Things I will never get to say to you.

I let people walk over me a lot. I let people say what they want to say and think what they want to think because I have learned that reality doesn’t really matter and the TRUTH ..well… the truth is never fully reached and not many people understand the word in itself.

However, in everyone’s life sometimes, there comes a time where a person jumps a fence, or in more familiar terms, “crosses that line.”

You crossed that line the day you said what you said.

I know you don’t like me. I understand that you still haven’t let go of him. That you’ve married a man you don’t even love. That it kills you because I’m so nice and never stoop to your level. I understand this.

But to say what you said was beyond unacceptable.

I know you don’t know me personally, but honestly that is why you shouldn’t have said it.

Have you ever sat in a room as a doctor tells you “the chances are worse than slim to none?” Have you ever sat across from a person you love more than what this entire world has to offer, someone who already has a child and has talked several times of having more one day with you, and had to tell them…”I’m really sorry…would you be against adoption?”

The big question here is why would someone even joke about such a disturbing issue such as this?

The bigger question is why would I make up something like this?

I guess you think it’s attention. Or maybe even shame.

Well let me let you in on a little secret

It wasn’t just news to someone. It was the most heart breaking news I could have ever received. Sitting in that office, all of my kids crossed my mind. All of the children that I had come to love so incredibly much over the past four years. The children I had sacrificed so much time, so much heartache, so much emotional stress over. The children who I had decided because of them…because of those faces looking up at me with a look I hadn’t seen the first time I’d met them…the look of hope… the look that SOMEONE in this world cares enough about them… I lost a piece of me that day, and even though I am carrying a miracle, and even though the doctor was wrong, and even though I get to be something I never thought I’d really ever get to be…I still haven’t gotten that piece back.

you know, you can sit over there on the couch all day, being so happy and stress free about your pregnancy…hell, you’re so stress free that you’re lighting up ciggs and downing starbucks coffee.

But me? I am so scared. I won’t touch anything that I think might harm anything. I won’t touch caffeine. I can’t even stand being around people who smoke…I am so peculiar about everything.

and I’m not stress free. I have this hidden feeling deep down inside me that something terribly wrong is going to happen.

So no, I’ll never get to express how much you hurt me that day…for once… congrats to you by the way.

I’ll never get to tell you this because honestly? What good would it ever do.

But how dare you. How dare you attack me and say something like you did. I’ve done nothing to you. Regardless of what you think, regardless of what you and your husband spread. I’ve done nothing to you except try to offer a hand of friendship and be overly understanding and kind to you.

Normally words don’t hurt. I’m a master of words.

But you saying that simple sentence. Brought back all of those emotions… all of the emotions I still have trapped inside….

and to me, was a very low blow, even for you.

I have kept this in, and this is me letting it go.

I feel so immensely sorry for your life.

Let’s clear the air, shall we?

I would say I feel as though I need to clear some things up, but in all actuality I don’t feel that way at all. Let me start off by saying I don’t feel as though I owe anyone an explanation at all to anything that goes on in my life.

How about you go struggle through one of the hardest colleges for four years, get a full ride all four years having to keep up EVERYTHING you have to in order for it to stay that way, graduate from that college, be in a relationship where people try to take your life and wash it down the drain all because they are jealous, yes, jealous. Be attacked all the time for doing something that you can’t help, which is caring and being so loving. Have the horrible, terrible things said about you that aren’t even true, all because of a past mistake of accidentally having a crazy person fall in love with you who can’t let go of the past either.

Basically just having a swarm of locusts following you because NO ONE CAN LET GO OF THE PAST

Walk my shoes, and then you MIGHT have the right to be owed an explanation.

So no, I won’t explain, but I will go ahead and clear the air because I want EVERYONE to know.

I don’t try to be Joe’s mom. I have NEVER tried to take those shoes, nor would I ever. I was the one who was encouraging Joe how much his mother loved him when he broke down in tears asking why his “mommy” didn’t want him at the age of two, barely three years old. I am the one who tells him to be good to his mommy. I’m the one who takes him to buy things for his mommy for holidays, I’m the one who doesn’t allow people to talk bad about mommy in front of him.

I have never been mean to his mommy. I have never said a bad thing to anyone in this community about his mommy.

I am a very self poised woman who doesn’t deal with drama and doesn’t deal with the whole “let’s talk about people behind their back bullshit”

If you have a question, ask me, I’ll tell you. If you want my opinion, ask me, I’ll tell you.

If it is wrong of me to care for Joe in the way that I do, than so be it. I treat every child I encounter the same exact way I treat Joe. Even the children I volunteer with I call, “my children” It takes a lot more to replace a mom than simply loving a child, caring about a child, playing with a child, and being there for a child…

I have a friend, we’ll call her Janet, and she is the most mature woman and mother I have ever met. She hates having to give her son away every other week to his daddy and his step mom, but she told me something one time that really made me respect her.

