Tag: writing

SEPTEMBER 11, 2025: “Do YOU Remember?” …

The Diary Of My Perfection

DO YOU REMEMBER?

Where were YOU at “8:46am” on Tuesday, September 11, 2001? I was standing in my then 9 year old son’s room watching the news, folding laundry, and literally glued to the screen. When the South Tower was hit, I vividly remember clenching the bath towel that was in my hand, pressing it to my chest, holding on to it for dear life, and being paralyzed by an adrenaline dump that at the time l’d only ever felt once before, which was at the moment I realized I was about to be raped in a parking garage in downtown Dallas on March 5, 1992. I couldn’t stop staring at the TV and was physically sick and numb. A few minutes later, my ex-husband called me:

Catherine! America is under attack! Get in the car and pull Christian out of school NOW!

AND I DID! I sped to his school in sheer panic and daze in nothing but my pajamas and a bathrobe only to be met by countless other parents (many of whom were also in pajamas and bathrobes) standing in line at the door in tears. Christian was attending Canyon Creek Christian Academy in Richardson, Texas, at the time which was just a few blocks away from The Islamic Association of North Texas that unfortunately and WRONGFULLY experienced immense backlash from the attacks that I wholeheartedly believe were an inside job and not the international terrorism the powers that were and accompanying media outlets so vehemently wanted us all to believe.

How little did I know on that day that I would henceforth become all too familiar with that very same “paralyzing adrenaline dump” with each of the life, psyche, and neurologically altering traumas I’d then go on to experience MANY times after that day … not the least of which was yesterday as I was glued to the screen once again at the moment Charlie Kirk was pronounced dead. By the way? Guess what I was doing at the exact moment I heard the words, “We have breaking news for you. Charlie Kirk has been pronounced dead”?

I WAS FOLDING BATH TOWELS!

For those of you reading this who weren’t yet born when “September 11th” became our new reality, it is my most sincere hope prayer that you’ve since educated yourself about what REALLY happened that day. Also? I just wish so badly you “kids” could have known what it was like to live in THAT America … where we were still “ONE Nation under God” and relatively free from harm in our own homes and public places. I’m haunted by the ghost of her and miss her terribly.

MAY 25, 2025: “The Anchor” …

The Diary Of My Perfection

When this question was posed on my writing forum today, “What is the biggest burden of your life?”, my answer was instantaneous and all but jumped out of my skin:

Perhaps amongst the heaviest burdens in my life is the one that as an empath I feel compelled, if not psychologically hardwired to bear when it comes to all but SCREAMING to others I see carrying all the heavy stuff that they refuse to just PUT DOWN!
{See Also :: “Heavy“}

You can say it all fades away in time, but this grave is a ladder that I must climb! Since the day that you left, I can’t seem to move on. All the weight that I felt, will I sink ’til I’m gone? THE ANCHOR!

Look, I don’t know who needs to hear this right now, but truth being told, although the lifelong effects of grief in every form do tend to fade away in time … be it grief for the dead, the living, or all the tangible things a person can lose … just six feet beneath every grave is the first rung of a ladder that you must climb up before you can move on – BUT – you’ll never make it up that ladder and out of the endless amounts of burial plots we humans dig for ourselves unless and until you CHOOSE to let go of the chain that keeps you anchored to that unhallowed ground below.

Remember …

No weight of any kind can just jump into your hands, wrap itself around your neck, or straddle itself across your back. YOU have to agree to either pick it up or allow yourself to be burdened with it. Do you understand this? It is CRUCIAL to your human survival, mental wealth, and growth that you understand this! Make the choice to drop that anchor and unburden yourself!

I have long believed that the truth of just about anything can be found in all the questions you aren’t allowed to ask. A more sobering truth, however, is that often the person who is refusing to allow “the questions” we so desperately need the answers from is the one we face in the mirror. With that being said, I cannot encourage anyone who’s searching for the reasons they’re sinking to the abyss strongly enough to do that most important work of all, which is to sit with yourself in solitude and have what just may be the most important conversation of your life.

Who, what, when and where do I need to let go of so that I can finally learn to breathe again?

(ps)

IF I CAN DO IT, YOU CAN DO IT! Trust me when I say I’ve have had my share of “heavy shit” to carry in my head, heart, and soul, but it wasn’t until I DECIDED to do the work, ask myself “the questions”, then drop all the weight that I finally started living freely and became my OWN “master“. No one else could have done it for me … not even God Himself! It’s called free will for a reason, people, and one will only ever be “anchor free” when they CHOOSE TO BE! Just sayin’.

