Good times and bad times, I am Catherine; with my contradictions and my flaws. I need to be love despite that, despite myself.

Catherine knows How to take others in her arms and how to soothe and console them and yet she doesn’t know how to console herself. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself. In caveman times, she would have died of hunger, of cold, or would have been eaten by a fierce predator. She needs others. She needs to be understood, fed, cajoled, and loved. She needs others to take care of her. Catherine needs. She is needy. She is dependant, selfish and yet very loving. Cat needs others so much that she pushes them away hoping they will know how to love her despite that, despite herself. Very few can.

Catherine is intelligent and yet often does really stupid things. She knows it. She really would like to change that but doesn’t really know how. Because Cat is mostly intuitive, reactive, explosive, volatile, chaotic and emotional. Sometimes her emotions are so powerful and overwhelming that they completely short-circuit her ability to think. Catherine then becomes a being of caprice and emotion; she becomes pure emotion in its most potent and destructive state. And this happens often enough because Catherine is raw and always skin-deep.

Catherine knows how to love without limitations, without boundaries. She knows how to love others not despite their flaws but often with and through them. She knows how to love with a heart burning with passion and filled with tenderness and softness. She also knows how to hate when others have left too many scars on her soul. Mostly she knows how to hate herself for her flaws for which she does not forgive herself.

Finally, Catherine would like to be what others want her to be. She would like to be an adult who functions well, who is well adjusted to her culture, to her environment. She would like to be useful and productive. She has tried so long and so vainly to change. Cat would so love to give others all they need from her. She tried so long and so vainly to do that. Catherine would like to be other. But Catherine is Catherine; and it is all she knows how to be.

Good times and bad times, I

Advocacy for Catherine by Catherine

My name is Catherine. Some call me Cat. I like that, although I do like Catherine as well. I am a girl. I am a woman. Both are true. I am neither beautiful nor ugly. I am a bit chubby (a lot chubby if I am to be honest). I have flaws and qualities like everyone else. I am a being of contradictions. I am soft and charming and understanding. I am easily angered, explosive and sometimes mean. I am loving and yet sometimes distant. I love and need others and yet I need space. I am generous yet selfish. I am very conscious of others, their needs, their feelings, and yet I am egocentric. I am a being in constant battle with itself. I am exhausted. I am full of faults and fissures and cracks and yet I am incredibly solid and strong in my fragility. For a long time, I was ashamed to be so “cracked” so crazy. For a long time I tried to change myself or to hide myself. But shame and all that, it is over with. Here I am spiritually and emotionally naked, transparent. I am done being ashamed. I suffer from mental illness. I have anxiety, depression, and a mixed personality disorder. I have a mix of borderline personality disorder and dependant personality disorder. But all those things, those diagnosis, those labels, what do they mean? Nothing and everything, all at once.

But who am I? What am I?

Cat, this woman-child, walks through life with no epidermis. This layer of skin, more resistant then the others, which protects us from bad weather, from the world; Catherine does not have it, metaphorically speaking. Catherine walks though life with no skin, no clothes, no bubble, no armour nor shield. She goes to battle and tries to withstand the assault with strength and grace. So many things hurt her being. Sounds are too loud; lights are too bright, colors too vibrant, odours too strong. And this surplus of stimuli is like salt on the raw skin covering her soul. And yet Catherine wants to touch, and taste and see and hear. Mostly, she wants reach others. Her only tactics against assaults are fleeing, sacrificing herself or bowing her head down and waiting for the onslaught to end.