Misc

Cathi's Thoughts of the Week Not Involving Personal Dilemmas

Is anyone else tired of hearing arguments from foreign criminals and closed-minded hicks about immigration reform? I don't know what the laws are, what the process is, or what life is like in other countries. I just wish that our immigration policy would let more people in more easily so that we wouldn't have this problem.

I am also tired of celebrities. I'm sad that, as I sit here watching my first episode of Dawson's Creek ever, as I see Katie Holmes running across a campus all I can think of is "how can she love a loony like Tom Cruise?" I want them to stay out of my informational magazines and off my evening news. I think it would be refreshing if the world simply let them do their jobs like normal people.

Rain makes me sad on the level that I can't go outside and be active, but makes me rather happy on the level that Dairy Queen will be slow and easy. Warm weather inspires visions of tank tops and flip flops, swim suits and tans, and the ever growing "oh my God look at my body" anxiety. My goals of preserving cash and my girlish figure by ceasing my almost daily fast-food intake has been successful thus far. We'll see.

I don't understand guys, and I probably never will. I make no secret of that. It's a little frustrating sometimes having to play guessing-games with things I should say/do/think in regard to pretty much any man in my life. I also don't understand when boys become guys and guys become men. I hear news reports about "man arrested for being despicable human being" and said "man" is 19 or 20 years old.

Little kids are the cutest and I want to kidnap them all. At least the cute ones. I'll give them away once they're 10 years old because then they become little punks.

Schoolin,
Cathi

spring time

It's like a last chance for a first dance

It's a little crazy and refreshing how brushes with death, even when they are not your own, tend to put things in perspective and how sometimes, although rarely, they reaffirm that you've made good choices.

I'm just glad he came out alive and (mostly) unscathed.

I sometimes wish things were more simple, that everything lay in terms of black and white so that we never had to be indecisive about anything. I also wish that feelings wern't so painful and that brains were a little less logical. I wish that people, myself included, could always say what they were thinking and feeling without fear of repercussion so that things could actually get done in this world.

A certain friend's actions and my consequent reaction completely shattered whatever illusion I had myself under, so I'm back to square one, flailing, falling, wishing there was an easy way to erase things from my mind, Eternal Sunshine style. Perhaps a few brick wall head-butts will do the trick. It might make me feel better, anyway.

Springtime brings allergies and the plague, lovers and reckless driving, good times with good friends and lots of stressful school work. All hail the MayFlowers.

Hard liquid girls,
thrine

The (real) end

Is that what you call a getaway? Tell me what you got away with. I've seen more spine in jellyfish, I've seen more guts in 11 year old kids

On the good news front, my "potential hypothetical crisis" (which, honestly, had way too many conditional words to actually have been something I should have been worrying about) has been essentially solved, seeing as the determining factor refused to take a stance.

On the bad news front, apparently this solution is not the one I had been hoping for. Until I got my answer I honestly wasn't sure what I wanted, what I was secretly wishing, but this awful feeling of disappointment and heartache seems to give me a good idea about how I wanted the outcome to be.

While the heavy fog of uncertainty has been lifted, I'm not entirely sure it's better this way. Now that my crisis-that-was-not is solved and I have gagued my reaction, I am only more painfully aware of how unfair I am being to certain people in my life.

I told you I'm a bad person. You just never believed me.

Also on the good news front, you probably won't be bored with vague entries anymore dealing with my inner woes about this subject, barely masked behind inspecific terms and generalizations. Now that this chapter can be closed I can mourn the loss of possibility in peace without the poisonous "what ifs" tearing me apart.

Good day.

Not Again,
Catherine

Mental Blitzkrieg

You're not dead! You don't need barriers like coffins to tell you what to do!

Does having a conscience really make me a good person, or is it just the final barrier to break down before I forfeit my right to respect?

Some people think with their heads and others with their hearts, some with a combination of both. My heart dictates my time-to-thought allocation but it's the thought which dictates my actions. This in mind, would it be worse for me to deny my heart free reign, or to let it wreck havoc upon the lives of those who captivate it? This is where the conscience comes in.