She told me that she never worried about her son, we’ll call him Jake. She never worried about Jake because she knew that even if the daddy was ever an idiot, even if the daddy wasn’t there all the time, that the step mom would take care of Jake. She said it helped her sleep at night knowing there was a woman who cared for her son as much as she did. Would she ever love him in the same way? No, but she knew that the woman would be there when she could not to protect him, and even though she hated to see him gone for that long, she would never be jealous of that woman nor would she ever give her any problems because NO MATTER WHAT she wanted THAT particular woman to stay in her son’s life so that he would always be loved and always be taken care of.

That, my friends, is a mother. A mother who genuinely cares about her son.

I’m sorry if I give people the wrong impression. I’m sorry if you feel the need to talk shit about me behind my back, and I’m sorry if you think what I do and how I live is wrong.

Point blank,

You don’t matter.

and I will never stop caring and loving Joe the way I do. He adores his mother, no one is trying to change that.

I have decided to start another blog entitled: OPINIONATED OCTOPUS…at least that’s what I am thinking the name shall be. I know I am a blog whore and have tons of blogs it seems like, (okay I really only have two) but I feel this will be a blog that no one will want to read. Everyone has a right to their own opinion, yea?

joys of being an american?

I remember sophomore year in highschool finding out for the first time about Maryville College. I remember thinking, “man, that’s where I would really fit in…being a hippie and all…” I remember getting full rides to two or three or however many colleges and I remember mom looking at me and saying that if I wanted to go to Maryville College I had to get a full ride because that’s what these other schools were offering.

I remember being terrified because the only school I wanted to go to was Maryville. It was not my first pick, it was my only pick.

I changed more the past four years than I could have ever done in highschool. Honestly, I don’t feel as though I changed at all in highschool. However, every year there has been something wild, something crazy, something hectic, and something life changing that has happened to me.

Such as freshman year. Starting out with my few close friends and realizing what it meant to literally stay up all night and study. I literally stayed up all night studying for exams. Exams where I had to name the title of the painting, the artist, and what year it was painted. Writing paper after paper after paper and wondering, “why did I pick this major again?” But freshman year was that vital year where you learn more about yourself as a person. You have these classes that test your knowledge about yourself. You literally have to sit and think about what makes you tick, and what things in your life make you…you.

I suppose by the end of the year I had figured out that I wasn’t meant to be the person I was currently being. So I made some changes, some life long changes, thus moving on to my sophomore year.

Sophomore year of college for me was the “PARTY” year. I made TONS of friends and stayed up not only for exams and papers now, but for friends and tons of dancing now too. I even took random road trips to Johnson city, staying in a house with a bunch of friends I went to highschool with and having to leave very early the next morning due to fear of being stuck with the incoming snow. This was the year that I found myself in losing myself for a good period of time. I made tons of mistakes that I look back on now and realize that they were beneficial life lessons that have brought me to where I am today, mentally. I will never forget the wild nights, the sneaky times at two a.m., the shameful walks in the morning, or flying a kite at the beach.

However, because at the end of the day I am still me that scene, however glamorous it was, eventually got tiresome. It wasn’t truly me and I believe it took me going through it to realize that that wasn’t who I was. This was the year I feel like I grew up a lot. I had kept the friends that were worth keeping and had lost some friends along the way. I may have not partied every other night but I still went out and had fun on nights that were contingent with my schedule and through that found some of the greatest people in my life, forever changing it.

Senior year would be my favorite year. Not because it was such a relief to finally be done, to finally walk across that stage knowing all the change, all the effort, all the EVERYTHING that was put into the past four years just to get to sink in the ground with heels I shouldn’t have worn, and keep fixing a hat that was much too big for my head, no, senior year was my favorite because that is when everything in my life just started to really come together. I feel as though I grew up a lot this past year. I got rid of things that needed getting rid of, and I finally moved on from things I found were still holding me back, and I got back to being more of myself at the end of the day. The carefree Caitlin who enjoys nothing more than the little things in life and laughing. The best part is freshman year you learn about yourself at the beginning and senior year you learn about yourself after you’ve been through the past four years. I am not the same person I was during orientation or during those “Find yourself” journals I wrote as an eighteen year old freshman. I have grown so much during all of these memories. Yes, my professors and classes have been big reasons behind this, but also the mere experiences through being a part of Maryville College, building memories there, and just the simplicity of being a student above all the technical “hard” things associated with the school.

It wasn’t just the papers, the fiction writing, science fiction reading, grammar sentence diagramming, newspaper writing, business writing…and so on

It was EVERYTHING. The friends, the losses, the gains, the parties, the experiences…

literally everything, that made my college experience what it was.

