KitCat87

: )

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:59:21 GMT

i hope so.

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:32:25 GMT

The Nicest Thing- Kate Nash

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:29:29 GMT

All I know is that you're so nice,
You're the nicest thing I've seen.
I wish that we could give it a go,
See if we could be something.

I wish I was your favorite girl,
I wish you thought I was the reason you are in the world.
I wish my smile was your favorite kind of smile
I wish the way that I dressed was your favourite kind of style.

I wish you couldn't figure me out,
But you always wanted know what I was about.
I wish you'd hold my hand when I was upset,
I wish you'd never forget the look on my face when we first met.

I wish you had a favorite beauty spot that you loved secretly,
'Cos it was on a hidden bit that nobody else could see.
Basically, I wish that you loved me,
I wish that you needed me,
I wish that you knew when I said two sugars, actually I meant three.

I wish that without me your heart would break,
I wish that without me you'd be spending the rest of your nights awake.
I wish that without me you couldn't eat,
I wish I was the last thing on your mind before you went to sleep.

All I know is that you're the nicest thing I've ever seen.
I wish that we could see if we could be something.
I wish that we could see if we could be something.

this song perfectly explains how I feel right now.

i just wish you'd say something substantial to me.

it's the shoop-shoop song, looped.

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 07:46:33 GMT

So, I haven't updated in a while. And by update, I mean a life-update. Yeah, I post a lot of poems, shorts, memes and videos (vidjas, as my one friend calls them). I never really tell you about me anymore.

It's because I really don't think that many people read this blog--and the ones that do keep in frequent enough are in contact with me. And if you try to say, "But Caitlin, I never talk to you any more! You're always busy!" Trust me, you aren't missing much.

I'm not that interesting, but then again that's probably the result of having lived an incredibly interesting and "different" life for the last few years.

So, lately, I've been working hard core on my tutorial (undergraduate thesis). My mother was looking at the requirements and has concluded that to understand tutorial, you just need to know one thing: it's in the format of a doctoral thesis, with less required pages. I kind of want to die whenever I look at it.

I've also been working in a film class and creative writing class, and both make me feel better (more whole).

Love life...lets just not go there. I like someone, but it's all messed up. And while it'd be easy to just walk away; I'd rather take the hard road and take my chances. I just hope I win for once.

And the thing is this, I'm still job searching. And I'm scared shitless. My wits are frayed and my patience is worn thin on a daily basis.

I'd like for things to start aligning. I've had enough uncertainty. Enough.

I'm just frustrated right now. Really bad.

25 Things Meme, Rewrite for just the blog.

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:53:21 GMT

1. I want to stay and work in Pittsburgh, at least for a couple years. I know that some of my friends worry about me becoming a "life-long burgher," but honestly, it's not a bad city to get my start in. Its relatively cheap to reside in, and I know the area well.

2. My ideal for live is to get paid to write, and be able to write at home. The goal's been the same since I was about 15.

3. I want to work from home so that I can have a family, and be there for my children. My mother was a business lady, and while I respect her fully for being the main breadwinner of the family, I didn't see her much, but when I did, she was always run-down from work.

4. I learned how to put on makeup, put on a bra, flirt with guys, shave, do my hair, etc. from my best friends and college friends. It was mortifying for me to have to ask for that kind of help.

5. The biggest joy I got out of being a lead in a musical was hearing my parents say they were proud of me, and not tell me that in a generic way. My friends were also proud.

6. I got teased a lot growing up. It really did make me a better person, in the end.

7. I'm 5'11 and I still think it's sexy when I wear high heels. I tower over my friends and probably look like a giantess, but I think high heels just make me feel better. normal.

8. I will always miss the Java Rock cafe days with my friends. I will forever miss the taste of the Christopher sandwich like you don't even know.

9. I have an absolute crush on someone for the first time since my senior year of high school. It's super cute, but knowing my luck, he hates me. ; )

10. I tend to jump to conclusions about guys and what they think about me.

11. The fact that I talk too fast and my words often slur or stutter actually annoys me. When I go an entire day without someone asking me to repeat something or everyone understands what I'm saying, I feel overjoyed.

12. I actually think that I'm quite the catch!

13. I don't watch as much television as a lot of people think I do---I just happen to watch chunks of it here and there, especially if I'm at home. I find television to be an interesting social snapshot of the times.

14. I find a creepy parallel between the animals in Planet Earth (BBC), and humans.

15. I went to Journalism school because I thought I could make a career of it. I'm totally fucked.

16. I wanted to go to either culinary school to become a pastry chef or beauty school too become a makeup and hair artist but my mother forbade it, and demanded that I have a formal education. When I said that I would go to college for theatre, she told me that I should prepare to become a waitress.