What is it, really, this little nagging voice which lives in the pit of my stomach? That static, white noise which crackles and whispers "You little fuck up, you stupid shit" when you double-cross it, but never purrs in contentment when you obey, merely lies in wait with poison claws, feeding you "what ifs". Is it the voice of reason or is it nothing more than the Flight to your heart's Fight?

Obviously, I'm having a conflict of interest, and currently it feels like the most important decision I will ever have to make. Moral, societal, personal, and potential barriers block off every single path I can envision which leaves me suspended in this awful fog where no option feels like the definitively right thing to do.

Blitzkrieg,
Thrine

Ethical questions

Is this all you have to say? This broken boy will hang on every word. You tell me that you need me while I slowly fall apart.

What if I was keeping a secret from you, would you like to know?

Would you like to know that I'm having second thoughts? That due to circumstances beyond either of our control I'm thinking of withdrawing? Or would ignorance be bliss?

Or what if you are the only thing I can think about, day and night and all points in between wakefullness and sleep? If every time you spoke to me, looked at me, my entire world stands still and crumbles the instant our connection is broken? Is that something you would like to hear?

How about if I feel that I'm better off without you? That you make my life impossibly complicated and I am and would be grateful if you just left me alone? Would that be too hard for you to accept?

Or do you just want to hear the good secrets? That every time I listen to Saves the Day I think of you? That when I try to describe the feeling of an instant connection, of people who are meant to be in each other's lives I tell a story about you? That when you look me in the eyes and smile I feel like I don't deserve you?

What if I had no secrets from you? If I told you everything I felt, thought, and contemplated in regard to you, the good and the bad. Would you still want to know me? Be with me? Hang out with me? Be a part of my life? Is the disclosure of private information an asset or a destructive force?

Maybe.

Perhaps.

Hypothetical moral crisis,
Cathi

Left in the lurch

Be gentle with me, I'd never willingly do you harm

In the movies (not that movies are in any way related to reality) when a protagonist is in love with someone other than their current partner, we wait with bated breath for the lovers to end up together and give little thought to the parter left in the lurch. True love prevails, right?

I am never more profoundly sad during chick flicks than when the heorine leaves the lesser man at the altar. We all cheered when Mary Jane abandoned her wedding to find Peter Parker to tell him she is with him hell or high water, but what about her astronaut? He was a good man. He loved her, and he was good to her and for her.

The problem was that while Mary Jane loved him, he wasn't Peter, and never would be. She was just occupying herself with the astronaut so that she could forget that Peter stood her up during her plays, or that he kept denying his love for her. We applaud her decision because we know they are meant to be together. I applaud her decision because it takes a great amount of courage to realize what is best for yourself, and then to follow through, even if the decision will devestate someone.

Perhaps this is selfish, to sacrifice someone else's feelings in order to pursue your own happiness, but I think that we give so much of ourselves over to making other people happy that it is a greater act of bravery to make a conscious decision to hurt someone very badly. We sacrifice ourselves in so many things, most of the time in our relationships, to avoid hurting the other person.

We think we are being noble and brave, letting ourselves be unhappy for the benefit of others, but I think we forget that this is easy. Everyone does it, and we do it all the time. I bet if you examine your life that you can think of at least one person from whom you are keeping something, whether it is your true feelings about them or information you know would make your life easier but would hurt them if they knew. Now imagine how hard, how incredibly, perhaps impossibly hard it would be to break that. To tell him that you're using him, to tell her that you kissed her boyfriend, to let them know how no one actually cares. You can't, you won't, because it's easier to live in self-inficted misery.

Give some thought to the astronaut in your life, and try to do something about him before you're at the altar, okay?

Safety dance,
Cathy

Person 8

8.

I actually wrote a "letter of confession" (term copyright BJB 2005) to you a little while ago but felt ridiculous afterwards so I deleted it. Now that some time has passed and I have a slightly more objective outlook I feel ready to say everything to you, anonymously, that I think I need to. Ready? Me neither.

