isolation. I've a considerable amount to brood on.

Fuck this. I'm tired of writing only to get nothing but negativity from it. 

Dear Lonely, Cruel World,

I'm sitting at the dining table whose transparent black glass happens to mock my very perception of life at this moment. My three roommates surround me, each of us painted in an awkward mixture of sweats, hoodies, tights, and beer. Arienne is softly singing to Taylor Swift. I am reminded of last fall, when I grew miserable with each passing day, finding it an enormous feat to unravel myself from the covers of a too small dorm bed, my ear plugs uncomfortably stowed under my body after a tossing-turning kind of night. I remember driving to the Glory Hole and leaving in depression from the cold shoulders, the air of nothing having happened when it did, feeling pathetic, feeling alone there and then again in my dorm bed and everywhere I was dropped off, feeling trapped on a campus that I couldn't connect with and having no means of a vehicle to escape, pouring my soul into acting classes and then hurting all over from rejection (yeah yeah yeah I'm not over it, I'm never over anything and that is the curse of my head). 

And then everything else happened and I felt validated and good and I really believed in you and I healed my own heart. I loved, loved, loved.
I HATE myself. So I just act like this and I sometimes get hurt when people criticize me, but what does it matter? And no one should fucking impart judgement on me when they can't even understand themselves, when they mostly hate themselves too. So fuck off and just love me because I'm loving you. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAKES IT DIFFICULT TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE COLLECTIVE YOU AND THE SINGULAR YOU AND IT DRIVES EVERYONE A LITTLE MAD, DOESN'T IT? Because I don't know who you are.

Bre is singing that she would swim the ocean for me, but she would probably die. 

You wouldn't talk to me if I was considered ugly. Isn't that such a heinous truth? I often wonder how differently people would treat others if they weren't so goddamn beautiful, and it makes me sick. This is why I really abhor certain people for no apparent reason. My friends are really pretty. Why don't I have ugly best friends? I hate myself.

Now picture this: Arienne, completely bald.

I will make an epic trek to South Korea and die in the place my mother was born.

I called her on the phone and she touched herself?
Oh shit, not my mom. Those are song lyrics they were singing. Fuck. Gross. Shit. 


Hahahahahahaha,
Catherine KILL.

LOW BLOW ARIENNE. WHY DON'T I DROP OUT.

Am I failing? For no longer can I cast
A glory round about this head of gold
Glory she wears, but springing from the mould;
Not like the consecration of the Past!
Is my soul beggared? Something more than earth
I cry for still: I cannot be at peace
In having Love upon a' mortal lease.
I cannot take the woman at her worth!
Where is the ancient wealth wherewith I clothed
Our human nakedness, and could endow
With spiritual splendour a white brow
That else had grinned at me the fact I loathed?
A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave
Of a great flood that whirls me to the sea.
But, as you will! we'll sit contentedly,
And eat our pot of honey on the grave.

Parents are moving out by the 15th. It is official!
I don't know where my dad is going, I don't know where my mom is going.
I don't ask questions, and I don't really want to know details.
Holidays will have diminished in their existence and extravagance completely.. I will spend Thanksgiving at the Blumpkin Patch. I will wake up Christmas morning with a couple of cats. To be honest, I'd rather be in this suspension of family life than be thrown into the awkwardness.

I received a phone call today with an offer of furniture. Bench, table, dresser, desks, portraits, accents, oh my!

I feel comfortable with this, but more alone than ever.

I had a most ideal and near perfect portrait of life when mine had first begun.
My dapper military man dad. My homemaker mother. A quaint house on Base, grass in the yard. Sunday services in frilly dresses. Christmas mornings. Marriage. Family friends. A PET. Yes, it really was exactly like that. It was always painted in daylight. That's why I laugh, that's why I've turned into this. Look at how it has changed. Sin crept in and rode my tricycle away, took my pet back to the pound. Why, it's all just a trick. A dirty, dirty trick.

I forget, morning, noon and night, the hundred unexposed layers, foreign code, dissonance. Sometimes I can translate it, the discord resounds familiar. Mostly, I cripple under failed attempts at understanding.

I'm a piece of shit. I'll admit it as cold, hard fact.

Why do I constantly feel as if I'm betraying someone? I can't even reason who that someone is. 


I had the most awful dream this morning. It was an epic dream. Epic, because each "segment" played with ample overstatement and established considerably high stakes. It must have incorporated every troublesome situation I have adamantly avoided or feared in my little life. Being the lunatic that I am, I convinced myself to continue sleeping so that I could remedy the problems my dream world invented. Well, I couldn't solve a thing. Actually, I only developed more imaginary predicaments. They became trivial. At one point I couldn't apply makeup, and somehow that was equally as alarming as destroying friendships. 

Now I'm awake and I feel ridden with guilt. Then, I must go to work and serve people.
I think I should have had a sibling so I could always feel cohesiveness.

Fuck this shit.

Anyway, she'd spend hours and hours just forcing herself to look through this book. Why, it was the same way she'd force herself to look at the poster of crippled children stuck up in the window at Dixieland Drugs. You know, that one where they want you to give a dime. Meg would stand there, and stare at their eyes and look at the braces on their little crippled-up legs-- then she'd purposely go and spend her dime on a double-scoop ice cream cone and eat it all down. She'd say to me, "See, I can stand it. I can stand it. Just look how I'm gonna be able to stand it."


For months I dreamed about playing Meg. Sad, magic eyes. The exhilaration of taking a drag off of death.
Except, I don't know how to stand it.

My great character flaw is that I cannot disregard End. You said yours was the inability to give up on multiple girls. 
Remember, before we plunged into any of this, we identified these things as if they were our most prominent flaws had we been characters to analyze?

Do you remember, again before we tied ourselves to one another, that you said certain things and then you never said them again after that? And then I tried to say them sometimes but they never entered your heart properly because I settled a weight on them, like some heavy fear of consequence.

Do you know that I have this real image of us catalogued in my mind: Sitting on the bench by the fountain with the sun that casted the shadows of us before our feet, and the two birds (can you believe it, only two birds) hopping there. And I never mentioned it to you in that moment because you would have told me to lay off all the poetry reading and I would have felt so small. Well I think about it a lot as I think about how much more uninhibited we were before when we could say things without consequence and how I thought I saw you as clear as sunlight then, you and your shadow and your bird next to me and my shadow and my bird and it all meant something deep to me and I thought, "I'm in love with this guy."

And right now? If I keep my eyes open too long I see static and insignificance. I wish I could know how to endow meaning in objects and tasks but I'm still alive and doing shit and I don't know what for, what for, what for, what for. I feel trapped in my own body, and the worst part is that I'm not good enough with words to escape my biology. I don't feel any good. Don't be fooled if I look like a functioning, smiling, talking girl. 

If it makes it easier for you to believe I'm just like the rest of them, okay. 

Does anyone from high school remember my slight obsession with allegories? Or the Allegory of the Cave? Well, goddamnit, Professor Scruggs relates the concept to our readings every chance he gets. Swoooooon. He is so in love with literature. I think he is the most beautiful professor I've had yet (and not in the "ew Cathy has a stupid complex towards old professors" kind of perverted sense). I've never known someone to be so illuminating!