17. China was my second choice for Chatham Abroad. I desperately wanted to go to Belize and Guatemala. After hearing about the bugs, I feel relieved that I went to China instead.

18. I hate when people start talking to me when I'm working on a creative project. It's distracting, and I lose my train of thought. Sadly, I'm too nice to tell them to shut up, so I usually end up messing up my project and starting over again.

19. My hair is short, and I did donate it for Locks of Love, but the real reason I cut it was because an ex-boyfriend prompted me to do so. He cheated on me, but I like the angled bob look.

20. If I cry in front of you, it's definitely a big deal. I grew up in a house where the phrase "turn off the water works" was used, a lot. So now, I get ashamed when I cry in front of others, even though I know I shouldn't be.

21. I went to an all women's college because I had a paralyzing fear of being around guys when I was in high school. When I told everyone that it was because I just liked Chatham, I lied.

22. When Joe died, I didn't go to his funeral. I didn't even go home. I just sat on my sofa for a week, and stared blankly at my computer. I still can't look at Allegheny General Hospital when I pass it on my way to 79.

23. The first time I went home after Joe's death, it was my for my father's last service at Center Presbyterian. I sobbed the entire time, and people thought it was because I was sad about my family moving. It was because every place was a memory, and I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt.

24. My sister is pregnant with her first child. It makes me overwhelmingly happy to think about it, because of all people I know, she deserves to have a happy life.

25. I believe that it is better to love everyone and be kind, than waste my time staying negative or hurting people. ...I have so many more factoids, but I'll share them later.

La Mirla (for Creative Writing I)

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:51:31 GMT

The nightmare was always the same. She had become a bird, free and happy. She would be floating effortlessly in the sky, and see the power lines approaching her. No matter how hard she tried, she would always run into the lines, and die.

Her nighttime routine was always the same. Her eyes would open, as if startled by a violent shove, and would take a moment or two to adjust to meet the red numbers glowing from her nightstand. Patricia Faultz would slide her feet, slowly, from the side of her bed and flinch as they touched her cold, linoleum floor. Damp marks, a result of night sweats, would shine in the moonlight, creating a weaving path behind her as she made her way to her bathroom. Her apartment was quiet, and it had been since the last holiday. It always seemed to be quiet now, and she felt as alone as the moon hanging silently in the night sky.

The light in her bathroom always took a minute to turn on�as if it, too, were stirring from a dream. Her eyes would take another minute to adjust to the light, and she would blink a few times before recognizing her aging self in the bathroom mirror. She would always remove the same pink washcloth from the hook on the wall, and after running it under cold water from the faucet, would wipe the sweat from her face and neck. She would stretch her arms and legs, and do so slowly, in order to provoke a satisfying yawn. She would take a piss, wash her hands and then tip toe to bed, as to not awaken the ghosts that lived there.

I met Patricia when I was 27 and had just started my short-lived career as a psychiatrist. She came to my office, first, in order to finish off the requirements made by the court system in New Jersey five years prior. The case file left on my desk was simple, almost textbook in nature. Attempted suicide at age 40 after a messy divorce and what seemed to be a mid-life crisis. I assumed that she would weep about grey hairs and wrinkles, and I would provide her with a listening ear and plenty of pharmaceuticals. I was wrong, and na�ve.

"Did you know that attempted suicide is illegal?" was the first question she rhetorically asked, as she plopped down on the sofa. She started to laugh, as if I wasn't in on the joke that she had perhaps shared with an old friend or co-worker. From there on, it was three meetings before I managed to get her to respond with more than irrelevant, snarky answer or a blank stare that accompanied a brief "yes" or "no."

I revisited her case file often, and with vigor. I was determined to break her, to make her cry or confess why she did it. The file wasn't indicative of the woman I sat across from on Wednesdays, from 3 to 4 in the afternoon. I often found myself sighing as I opened her file, re-reading every last detail. Her name was Patricia Bea Faultz. Once married, once divorced. The ex-husband's name was James Carlson, who was 9 years her senior, and the pair had one child together, Benjamin, who was 8 years old. He was under full custody of her ex-husband, except for supervised holiday visits at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and birthdays; this was, under the condition she regularly visited a therapist and behaved well. I wanted to delve more into the case, but the actual divorce and custody files from the court hearings were sealed to protect the privacy of Benjamin.

The week she finally started speaking to me was strange from the get-go. My son had been sick on that Wednesday, so I moved Patricia's appointment to Thursday. It was March, and the weather was uncomfortably settling between warm and cold, and left a knot in the pit of my stomach as I drove anxiously to the office.

"I had the dream again," Patricia stated, before I could even ask her how she was doing that day. At that point, I had never heard of this dream, so I just stared at her, waiting for her to explain.