I cut you out of my life over the past few months. I'm not sure if you've noticed or not, but I have. I deleted your number from my cell phone, I took your screen name off my buddy list, I removed myself from a Facebook group regarding you, I even made sure that the one day a week we would have to see each other that I would be elsewhere. It's not that I hate you, or think you even wronged me in any significant way. It's that I don't think I can handle being near you. For some reason I cannot explain I am drawn to you so strongly, and I get all emo just thinking about how awkward I have made our situation to be for me. Sorry about that, truly. For all I know you really did want to be friends and here I go, avoiding you like biology homework.

I think you are fun, interesting, cute, and hilarious and I apologize for any rudeness. I wish I wasn't a crazy female and that we could actually be friends. You seem like an amazing person to be friends with, and I am sincerely sorry that I can't deal with you. To be fair, you were kind of a big jerk, but everyone is from time to time and I don't hold it against you. Really. Best of luck with your children's stories and debatably good music. Maybe next year we can be acquaintences. Who knows.

Feeling shitty twice over

I am watching one of those asian beetles slowly die, and it is honestly one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen. It's one of those trainwreck scenarios where it's horrible, and you can't really do anything about it, but you just can't look away.

I'm one of those females of the "ridiculous" classification, and I recognize this, even if I don't condone it. I often do things that I know will hurt me, emotionally, in the long run simply because I can't let go, or my curiosity gets the better of me. Sometimes this is enabled by subconscious dreams and then aggrevated by some boy's uncanny bad timing, but it is mostly my own fault.

There is nothing I want more out of life than to be Happy. "Be Happy" is my Number One Priority, after all. This isn't to say that I am currently unhappy with my life situation, I am happy, very much so, in pretty much all departments including the romantic division. I am just crippled by one stupid, ricidulous, and incomprehensibly fruitless burden.

I keep telling myself it's a phase, or that I was so lacking excitement in my life that I built this up to something way out of proportion, but a part of me, most of me, disagrees. It feels real, undeniably and painfully real. I can't pretend that I don't feel physically sick over this when I fail to adequately distract myself, and I can't deny that all I am doing with my absolutely incredible life right now is just that: distracting myself. I am thouroughly disgusted with the fact that I am spoiling all of my opportunities for happiness, my internship, my friends, this Alex thing, radio, speech team, with this one completely irrelevant and pointless trouble.

I'm not sure if I've iterated enough how stupid this "problem" is. It's so stupid, that it's not even actually a problem. It's me being irrational and dwelling on something that doesn't even exist. I stated in the immediately preceeding entry that when something petty is bothering you, it sucks ten times harder because then you feel guilty and stupid for even worrying about this situation. In essence: I feel really shitty about feeling shitty over something that isn't real. God, I love being me.

To keep you up to date, my beetle is flipped over on it's back, probably in the last throes of whatever poison it walked across, and because I am too grossed out by bugs, I can't even find the gumption to flip it over to let it die with dignity.

Curious George,
Catherine

I'm so Goddamn paranoid

There is nothing I know except that this lifetime is just one moment
and wishing will just leave me empty.

I'm weak with mistakes, and if this is just another one to add to my list then I promise you that I give up.

Trivial pursuit,
Cathi

February 13th

February 13th, 2002

I blew a hole straight through the calandar
Dynamite words and black powder tears
All my careful preparation, precise sabatoge of the heart
fell apart as I realized
- I was making a mistake -

You can't call a halt to something like this
It's all or nothing- I love you, or I don't
Once said, you can't take it back
I ordered the forward march! and could not pull out
My troops were committed because I was not
and thus you fell.

pre-V-day!
Cathi

end of wes

Once upon a time I was falling in love but now I'm only falling apart

Yet another entry that shall be focused on my petty woes. How LiveJournal of me.

I've said it before and I will reiterate it now, I'm not a person who lets go easily. Running parallel to this is the fact that I get emotionally invested in certain things very, very quickly. Sometimes the "thing" is an idea or a project, more rarely this "thing" is a person. Whatever this thing may be, the depth of my attachment is directly proportional to how well it is compatible with my life, my interests, and my dreams and goals.