– Tyson Liberto –

MAY 22, 2025: “Today @ 8:12AM!” …

The Diary Of My Perfection

Dear Me,

Oh, how this epic roller coaster of a life I get to ride on never fails me! Five years, six months, and one whole day later, and leave it to that ride or die of mine and his bittersweet, cryptic, and powerful “music thing” messages to bring one of THE most important Diary entries I’ve ever written full circle by sending me THE perfect song to finally pair with it!

Meanwhile, and dare I remind you …

This is no longer just our communion. The worms of our flesh have turned with all the sacrifices you once swallowed, but now the once cold blood from the cup is warm again. It wasn’t so evil, as much as it was hunger … this body and the bones I picked clean. I built that cage I was trapped in with her, but guess what? I REMEMBERED WHERE I’D HIDDEN THE KEY! All of the reasons for me to get by became a need to get “high”, then pulled me down into an abyss of a life that was no fucking life whatsoever! The trick was always for me to get out of my own skin, but the beast had been calling for me all the while and slowly assuming control. I once truly was a taxidermy sewn into my own soul, but THESE days? NO MORE SLEEPING … only STAYING WIDE AWAKE in this dream that’s allowed me to get out of my own skin, because I was only ever as sick as the secrets I kept within! Those days are gone now, though, aren’t they? I’m so fucking proud of you, me! I LOVE YOU!

MAY 20, 2025: “The BEST Of Times!” …

The Diary Of My Perfection

For me, the train is headed to 78 Lookout Avenue in Johnston, Rhode Island, the place where I was born, at the home of my Uncle Norman and Auntie Connie, where pretty much all my “happiest childhood memories” still live. It was “the house with the slate floors and the little lawn jockey holding a lamp at the end of the driveway”! I can see it in my mind right now as if I’m pulling in for Easter dinner this second and can smell her cavattis in gravy as I’m walking over the threshold of the back kitchen door where we’d be greeted with THE biggest hug EVER from my Aunt. (“Gravy”, for all you NON goombahs reading this is what we Italians call that red, saucy stuff in jars some of you buy at the store to serve with pasta!)

They weren’t just my Godparents, but more so much more than that, and it was their home where our entire family would typically gather for major events and milestones before it sadly all blew apart one sad day the summer of ’79. Their son, “My Cousin Norman”, lol, was and is still perhaps THE biggest Kiss fan alive, and not only was his room where my sister and I would often hang out when my Aunt was babysitting us was literally plastered wall to wall in KISS album covers and memorabilia, but down in the basement he he’d built an actual KISS stage where he and his friends from the hood would dress up like Paul, Gene, Ace, and Peter and play concerts for all us cousins in the audience!

It’s been almost 15 years since the last time I went back to Providence when Zack and were on our honeymoon, actually, but every single time I do go home, I always make sure to drive by their old house … and? I CRY MY FUCKING EYES OUT! You know me, right? I’m nothing if not a pile of nostalgia and emotions (topped with a heaping serving of F-BOMBS)! Good times! No. The BEST of times!

So, where’s the train dropping YOU? Tell me in the comments!

APRIL 27, 2025: “The FIGHT Club!” …

The Diary Of My Perfection

“It didn’t kill me … but something changed.
A piece of me lost … forever estranged.
I walked away … yet not the same.
A shadowed soul … a quiet flame.
That day took part of who I was …
left me searching, without a cause.
I carry on … but feel the void.
A heart once whole … now destroyed.
It didn’t end me … but I’m not whole.
An echo remains deep in my soul.
I’m here … I breathe … but truth denied …
A part of me that day quietly died.”
{Author Unknown}

You’ve oft heard it said, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!” Indeed, I wholeheartedly agree! HOWEVER, what prolly also should be said literally every time someone utters those ever so famous “seven words” is:

“… but not before it literally fucking BREAKS you first”!

I’ve had the, err, “privilege” of one of these “falling to your knees and screaming” moments three times now. The first was more of an internal raging scream at that moment my nugget of a daughter slipped into the next room, headed to The Brighter Side Of Grey, and flew off with a piece of my soul. The second was that night back in 1999 when one of the less than a handful of men I’ve ever truly loved hopped on his Harley and rode head-first into a brick wall going 90mph with no helmet. The third was on August 23, 2019, when the police chief of Parker, Texas walked into the hospital where my daughter was also shattering to tell me they’d found my husband dead in his car courtesy of the hollow point he’d put in his own head:

No, I don’t think God was laughing that day or that He laughs on any of the days we spend facing the wrath of His angels. In fact, I’m certain that He was on that hospital wailing WITH me and holding me tight as every shred of what I’d come to believe as truth turned out to be the devil’s lie. God DID give me wings, but it was MY job to learn to fly. I had to face not just Zack’s, but my own “devil in the mirror” before I could ascend to the sky.
(“I’m Alright, Thanks For Asking.”)

