it happens… over and over

so, you may have noticed that my last entry was a bit… glum.  and not really an entry at all, just a song that i listen to when shit hits the fan in my relationship.  i don’t even really know what to say though.  we broke up… i guess.  i mean it feels like a break-up although technically it’s a break, a term that i hate because it’s one stop away from singleville (it’s the same reason i hate when people say that they’re bi-sexual; dude, you’re gay, accept it and move on!).  anyway, so i’m in this relationship limbo at the moment and i am feeling… like i’m sick of talking about feelings.  i’m sick of talking or even thinking about how i feel and what i want and what he wants and all this fucking shit you have to wade through when your boyfriend and you are “taking a break.”

i just don’t get it.  why am i attracted to guys i can’t have?  for example, my first boyfriend (aka the douchebag) who was emotionally retarded and didn’t care about whether i was happy at all, just as long as i was doing exactly what he wanted and nothing else.  then, six years later, while still fragile after very not amicable break-up with the douchbag, i meet a guy at a bar (aka mexican douchebag) who seems really nice and generous and fun, but turns out to be some nortena-criminal-baby daddy who still sees his psycho ex-girlfriend slash baby mama who calls you on your cell when you’re trying to go pick up your nephews from school to confront you about what you’re doing with her man and, oh, did you really think he left me, you poor stupid white girl? a guy who convinces you while you’re blinded by “love” to sign for a motorcycle for him which he swears he’ll pay for but doesn’t (natch) and your poor mother ends up paying for it because you were too stupid to know better than to trust a guy you met in a bar.  then you leave that mess and fly to paris to live for a couple months, at which time you immediately meet your dream guy and he is totally perfect in every way (gorgeous, sweet, friendly, generous, french, nice to mother, attentive, etc.) except for the fact he lives 9,000 miles away in a freakin foreign country and even though you daydream that on the day you’re to fly home he’s going to tell you that he can’t stand to see you go because he’s in love with you so he moves to america to be with you, that doesn’t happen and instead of said dream scenario you fly home heartbroken and alone.  then like 10 minutes after you land back in america, you run into current love of life who has had a crush on you for months and thinks you’re so cool for having just spent all that time in france and you end up falling for him and abandoning your french movie love story for this guy who four years later tells you he isn’t sure he sees this going any further, that he’s not sure he wants to get more serious, and that he doesn’t know if he ever wants to get married let alone in the next couple of years.

so, here you are “on a break” waiting to see if the boyfriend will remain the boyfriend or if he will join the ranks of ex-boyfriends.  i get to sit and wonder if he will have a change of heart, decide he can’t live without me and does want to get married someday afterall.  or not.  yea me.  if my track record says anything, i’m pretty sure i know how this is going to end because i’m sorry, but i can’t make that compromise: i want to get married.  i do.  i want that security and closeness and devotion that comes with a marriage.  i don’t want to be goldie hawn and kurt russell or susan sarandon and the tall dude from shawshank redemption whose name i can’t think of.  i want to know that i have someone for my whole life and for them to know that they have me; i want the promise of a life together without having to worry that he’ll leave me for some blonde cliche because “it’s not like we’re married!”  and i don’t think i should have to give that up.  but it’s hard because when i’m looking into his eyes i think that i’d give up anything to have him in my life, that i’d make any sacrifice to make him happy.

but then i realize that i should wait until someone feels that way about me.

i just don’t know how many more times my heart can break before it can’t be put back together.

handle with care

an ending is an ending

just a thought…

the chronicles of caitlin

"these are my hands, these are my faults, these are my nasty little thoughts, i wrote them down for you to contemplate at a later date..." --stroke 9

i used to keep a journal.  i received my first real journal, like the first one i actually wrote in frequently, the one i wrote in until it was full, from my sister michelle when i was maybe 12.  i think mormons are into journaling for the same reason they’re into geneology– writing in a journal is considered keeping a personal history that your descendents can read and learn about you and your life, the times you lived in.  the problem is this: the crap i wrote about at that age (12-17) is useless.  honestly, it’s horribly embarrassing.  i’ve gone back to read old entries and i just want to reach back into time and punch my young self in the face.

i was so stupid… i didn’t have a clue about what’s important.  i would devote pages and pages to the d-bag boyfriend i thought i was so in love with from age 14 until the end of the journals.  i didn’t manage to get that a-hole out of my life until i was 20 years old.  god, that’s so embarrassing.  i wish i would have listened to my parents, to my mom specifically, and not wasted my youth being retarded over that guy.  in the end, he left me.  well, i left him, but wanted to get back together, but he met someone else and didn’t let me back.  that ate away at my soul for months– it was my main reason behind going to france for that study abroad program.  so, in a lot of ways he did me the biggest favor anybody could have, one i didn’t have in me to grant myself.