I'm going to admit this once and only once. This is one of those "deep dark secret" things I spoke of in a previous entry: The first time I saw him, I heard that 'bell'. The sound of possibility, the sound of something absolutely right settling into your life. Something in my gut would jump every time I passed him in the stairwell in the stadium or would make eye contact with him at station meetings. He said he remembered seeing me standing outside the library once, but I never told him I remember him passing by that day as well.

Point being, I was already emotionally invested in him before he forced himself into my life, and his sudden arrival and essential departure absolutely killed my emotional stability. I have since spent the past month trying to get over it, trying to forget he ever existed because having him on the periphery of my life is not, and will never be good enough now that I got a glimpse of the tangible person he is. Up until the last week and a half, this was literally all I could think about. Every song was relevant, every friend's life scenario was similar in some way, and no matter what I did, I dwelled.

It feels like this has absolutely consumed my life recently, but I made such a huge effort to keep it inside. Some people keep things to themselves because they like having secrets, and others do it because they like having secrets to tell. I kept this more or less to myself because I recognize how absurd, silly, and ridiculous it was. One pseudo-date and suddenly I'm obsessed? It was, is, embarrassing and also utterly debilitating. Because I was unfortunate enough to have one of those Bell People manifest himself in my life I walked around for the last 4 weeks oblivious to everything else going on around me. I've let my schoolwork suffer due to daydreaming, I've let my friendships suffer due to lack of attention, and I truly believe I've possibly postponed or blatantly ignored a real, concrete potential romance.

For this, I am sorry.

Kentucky was my wake-up call where I found myself going an entire day without once thinking about him. I have since been more productive, more focused, and less mournful that I have been, and this is good. The only drawback is that I am still tempted, oh so terribly tempted to keep this emotional mess alive and painful. His picture taunts me when it appears as one of the 6 "Friends at N. Central IL" on Facebook, his screenname glares at me on my buddy list, perpetually away yet with profile quips and away messages that mean something to someone, just not to me. I still have to physically and mentally force myself not to click on his name, or read his away message, because I know it will only foster this abusurdity longer.

This hurts. It still hurts as much as the day he said he made a mistake, and, as silly and crazy and ridiculous as it is, it might hurt for a very long time. The good news is, I'm overcoming it. I'm burying it, and I can stop hating myself for being stupid.

Catharsis,
Cathi

Man less?

For anyone who's counting, this is the first January since 9th grade that I have been 100% boyfriendless. It feels a little strange, like being pathetic and liberated all at the same time.

Dear me, an edit?
Wednesday Feb. 1st, 2006 5:07pm


Have you seen that cell phone commercial that advocates unlimited "Call Me" minutes, "so even when they waste your time, they don't waste your money"? Have you seen the one where the girl is getting ready for a night out, and the guy on the other line says something along the lines of "Hey... it's me, the guy you've been trying to let down nicely. I think maybe there might be something wrong with your voicemail, but I really appreciate that you picked up this time unlike the other 21 times I've called. So, I was thinking that we had a really good connection that night...five weeks ago. So I hope we can get together sometime soon!"?

Yep.

My lesson from the month of January has been this: Even though things seem like they should be one way, sometimes they just don't turn out right. Hopefully my lesson in February will be one which I handle with grace.

That is all, fo realz,
Cathy

Priorities

Numbers and text hide ulterior agenda

I have a rating scale to judge how pathetic my life is that is directly proportional to how much time I spend thinking about guys. I've been at threat level Red: Severe for at least two weeks now.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you're going about your life and then something seemingly mundane catches you off gaurd and knocks you flat on your ass? That happened to me twice yesterday within a five minute span. Just as I was getting the breath back into my lungs from the first surprise, the other one jumped out and incapacitated me for another few minutes. It's like the world suddenly stops, you're robbed of breath, and you get rather hot or cold, depending on the stimulus. These pole-axing happenings spurred me to re-prioritize my life somewhat.

Current priorities in life
by virtue of thought/time allocation

1) Guys, one in particular.
2) What state my life is in that I am spending so much time thinking about Guys.
3) School.
4) Internship.
5) Speech team.

Goal priorities

1) School.
2) Internship.
3) Speech team.
4) Social life.

We'll see if that actually happens. Five bucks says it doesn't.

And then I found $5!,
Cathi