"I have this dream every night, but I guess you could call it a nightmare. I always wake up around 3 and I have to do certain things in order to calm my self down, I guess like a ritual." She paused, and looked at me as if I underwent the same kind of ordeal.

"You have rituals?" I asked.

"No, no. It's not a ritual. Rituals are for crazy people. I'm not crazy. I just know what calms me down now after the experience." Her face was touched by the sunlight coming in through the window. It was the first time I actually looked at a patient. Her eyes seemed glazed over and there were dark circles sneaking around them. Her lips were chapped and tattered-looking, and her skin was sickly and pale. Her hair seemed to fade from the grey at her roots to a dyed orange or red.

"The best way," she continued, "to explain this dream is to explain where I'm coming from, or at least, who I was before James."

I started to jot down notes feverishly, feeling victorious and glad to perhaps finally understand one of my toughest patients.

"You know," she said to me as I wrote down the details of the first physical fight, "I wish you would look at me instead of writing those damn notes. I'm not crazy, you know. Just tired. Always tired."

"I don't think you're crazy, I'm just trying to find a way to help you." I found myself reciting textbook instructions.

"If there's one thing I could get a Ph.D. in, it's bullshit. And I'm calling you on it." She looked at me as though if I wrote down one more word, she would slap me. I put the pen down and sat back.

Her story was long, and often she would ramble incoherently. She began her life at age 19, where she dropped out of college and ran away from controlling, vindictive parents. She used a trust fund and life savings to travel around the world, but primarily Europe. Her passion was travel, and writing, and learning, and being young. And although she seemed alone, she found lovers and travel companions (sometimes both), and the came and went with time. Inevitably, she was never alone for longer than a few days. She went to Italy, France, England, Scotland, London, Ireland, and places in between. She told me about how she was always happy and loved life. For a moment, the woman I was sitting across from was less of a patient, and more of an old college girlfriend, telling me stories about what she did after we graduated. She was not her case file, and I was not the psychiatrist. The depression was gone, the court orders and problems, were gone.

It was when she reached Spain did she get quiet. Quiet and seemingly introspective, she asked me if she could take a moment. She got up and walked over to the office bathroom. I heard her sigh from the other side of the door, and the sink turn on. The water flowed for a brief moment, and then stopped. I felt guilty for praying that she wouldn't kill herself in my presence.

A moment later, she rejoined me and looked at me with the same eyes that a moment prior had been full of light and life. They were dead now, the same as the girl she had been before Spain.

She met James at a caf� in Spain. She had been there for a week, and fumbling through her Spanish-English dictionary, when he came up behind her at the counter. He ordered for her, and asked her to join him at his table. Relieved to finally have a potential travel partner for Spain, she accepted.

She was 20 by the time she had reached Spain. He was 29, and handsome. She would describe him as handsome and kind, fluent in the local language and working at the local university as an English teacher. He would teach her bits and pieces of Spanish while they made love, and it was he, she claimed, that made her a real woman. Or, at least she had thought that at the time. When his contract came to an end, he decided that he would return to Illinois, to his home, and teach Spanish there. Patricia followed him, after a few lonely weeks in Paris, feeling as though she had passed the age of freedom and travel. She also stated that she missed the smell of his hair when she slept, and found that incredibly peculiar.

When she arrived at O'Hare International Airport, he was waiting at her gate, setting perfectly on one knee with an engagement ring. She continued to inform me that it was the perfect engagement and wedding. The fights had only started 10 years ago, when she was 35. It got physical on her 37^th birthday.

She would follow the typical pattern of an abused woman. Excessive amounts of concealer, sunglasses and excuses for the bruises and scratch marks, and remained certain that the fights were her fault�she had nagged her far too busy spouse into a corner, and it was the only way, she thought, he knew how to respond. So she continued to forgive him and he would continue to beat her.

She finally admitted to me that Benjamin was a result of a drunken fight. James, after screaming at her and slapping her hard across the face, picked her up lovingly and took her to their bedroom. He apologized, said he drank too much whiskey for his own good, and then kissed her. When they made love that night, Patricia admitted, she closed her eyes and wished for death.

She got Benjamin instead.

From there onwards, Patricia was rather still, and required questions. She listed off the medications doctors would put her on to fix the depression.

"They only pushed me further into numbness." She stated, blinked and put her head into her hands. Patricia Faultz became the only other woman aside from my mother, on that day, whom I had seen cry without making a sound. Her shoulders shook violently and I watched tears stream from her hands, down her forearms and find their inevitable fate in the cotton grid of her slacks.

