Category — true colors

For the first thirteen years of my life, I was a good girl. Cath followed orders, she kept things running, she took care of her little sister, baby-sat all the local kids. When the neighbors left for vacation, Cath kept an eye on their garden, or fed their cats, or watered the plants. She ached for gold stars, for approval, for recognition. Cath was Mom’s little helper, Daddy’s tough little solider, the teacher’s pet, a golden child. Smart, sweet, dependable, and wise beyond her years.

Sure, she had a smart mouth, broke the occasional rule, and was prone to emotional outbursts and displays of temper. She sometimes suffered an inability to accept a perceived injustice, and working so hard at being a good girl gave her a sense of entitlement. She had her resentment squirreled away in a savings account, to be retained as righteous indignation when she had her heart set on something that never materialized. Cath could be quite a handful in those moments, and her Mama likened her to a girl from a nursery rhyme:

There once was a girl with a curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid.

Cath’s parents were trying to teach her that life isn’t fair. They wanted her to learn to accept defeat gracefully, and to treat others well. She had to learn that one does the right thing for their own satisfaction, and not to gain favor or reward.

Somewhere, most likely at the intersection of life isn’t fair and you reap what you sow in the world, she misinterpreted the meaning behind the message.

Being a good girl means meeting others’ expectations, but you have no right to your own expectations. If you get what you want, it’s because you’re a good girl, and if you don’t get what you want, too bad- good girls are grateful for what they have.

Aren’t you grateful for everything we’ve given you?

For the next thirteen years of my life, I was a bad girl. Cat started drinking, sneaking cigarettes, doing drugs, going out with older guys, skipping school, speeding and generally doing whatever she wanted, fuck allwhat you thought of it. Her Daddy cured her of that her sixteenth year- he taught her that appearing to be a good girl was what counted, and that she could be as bad as she wanted if she didn’t get caught. He showed her that following the little rules made it easier to break the big ones.

Cat picked that up quickly, and she excelled at acting like a good girl and being a bad girl when no one was looking. She met a man who prided himself on that very same thing, and they fell in love. They were very happy most of the time; save his occasional failure to meet her expectations.

When she threw a fit, he gently explained to her that she wanted too much from him, more than anyone deserved, probably because her Daddy hit her and her Mama was closer to her sister. It was okay, though, because he loved her even though she was bad for being angry when he was cold or disrespectful.

Would I be here if I didn’t really love you? You’re just crazy. The way you depend on me is bad; I can’t be your everything. You need a life of your own.

She knew he was right, she was always bad that way, wanting more than she deserved, not merely gracefully accepting what she was given in exchange for being a good girl. He was right, she was bad, and she was so very grateful that he loved her anyway. So what if he was bad sometimes too, if he made her feel bad, it was her fault, for not just loving him anyway, for putting up with her. She loved him too well to expect the same in return.

Ever so slowly, she built a life of her own. Cat snagged an incredible professional opportunity, she made friends, she even started college. They bought a cute little house in the middle of nowhere, and she started to believe that her life might turn out better than she ever dreamed.

Once again, she had a great deal of responsibility for her age. At twenty-six, she was a wife, a homeowner, the Controller of a multi-million dollar company, and a student. All of these roles required suppressing that bad little girl. She was constantly belittled and criticized for her passion, intensity, honesty, and the clumsy new way she stood up for herself.

That’s when I became a verybadcat. The blog was first; verybadcat needed a place safe from criticism to start writing again, to tell the stories no one wanted told, a container for her badness. All those pieces and parts of her that were not honored and accepted off the page. Her deepest fears, darkest secrets, secret dreams and wishes. She was astounded to find that she developed a following, that people who didn’t know the good girl loved verybadcat. Twitter allowed her to communicate with those folks in real time.

Her life was finally full and fruitful, she gained confidence, which was just what the wasbund always said he wanted. Unfortunately, what seemed ideal in theory lost luster in practice; the career, the social life, the night classes and homework, and all of that fucking around on the Internet took time and attention away from him. She wasn’t content to sit on the shelf till he was inclined to take her down and dust her off. At that same time, his full and fruitful life began the agonizing process of unraveling.

The addition of financial stress and marital discord to her already demanding life left her with no room to move. Anything she wanted for herself: time, energy, recognition, space, respect, and especially love or money, she had to steal from the life she built. The guilt of resenting all of the pressure was crushing. Everything was a secret.

Her precarious financial position was a secret from her employer, because admitting that you are cold and hungry at night isn’t a good idea when you hold a key financial position in an organization. Her professional success threatened and intimidated her chronically unemployed husband. Her friends almost knew how bad things were, but she alternated venting between wholly separate social circles to keep the depth and breadth of misery a secret too. Most everything was a secret from her family.

She was two people then. Catherine did the payroll, and verybadcat kited personal checks to get to work the week before payday. Catherine made good grades and enjoyed being back at school, but sometimes verybadcat just let everyone think she was in class, so she could have her brain to herself for a few hours. Catherine felt badly about leaving her husband home alone with no food or heat for decadent business dinners, but verybadcat snickered over it after a few cocktails.

This arrangement worked beautifully until both girls went alone for a secret long weekend in Ohio to mourn her last living grandparent, followed shortly by a week in Atlanta to help her baby sister bury her first love and witness with abject horror the effects of chemotherapy on her previously strong and healthy mother. All of that mortality shattered the illusion that there was room in one life for two girls- because she had felt the precious fleeting nature of this life, and because it occurred to her that the collision of all of those secrets would have made her own funeral apocalyptic.

They both decided that Catherine would stay and verybadcat had to go, since Catherine was a good girl and verybadcat was selfish and shameful.

It didn’t work out that way. One after another, the expectations Catherine had to meet fell away, and more people came to know both girls. Suddenly, verybadcat found herself single and starting a business. Catherine couldn’t let go. She needed more than ever to prove she was a good girl, but for the first time in her entire life, there was no one there to define what that meant.

Picking up where her experience left off, she made a list that included just about anything that made her too happy. Surely she didn’t deserve those things; every mistake, every failure, every rejection, every missed opportunity was proof that she was just a broken piece of trash that snuck her way into a place in the world far beyond her worth. Catherine ran behind verybadcat with a clipboard, counting up demerits and doling out punishments in the form of deprivation. She labored tirelessly to atone for verybadcat’s constant self-indulgence.

On Friday morning, Catherine filled a page with evidence of unworthiness easily before noon. She couldn’t get to the punishment, though, because verybadcat was solving her problems by helping beloved friends solve their problems, who in turn made her own solutions better. Catherine tried to calculate the cost of the love and support she was receiving, and fretted about the total deprivation required to even it out.

She had almost finished cleaning out the kitchen cabinets Friday night when it hit her.

There are no more secrets. There are no more outside expectations. The people who love me the most are the people who know me the best. The world, this world, my world finally needs me in whole. There is no good girl, no bad girl, no Catherine, and certainly no verybadcat. There is just me, in all my flawed perfection, essential to the whole and lacking nothing essential.

Just like the integral cat.