ugh.

i know the point of making mistakes is to learn from them, but i still find it painful to look back on all the time i spent toiling over him when i could have been with my friends or my family.  i would have taken the s.a.t.’s and applied to colleges if i hadn’t thought me and the d-bag were gonna live happily ever after together after i finished high school.  i could be a college graduate right now if it hadn’t been for him.  but those few months in paris changed my life in a lot of important ways and i wouldn’t have had the desire to go if i hadn’t been trying to run from something.  oh, well.  i know “time spent wishing is time wasted.”  i guess i wonder what my life would be like now if i had never met him or if had realized what he was sooner.  the mistakes i made with him and for him and over him brought me to where i am now, so would i change anything?

i’m happy with the boyfriend and i’m happy i went to paris.   but i do still wish i was done with college already.  i feel like i’m just adrift– nothing changes.  people who haven’t seen me in years will ask “where are you working?” “where do you live?” and i’m like, well, i still have the same job i had in high school and i still live at home with the ‘rents.  does that make me super lame or what?  should i feel like a huge underachiever?

so i guess this is my new journal.  i just hope that someday i can look back at these years of my life and feel pride or gladness or like it was time well spent.  i don’t want to wish i could go back in time just to slap my younger self silly.

do you have any regrets?

no power

it was weird, but i actually felt myself missing my blog this week.  i never thought i would care about it enough to miss it, but i left my power cord in bezerkley at the boyfriend’s apartment and my laptop was sans power until today.  now the pics i tooks in san francisco are locked on my camera until the camera’s weak ass battery recharges.  in this technologically dependent society, i never realized how dependent on it i myself am.  so, pictures from my and the boyfriend’s trip across the bay will have to wait, however he showed me a pretty awesome youtoob video that i’m going to share with all of you.  you might have seen it before in an email forward or something, but i’m behind the times and hadn’t seen it yet.  watch it– especially if you l.o.v.e your animal(s)!!

voila:

if animals don’t go to heaven, then i don’t want to either.

be back soon with some pics of the beautiful san francisco bay area!  vive la 408 et la 415!!

la poste grosse (the fat post)

i tend to go casual by wearing t-shirts and jeans with flip-flops, unless it’s

trusty chucks

raining in which case i’ll switch it up by wearing a pair of vans or chuck taylors, et voila! i only wear make-up for special occasions or if i am trying to impress someone, like that slutty tramp the boyfriend still considers a friend even though her nickname in our crowd is “bucket,” short for “slut bucket.”

*sigh*

if i only had my 16-year old body back i could wear pretty clothes again. it’s one of those things where you don’t realize what you have until you’re fat? well, fatter than i would like to be, fatter than the boyfriend would like me to be, fatter than i meant to get. and i’m not practiced in the art of losing weight, i know the general idea but i haven’t been able to convert to that skinny lifestyle. in high school i was just a slammin’ hottie and i never really thought about it. now i’m lucky to have a pretty face, but it doesn’t seem as pretty when you always feel an impulse to suck in your cheeks while looking at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, wishing it weren’t so damn difficult for you to get motivated.

did i mention i’m not a huge fan of exercising either? i hate going to the gym because i always end up on the treadmill next to some spandex-clad blonde miss-i’m-training-for-my-5th-marathon or mr.-i-run-20-miles qd or i go to a yoga or pilates class and invariably i’m stuck in a spot in the room where i’m being reflected back at myself from all four mirrored walls while a bunch of tiny anorexic cheerleaders giggle and make me consider just going home and becoming bulimic. at least that’s something i can do in the privacy of my own bathroom.

ugh. now i’m getting all depressed just thinking about the daunting task ahead of me. i have to lose at least a noticeable amount of weight soon or i suspect the boyfriend may downgrade our relationship to just friend. he’s not shallow or anything, it’s just we’ve been together for almost four years and i’ve *ahem* changed and if anything he keeps getting thinner. if i wrap both my hands around his thigh, my fingers almost touch. i mean that would be hot on me, but for a guy it just looks unhealthy. so he’s gorgeous and thin with a runner’s body and i’m just desperately hanging on to my prettiness while trying to conceal the body i hate so much in progressively baggier t-shirts.

i feel like i’m a huge (literally) disappointment and i honestly hate occasions that require me to wear a dress since i detest my legs so much, and also because i was too poor for a long time to go tanning, a routine i desperately need to get back into because tan chub is more attractive than pale chub. skin cancer be damned!

poor boyfriend. i think he resents the fact that i don’t look like i did in high

if only...

