Pelham Bay

Confronting the ghosts of a rather ecclectic past and drinking some others out. Made a former abuser cry at a aparty at the Steyer house and mortally offeneded another.

Situation has gotten better at hand as have become the new intrest of an editor. A writer? This could work out. Found said writer to be absolutely boring in topic but with good imagination. Oh, the possibilities.

Even spoke to chrissy after a night of free shots with another blonde and Crims. He says he's ok, but he sounds sad, he's always sad. And I'm fine. Really, I'm fine.

Really. I mean it isn't even tragic and despicably lied for once. Really, I'm well.

Being around all the people I've left for long, it's odd in a way to be playing the part I've have wanted had this been 1997. When they tell me I look good, I have grown up quite beautifully, I alway feel that same mix of insult and compliment. I get so many people telling me they never forgot my name, my face, things I said and did. I want to know why I ever questioned myself in the beginning. I could have done much better because I was better. To embarrass the boy who made me cry year ago for weeks on end, to be asked for my number by the kid who bruised both my arms on my 12th birthday, its all unusual, but I guess settles things perhaps I hadn't fully resolved. To have that peace and now the realization of what was and what wasn't... it's beautiful even. And I know I'm sounding stupid writing about the people I've looked down on for years, the place I'm ashamed to be from, but seriously, it's good to have come this far.

And it isn't even acheiving anything; I never needed their confirmation. I never needed their respect. I laugh when they tell me how pretty I am, because I always was pretty. I always was beautiful and witty. I always had a clever smile, a free laugh, a colorful imagination and an amusing appetite for liquor. I never needed their respect and seeing this now, that what Crims has been saying for years was true, that I am a strong person has been extremely therapudic. I got through those horrid times brought back and set to peace by the events this summer on my own, even when I didn't realize the world was a big place, and blonde hair wasn't ugly. Even when I wasn't Casey, but Cathy. Even then. What I've always had and for those reasons had been so ashamed of, is indeed my best. That my self sufficience and quiet pride is something to be envied, and no longer misunderstood, most of all by me. I always had it, I just hid it. I don't need to be that person anymore. I have no reason to hide.

I always go by no regrets, but in the past this had more or less been a defense. There are things I regret, but not in a shamed way. I regret listening to the advice of people who had no advice to give; most of all my own misgivings. I regret not hearing the advice of Crims, of the people who really know me, a staid and precious few. I regret never knowing what people are no longer embarrassed to tell me, that I had always been beautiful, the horrible things people had said to me in those awkward years were never true, and being old enough to see that and happy enough to apprechiate it are invaluable.

I have few pictures from then, but I kept them all in the same album. I flipped through it the other night, and saw her, the loud girl with the bad skin, thick glasses and metal braces. The orange hair I was so ashamed of that has no become the feature people notice most. The hips that grew before anyone elses. And I confirmed it, I wasn't the monster I like to remember in allegories of my tacky adolescence that I relate to people I meet now. I was lost. And now, I'm found.

I was telling someone the other night that one of my most hurtful moments was when a kid I had liked told the entire class during an assignment on what he thanked God for (Catholic school, understand) that he thanked God for me because he felt I was strong because everyone "hated me." But I shouldn't have been ashamed. He was right; I was made of different stuff. I was stronger. I would have never done the things I've endured to anyone. I would have never followed the crowd simply to fit in, and I didn't. I did what I wanted, and am better for it. And at last, I've come to it, the respect I needed all these years wasn't theirs but my own. I would never trade places with the girl in those pictures, but I'd like to have told her what I know now.

"I always wanted to ask you out, I was just afraid of what my friends would have said."

I tell you I heard this and laughed, not out of my usually degree of discomfort, but with satisfaction.

I was never afraid, and now I know it, too.