I have never had school spirit before being a part of the Maryville College family but I can say that I am SO PROUD to be a Maryville College graduate. I wouldn’t want to have graduated from anywhere else.

Thank you to everyone who made this experience, everyone I met, encountered, spent time with, literally everyone helped mold me into who I am today.

And Thank you to my family for supporting me even though this school reshaped a lot of my beliefs and turned me into a more argumentative person, thank you for loving me unconditionally and pushing me to never give up.

Dear Maryville College,

I really did conquer you, and it’s the best feeling in the world. Seriously.

Love always,

A very proud Maryville College Graduate.

My calm lovely daughter.

Rylei Nayelli Sneed,

Going into the doctor today I was very excited as I thought about seeing my daughter in a way where one could actually tell what she looked like. But of course she did not do what the doctor wanted her to do, and was resulted in being called stubborn. I didn’t find her stubborn though. I think she is just a very calm child, who is comfortable where she is, and this makes me happy. She doesn’t kick me much, but I can still feel her move all the time. She tends to only kick when she isn’t happy, i.e. when I get really hungry, she kicks, when I get really tired, she kicks. When I get really stressed out, she kicks.

Other than that I only feel strong butterflies all the time as she moves.

So maybe I didn’t get to see her face fully because she wouldn’t get her face out of my placenta, but I still saw her a little and I still think she is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. Her little nose is perfect and she has Robby and Joe’s pouty mouth.

I love her.

Yes, I just went there.

I will no longer be afraid of offending you. If everyone else would like to bow down to your whims, than that is fine with me, it will not even anger me because people are entitled to behave how they wish.

You do.

As for myself I am a pushover enough with the people in my own life, I will no longer condemn myself to even acknowledging your existence. If that makes me a bad person than so be it. Will I be mean to you? No, I am not stoop kid. However, I will not go out of my way to show you kindness. Ignorance never picks up anyways, and I have gained a lot of self respect over the past six months.

I will post whatever I want on facebook. If there is a picture you don’t like, I would say I’m sorry but I’m not, get over it. You say what you want about whatever you want on yours, we should all be entitled to that same freedom.

The tiptoeing past your doorway has stopped.

I am an intelligent, classy, highly respectable, and very much worthy of respect lady and do not have to answer to people like you.

Yes, like you.

The people who think the world owes them everything. The people who only care for themselves. The people who don’t know the definition of self sacrifice and selflessness, they only pretend to as they play the pity card and try to evoke the emotions of other people based off of false implications.

Yes, like you.

and because I can say what I want, and do what I want, and be what I want, and just want want want

Let me explain something to you, even though you don’t know the definition of “advice” or “constructive criticism”

Love is a REAL thing. Not something you try to make people believe you’re in on your facebook, or even your twitter.

Love is putting up with all of someone, without trying to change them. Taking them in for who they are, even the ugly parts such as the times you get farted on and you want to gag yourself.

Love isn’t a show. I don’t have to post about how in love I am because honestly I don’t care if anyone knows  my feelings, that doesn’t make them any less important or real than what they are.

Love is happiness. It isn’t the constant pull and desire to try to take someone else’s happiness away. When you’re in love you let go of the past hurt, because the person you love helps you let it go. They help you move forward and they break you down as a person and make you better.

When you’re in love, it shows. You don’t try to make other people miserable. You don’t push and push and push and find things in life to complain about. The pessimism goes out the door when love comes in.

Love is not money.

Love is not in appearances. Love is not an airforce suit that comes with great benefits.

Love is reading a ridiculous text message from a very unhappy person and disregarding it because at the end of the day NOTHING anyone else thinks matters.

nothing at all.

You don’t matter.

Maybe if you realized this, you’d be a better person, because you wouldn’t try to rationalize your “opinions” on other people’s lives and you would for once look at your own life.

So believe what you want, make up bullshit if that’s what makes you happier throughout your day. Come up with things in your head, and keep reminding yourself of how happy you are

because reality is, we don’t care.

You don’t matter.

We’ve nothing to prove to you.

and I owe you nothing, anymore.

“Please don’t forget me, I’m going away. I’m taking a taxi to Kentucky where they don’t even know all about me, I just need to feel safe.”

As a human being we are entitled, and even more so acquired to have emotions. It is just a part of who we are. Sometimes these emotions don’t make sense, sometimes they are mere results from a bad situation we are in and if we were not in that situation we wouldn’t have that emotion.

I suppose what I am trying to say is it has been awhile since I have written such a post where people might read it and say, “she’s miserable.” I want to go ahead and clarify (for what it’s worth, which it isn’t because time and time again I am shown that people will come up with ridiculous claims about your life regardless of facts) that I am not miserable. Quite the contrary actually.

But during this time I feel the need to express this moment of …”feeling” or whatever one may want to describe it as.