school or even when we first got together. i can feel his resentment like radiation beams whenever we go out with his friends. his friends know me, have known me for years, and that makes the whole thing even worse because they know what i used to look like so they’re probably thinking how sorry they feel for boyfriend for having to go out with me. i mean, i know he loves me and blah blah blah. that doesn’t erase the times he’s suggested i go running or maybe i shouldn’t have those chips or isn’t that like your 3rd cup of milk today (yes, i like to drink milk and boyfriend’s mother only buys 2%)? no, my cruel mind doesn’t allow me to forget comments, no matter how insignificant, no matter how off-the-cuff. instead i plaster those words like enormous posters on to the walls in my mind.

he doesn’t mean to be mean, he doesn’t mean to hurt my feelings, he’s not that type of guy. he is, however, a very honest guy. in general this would be considered a very admirable trait in a man, but for me, a person who needs to be lied to in order to maintain some semblance of sanity, the honesty thing has posed problems in the past. i know he means well, it’s just that when a skinny person comments on your overweight-ness, well, it makes me want to wring him by his goddamn skinny neck.

oh and the boyfriend’s older brother has a girlfriend, e, who has given birth and is still the tiniest non-midget i’ve ever met in my life. she’s not even 5 feet tall and she tips the scale at like 87 pounds. i almost socked her in the face when she was doing that goddamn master cleanse diet to lose what she called “those last couple of pounds” by only drinking lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup for like two weeks. the whole time i was thinking that i don’t have enough will power in my little finger to subject myself to that diet for longer than 12 hours. and the kick in the ass is the fact that she’s had a baby. i am so envious of her i could die. she’s sweet, too. maybe if she were a bitch i could hate her for that, but the bitch is effing nice.

yep, she’s nice, always wears make-up and cute clothes, and she’s exactly my boyfriend’s type. i know i’m being paranoid and i know that the boyfriend is too good of a guy to betray his own brother, but sometimes i worry that one day he’ll just get fed up with my stubborn fatness and look at her all done up in make-up, so thin and petite, and decide he is done. i’m not saying he would try anything with e, i don’t think she looks at my boyfriend in that way, and like i said the boyfriend isn’t that kind of guy… at least i don’t think he is.

when you start to lose your self-confidence, it’s easy to replace it with bad imagination. the boyfriend has reassured me plenty of times when i’ve gotten low enough to say something about my secret fears. but he lives in berkeley and he’s not here all the time to dial down the crazy.

i just have gotten used to the idea that he’s it for me, you know? i don’t ever want to date again or go through that whole awkward getting-to-know-you stage with someone else. i’m not one of those people who balks at the idea of marriage because you’ll never kiss anybody else or whatever. i love the idea that he’s the last person i’ll ever kiss. i hope he is. but why would someone like him want to kiss someone like me for the rest of his life? what if he ever realizes what i already did: that he could do so much better?

sur ma liste aujourd’hui

he may have been lost, but all i could think was: "i want your hat."

i’ve decided to make lists.  i love writing out lists of endless amounts of crap i need to do, but i rarely actually do anything from my lists.  but i enjoy them all the same.

i’ve never really explained why i love paris so much.  since i was maybe eight or nine i dreamed of seeing the eiffel tower in person.  i must have seen its daunting beauty on tv or in a newspaper or something, but whatever it was, it lit a fire under me and for the next 10 years my dream lived on.  i went in high school as a 16 year old french student and took the typical tourist trip.  we hit all the important eglise, cathedrals, museums, monuments, castles, and quaint country towns.  the south of france was nice, but paris remains my true love.  so, while attending de asia, i signed up for a study abroad program that would set me up in an apartment (avec a roommate) and i would attend classes at a little extension school.  since i couldn’t legally drink back home yet, i basically stayed at least half drunk for two months straight.  i also started smoking a pack a day of marlboro reds to help me assimilate.  it worked.  i met some amazing people that i still think about, wondering what’s going on in their lives now that nearly four years has passed since i walked the cobblestoned streets, licking nutella from my chin and trying to absorb as much culture as possible.  it was so wonderful, i didn’t have to work for the first time in six years, and i could devote my energy to school and blending into the french crowd of which i so wanted to be a part of.  but april turned into may and may became june and i had to board a plane back to california.  while i still have so many memories from my time there, i’m no longer in contact with any of the people from the memories.  i miss ross and vered who proved to be awesome friends, with whom i shared so many bouts of laughter and with whom i sobbed tearful goodbyes into their shoulders, and they into mine.  i tried to keep in touch, but the circumstances just wouldn’t allow it.  vered moved to hollywood to be an actress and ross left for san fran to live with his girlfriend.  and sometimes i allow my thoughts to drift to one more person who left such a great impact on my soul.  but, like i said, i left paris to return to my home in san jose (northern california is a fantastic place to live, too, so i have been exceedingly lucky) and he stayed behind in his home.  i used to hope he would show up on my doorstep announcing plans to stay and live here, but that childish desire flitted away like a delicate butterfly.  i came home and shawn (aka the boyfriend) presented himself and for the first time in my life i found myself able to accept kindness and affection from a boy.  the boy i left behind did this for me without ever knowing it; he made it possible for me to love again.