So, yeah, I’m still here and none of those moments killed me, but here’s to that sorry ole devil for trying, right? (#IMWINNING, lol!) I guess what I’m saying is that if you haven’t had one of these moments yet, God love you. No, seriously.

Even more seriously, though, while this, err, “fight club” of sorts really really stinks and the membership fee sucks massive BALLS, know that once you get your card you’ll be welcomed and embraced by the rest of us who’ve gone toe to toe with everything that was meant to break us and lived to tell about it! Until then, take NOTHING and NO ONE for granted, please. Life is precious and so is your mental wealth, so here’s hoping that when (and not if) your time finally comes to hit the floor and shatter, you’ll find every bit of power, grace, fortitude, and resilience hiding within yourself to join the ranks of us who’ve SURVIVED (and even THRIVED) “post-mortem”. And oh, yah, one more thing …

“#MEMENTOMORI“!

“I’m Alright, Thanks For Asking.”

APRIL 19, 2025: “SIZZLING In My Holy Water!” …

The Diary Of My Perfection

Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – IF you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement … It’s poetry.
(J.D. Salinger – “The Catcher In The Rye“)

If you’ve ever read “The Catcher in the Rye”, you may be familiar with the quote above and how it was spoken by the teacher who showed compassion to Holden by not speaking to him like a holier than thou ass wipe … the irony, however, being that said teacher was later busted staring at him, err, “inappropriately” while he was sleeping. I guess the point I’m trying to make here (especially as many of us are looking forward to chocolate bunnies and ham tomorrow) is that although I do so love “humanity” and this EPIC life I’ve lived amongst it thus far, people are basically living bags of shit (some more so than others. That includes me, as well. The worst of us, however, are the ones who are both too blind and stupid to see their innate shittyness in a mirror or worse yet, too selfish and lazy to even bother trying to learn from not just others’ mistakes, but their own, thus the aforementioned “beautifully reciprocal arrangement”.

What I love about this song by The Funeral Portrait is that as a “recovering” Catholic, I’ve always had a twisted relationship with holy water. There was a time in my life I was certain I’d literally sizzle like bacon if even a drop of holy water touched me and was absolutely terrified to go into a church. Guess what?

Those days are OVER!

I’ve made peace with and forgiven my inherent depravity – good, bad, AND “sizzly” – and walk in the POWER of the GRACE I now wield for almost every other “human” being. Meanwhile, as out loud and proud “Jesus freak“, I’m thanking GOD that tomorrow isn’t just about chocolate bunnies and ham for me. It’s about my belief that “FUCK that holy water biz”, ’cause I’m good now!

Bye everyone, it’s me, CAT! Now, go on and wash your damn self, “sinner”, and also have a REALLY nice evening! Here’s hoping the Easter bunny treats you well, no matter your race, creed, religion, or SINS! For the record, I cannot say enough how much I adore this fucking band and what an epic decision it was for them to collaborate with one of my favorite sinners of all, Ivan FUCKING Moody!

APRIL 18, 2025: “… And Here’s To ANOTHER Good Good Friday!” …

The Diary Of My Perfection
I’ve prayed incessantly for the moment I would be at peace with the thought of no longer being the number one woman in his life, and yes, “you” have always been at the forefront of my MOST important prayers:
“Please, God, PLEASE let her momma be raising someone precious for my son. No, I’m not asking for her to BE perfect. Just let her be the perfect one for HIM.”
Some years ago I found this excerpt from a prayer someone wrote to God about his own sons, and I’d been keeping it tucked safely in the “drafts” of this Diary for the day he’d finally found someone who I believe was worthy of sharing it with. It had something to do with Princess Katherine, who as you know just became The Princess Of Whales:
“And so I pray … for a princess that realizes she’s the daughter of the King of Heaven and Earth … for a Princess clothed in humility and grace (rather than the latest fashions and trends) … for a princess with hands that will get dirty for the sake of serving others and feet willing to walk the extra mile (rather than one that demands manicures and pedicures by age seven) … for a princess whose “adornment” is not merely outward (arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel), but rather, let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is “very precious in the sight of God.” {1 Peter 3:3-5} … for a princess who loves unconditionally and forever, and doesn’t run out when her prince falls off his royal horse and isn’t as charming as she dreamed (because it WILL happen). Amen.”
(“How To Talk To The Girl“)

And so, with that, here’s to me realizing that no matter where in both Heaven AND Hell this journey has already or will ever take me, I’m still and always God’s most FAVORITE daughter ever and one REALLY really blessed momma. BY the way, how freaking epic is it that she “kept” that little voice message I left her? As I said to her in the screen-shotted conversation you’ll see below, although she and I will clearly not always see eye to eye on things over the years, these are the moments that I’ll most want them all to remember when the time comes for me to head on over to The Brighter Side Of Grey. Here’s hopin’ they just “leave out all the rest! Indeed, today is a GOOD “Good Friday“.