I didn't push further, and let her go home early from that session after she had calmed down and informed me that she didn't want to talk anymore. I didn't want to talk at all, after hearing her stories. I drove home, and made dinner for my son and I; all the while wondering how someone would want to leave this world when they were in charge of another life. My son was 4 at the time, and his father had died in Iraq when he was 2. I had no time to be selfish, to be depressed or melancholy. Admittedly, I still signed checks with my married name, and seeing it made my heart pound a little slower than the moment before. I was a psychiatrist who personally knew what it was like to want to give up on life and somehow, the little face across the kitchen table made me remember that I was tied to this Earth.

The next day, I had a meeting with her parole officer, and to say that it was informative about Patricia would be an overstatement. To say that it spoke volumes of the American court system would be an understatement. I asked Officer Jones whether or not he was aware of the abuse that Patricia had undergone during her marriage. I asked for the reasons the court found it better to place Benjamin with his father, an abuser, versus his mother.

"The court was aware of the abuse claims filed by Miss Faultz, and Mr. James Carlson did community service for his crimes. The custody case was an entirely separate ordeal. Miss Faultz showed mental instability, and Mr. Carlson showed remorse for his actions. Any further details are sealed in the file, as you know." Jones blinked a few times before asking me if there was anything else I needed to know. I politely declined from prodding further, and informed him that therapy seemed to be finally working for Patricia. He smiled and left without saying good bye.

Patricia avoided talking about her suicide, as much as I would try to push her. She would discuss the cards Benjamin would send her, her complicated family life growing up in suburbia and express her concern over the aging process, which seemed to speed up with time. She would talk, endlessly, about absolutely nothing. I grew increasingly frustrated with her, but was not allowed to show it. I was determined to remain professional.

The day she did talk about her suicide was normal, like any other appointment we had shared before. It was 3:45 when she brought it up, only allowing herself fifteen minutes to really talk about what happened on that night.

"James came home and beat the living hell out of me, like always. This time, it was in front of Benjamin. James stumbled to the bedroom and told me that if I wasn't in there in 10 minutes, he would beat me harder than before. Benjamin started to scream, and I found myself fixated on one of the pictures we had on the fireplace mantle. It was me, in Spain, with the Alhambra behind me, and I looked happy." She paused, and took a deep breath.

"At that point, I realized that I hadn't been happy in years�.years. Do you know what it's like to realize that you haven't felt an ounce of happiness in years? It was as if my soul had been split, and the happy part of it was being kept prisoner by the miserable part. It was when James yelled that I had five minutes that I managed to snap. I grabbed a bottle of pills from the cupboard. I don't even remember what they were. I just knew that I wanted to die. I called for help when I saw Ben. I didn't want to leave Ben with James, for fear of the absolute inevitable." This part made her laugh, bemused by the situation.

"I still regret calling for help."

The buzzer would ring in from my desk, signifying the end of the hour. She got up, and left my office without saying a word.

The words were hanging in the stale air that circulated in my office. I called Officer Jones and request that he keep an eye out on Patricia in the upcoming days, informing him of the danger that might come from a statement of regret.

The next Wednesday, she did not return to my office. She did not return my calls. Officer Jones left me a message, stating that she had opted to see another psychiatrist, and requesting that I forward my notes and thoughts to one Dr. Vickers. I promptly replied with the materials, and sent my best wishes for her recovery.

It was a Wednesday when I received the card. It was a year or two after my last meeting with Patricia, and seeing the name Patricia Faultz-Vickers in the upper left hand corner made the knot in my stomach tighten. It was post marked from Alicante, Spain. She had enclosed a photograph, and I was surprised by the image of her, with a man and young boy playing on the beach. It was not the same woman who sat on my sofa every Wednesday from 3 to 4, sans one week were it was a Thursday, and spoke of her misery. On the back of the photo, in a woman's handwriting, it read: Patricia and Joseph Vickers, and Benjamin enjoy the Mediterranean beach, and are very, very happy. Thank you.

She also enclosed a note card. She wrote:

The nightmare remains the same, but the reality has changed.

This is for YOU.

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:47:29 GMT

A friend of mine is going through some trying times with a man she's in love with. I haven't been able to give advice so well, but I was listening to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill earlier, and this song came on. I dont know if it'll be helpful, but I certainly thought of you tonight.

breaking the fever on advil and coca cola.

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:04:36 GMT

song #2 is what i was telling you about, nass.

this made me cry .

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 01:32:13 GMT

it is a good song, too.
radio head "all i need"

true love <3

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:04:57 GMT

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining;
It is the night of the dear Savior�s birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary soul rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born!
O night, O holy night, O night divine!

Led by the light of faith serenely beaming,
With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.
So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming,
Here came the wise men from Orient land.
The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger,
In all our trials born to be our friend!

Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born!
O night, O holy night, O night divine!

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His Gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His Name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy Name!

Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born!
O night, O holy night, O night divine!