**sigh**

life happens when you’re busy doing something else, or however the saying goes.  well, that explanation may seem cryptic, but i assure you there will be more paris stories over time– i’ve got a million of ’em.

ok, now the list of shit i will never do of things to do this week:

1. scale mount laundry and actually fold the shirts and whatnot right after so i don’t have to iron (ehh i hate ironing!)
2. purchase textbooks for this semester
3. take charlie for a walk qd
4. learn to add music to this blog
5. write in blog qd
6. drink more water and eat less without picking up smoking again
7. cut back on various vices (the boyfriend knows)
8. make valentine’s reservations at loony boon or boony loon or whatever that winery is called (merci ash & j.c. for the generous gift certificate) for wine tasting and food pairing, very chi-chi.
9. wash face q night hs (hs=at bedtime in pharmacy speak)
10. send two month late payment to capital one, transfer $$ to visa so they stop calling me
11. re-order checks from wells fargo so i can pay aforementioned bills
12. remember to save $$ q week for tuition in august (goal: $3000)
13. schedule charlie for vet visit
14. go to audiobook store all ears in saratoga for new books. (just finished all 7 harry potters, all of david sedaris they had, memoirs of a geisha, and the giver) next i want the time traveler’s wife and maybe something by christopher moore.
15. be nicer, be more gentle, and be a better listener.

voila! no capital letters allowed

ok, so this is all pretty new to me. i mean, i used to be on myspace, but that seemed so self indulgent. this blog will be, too, because i’ll be mostly blogging about myself, but somehow i feel like blogs are less tacky and more intellectual than myspace where people mostly post pictures of themselves taking bong rips and leaving lame posts for each other about how much they love themselves.

i decided this would be the opposite of that. plus, my mom, my big sis, and my sis-in-law all blog nearly qd (qd is pharmacy speak for everyday) so i’m starting to feel it pulsing through my blood. i also figured the writing practice would be good for me, although you will never catch me

my snuggle pug

using capital letters. it’s just my thing. if you devote yourself to reading my blog qd, you will quickly find that i have a lot of things.

anyway, i’m typing away on my increasingly obsolete laptop balanced on one thigh while charlie the erstwhile pug snores away on the other. he’s a good boy, but no matter how many episodes of “the dog whisperer” or “it’s me or the dog” or how many of cesar milan’s books i read, this dog is still a total a**hole to anybody who comes to our house outside me, my mom, my dad, and my boyfriend. he hates children (my nephews and nieces call him the devil dog… that actually hurts my feelings a bit, but he has tried biting all of them so it’s understandable), he hates the guy who reads the meter, he hates the mailman, he hates knocks on the door, and he really hates our neighbor’s puggle. but he really loves me so it’s hard for me to give a rat’s arse if he hates anybody else. he’s my little snuggle pug and he could eat kittens for breakfast and i’d still defend what i call his “quirkiness.”

already filed my taxes because being a journalism student i’m all up and up on the news, so i heard that since my dear state’s congressmen and the governator can’t agree on a budget (lazy, stubborn s.o.b’s) that instead of issuing refunds citizens may receive i.o.u’s. but i.o.u’s don’t exactly pay the bills do they? no, they do not. so i figured the sooner i stake my claim on my share of my tax refund, the more likely i will be to actually receive money. we’ll see how that turns out in a couple weeks. if i’m not over $1500 richer, than the irs will get a nasty phone call from me, and they don’t want that. i spend a good chunk of my work days calling insurance companies and trying to convince them to pay for services they should be paying for anyway, so i’m used to yelling and acting all snippy on the phone with douchebags who are trying to save money.

douche and douchebag are two of my favorite words. i even caught my 68 year old father calling someone a douche. it’s just so insulting, yet incredibly descriptive. it’s almost as useful as the f-word. how would i live my life without that word?

also, if you ever want to curse somebody in french- see me. i did an entire project while i was still at de asia community college on verlan (derived from the french l’envers, the reverse) and swear words. Verlan is common french slang in which you take a word, like, for example, merci, switch it up and say it like cimer. it’s really hard to understand if you don’t already speak fluent french, which i don’t, but just knowing about it will get you in with les jeunes de paris. trust moi.

cimer for now, au revoir all.