Everyone keeps asking me what I want for my birthday. Why they keep asking me this I’m surely unaware because as you grow older birthdays are supposed to become less important. I don’t need any gifts, not that a gift every once in awhile wouldn’t be appreciated, it isn’t something that I need in order to say I’ve had the birthday experience.

So what I want for my birthday, as of right now, and as of the past week, in reference to every day leading up to this very moment, is to run away.

I am not saying I would run away forever. Maybe not even for a very long time. But I would like to go somewhere, for some time, where no one knows where I’m at and to where I wouldn’t have to communicate with anyone.

In other words, I need a break from everything.

It gets so exhausting always being the person who has to be understanding. Of literally everyone. Everyone is going through this and everyone is going through that, and Caitlin is just the person they can unload everything on top of, but in the end, where is caitlin’s salvation? Who is to be the understanding person when it comes to things she feels? Even if they don’t make sense to you at the time… I never really get this, and for once I feel it would be nice if someone in this world, in my life, would take a minute and put themselves in my shoes.

Just for a minute.

It has also been awhile where I’ve had anyone in my life really stand up for me.

and I guess I’m just exhausted.

Should I be so upset with rumors and untrue realities that keep scampering behind me? Should it make me, the newly college graduate, lower myself to allowing such nonsense that people who mean nothing not only in my life but really in this world in general have the emotions that it brings on? Feeling guilty. Feeling uncertain.

They say it’s always those who don’t deserve it who get spit on the most.

Maybe they’re right or maybe not, at this point it doesn’t matter how much I deserve it or not.

What matters is, people never cease to stop.

and as a result I am left like a hollow hole waiting for someone to put themselves in my shoes for once and try to see how I am feeling.

How all of this makes me feel.

How I shouldn’t have to be ashamed of the miracle growing inside me.

How I shouldn’t have to allow words of pure trash get to me at eight o’clock in the morning.

How I shouldn’t have to chase after anyone in any parking lot

How I shouldn’t have to be feeling like this right now after everything I have not only sacrificed, but after everything I have to put up with that I don’t even have to. No one asked me if I wanted to be in this situation. Stuck with having to deal with a literally crazy miserable person who will never stop. She never will. You know that more than I do. Did I ask to be in a situation where I always, constantly, have to be the “understanding” person.

NO, but because it’s where I want to be. Because I do love my life. I love him. and him. I put up with it.

With really not so much as a thank you, every once in awhile.

So for my birthday, I would like to run away.

Just for a little while.

That is all.

Oh you know, the whole Mother’s Day thing.

You would think after writing something sappy every year I would run out of things to write about. However, either because it’s just life, or I just happen to be the daughter who literally gets herself in so much shit each year, there is always something new to write about.

This year it would be a simple thank you but even that wouldn’t be quite grand enough. You deserve so much more than a thank you, however as the dice has rolled my luck at being able to give you more than a simple thank you isn’t quite…well…lucky..

If there really were a mother of the year award I truly believe you would get it, and I’m not just saying that because at this moment on this day every daughter and son in the world would say that…and maybe in their own ways they would deserve that award…but in so many ways you really really deserve the award.

For putting up with as much as you do. Such as a hormonal pregnant daughter coming back into your house and stressing you out. Such as a daughter who forgets from time to time who’s on her side. A daughter who thinks she has everything figured out, only to wake up to a new problem and realize she doesn’t know shit about life yet at all. A daughter who thinks she gives so much, yet at the end of the day takes so much…from you…

a daughter who doesn’t deserve to be helped at this point. Who should have been left to deal with her consequences by herself.

But once again mom steps in when she really doesn’t have to, especially this time, and saves the day. Once again she puts her needs and wants and dreams of a new house somewhere else…or other plans just so she can save the daughter who keeps falling on her face only so she can receive a sappy note and thank you on mother’s day every year.

sometimes just thinking about it makes me even sick.

I hate that you do so much sometimes, I hate that you constantly put yourself out there, and I hate that I feel like there isn’t anything I could ever do to make it up to you. Especially when I keep failing at everything and can’t seem to pick myself back up to ever really do anything special for you.

So I will end this sappy note or letter or whatever you want to call it by saying thank you. By letting you know that no matter how hard I tried I could never really make it up to you..I would never know where to begin…

But I will say that I hope one day I am even half of the mother you are. I know we don’t see eye to eye, and it’s ironic because when Allie wrote it in the book to Rylei it made me think exactly of you…we never will see eye to eye, and that’s okay, because I know for a fact I will never find anyone who will love me so much, who will stand by my side, and who will fight for me…like you do.

I hope I can be as strong of a mother as you are, and show my kids the same overflowing love that you show every day.

I love you mom,

Your ever growing yet still crippled in life daughter, 

well, me.