As and aside, can I just say this to any and all of you mothers-in-law out there reading this right now? If you are blessed enough to have a son who’s found a girl to spend his life with who loves him as much as you do, why not take a minute to just let her know that “you see her”? Although “Monster-In-Law” was a really cute movie, the message therein was powerful:

“A daughter is her mother’s entire heart existing outside her body. She is her strength and her dreams and a better human than she could have ever imagined. She is her light, her baby, her world.” (Unknown)
But what about a daughter-in-LAW? She is his mother’s entire HEART existing outside her body. She is his strength and his dreams and a better human than either he or his mother could have ever imagined for him. SHE is his light, HIS baby now, and HIs world (as it should be)! Now that I think of it, this same rule can apply to all you dads out there, too. I of all people know exactly what it feels like when a father or even grandfather can’t cut the cord.
(“Monster-In-Law“)

JUNE 3, 2024: “Love Bites” …

The Diary Of My Perfection

True love can really “bite”, can it not? So, let’s philosophize about it about, starting with the picture quote above. What we have here, dear readers, are two vastly different philosophers (may they both be resting in peace) by way of their waxing some of life’s burning questions, with even more vastly different truths about how they survived “love’s bite”.

I’ve been reading Franz Kafka since my freshman year of college, by the way, and very much align with his inner beetle. I’m “Kafkaesque” to the core in my grave disdain for all things alienation and bureaucratic absurdity, and do quite often find the human condition surreal and nightmarish. Lol! To think that those who know personally thought I was just a bird brain!

Dostoevsky? He stayed in love because his truth was that it was worth every last nibble, no matter bittersweet, painful, or brief. So? He’d “hold on for dear life“, because for him, love required fully surrendering to and losing himself in it.

Kafka, on the other hand, would just leave love behind, because his truth was that it all but demanded he save HIMSELF. So? He’d “let go for dear life”, because loving HIMSELF meant walking away from anything he’d once thought he couldn’t live without that harmed him.

As for me? I have scars from both sets of love’s teeth, BUT, now that I’ve come this far in my journey and fallen completely in love with MYSELF, I can honestly say I’m more “Kafkaesque” in my relationships of ANY kind going forward. As a “crucified mother”, however, I’m also “Dostoevsky” and in it to win it, win, lose, or draw with my babies for LIFE! Jean-Claude Van DAMN, ain’t love a many splendored thing?

So? Which of love’s chomps do you keep close to the bit? Do you tend to “stay” even if it’s breaking you, or “leave” even if it means breaking your own heart? Pretty deep stuff, right? Hi everyone! It’s me, “The REAL Cat Fyodor Kafka Williamson” … writer, mother, and LOVE BITTEN philosopher extraordinaire!”

For the record, for those of you who wanna be in the know. our beloved, tortured Kafka died this day 100 years ago at the relatively young age of 40:

How often Kafka had longed to leave his Prague! He noted the desire “to go away from Prague. To take action against this, the greatest human damage I have ever suffered, with the strongest chemical agent I have at my disposal” in his diary on 9th March 1914. This wish was fulfilled in the most tragic way: the final phase of his life was spent in Dr Hoffmann’s sanatorium in Kierling near Klosterneuburg, a picturesque village a few miles outside Vienna. Here, on 3rd June 1924, the ill-fated author succumbed to tuberculosis; he was cared for in his last agonizing weeks by his friend Dr Robert Klopstock, and his lover Dora Diamant. Franz Kafka thus gave sleepy Kierling a place in the annals of literary history.
(“Kafka’s World“)

APRIL 27, 2024: “NO! We Ain’t Gonna Take It!” …

The Diary Of My Perfection

The Quora question was:

… and my unfiltered asshole

TRUTH BOMB of an answer was:

Lol, the “no contact” thing with adult children today is the beautiful, powerful, collective result of an entire faction of adults who are now embracing their mental wealth and the accompanying new and improved relationship tools acquired as a result of the former generational stigmas about mental health advocacy and therapy. Long gone are the days when all them dirty little family secrets, poisons, and cyclically toxic patterns that had been gathering like moss on the proverbial pebble that started rolling downhill and passing down infections since probably the beginning of time! (Geesh! THANKS A LOT “Cave Grandpa and Grandma”!)

Imagine instead humanity-wide shift, if not earth quaking of broken children turned enlightened and healed adults who have bound themselves together like a rogue faction of Mad Max-men against the former “powers that were” singing together like twisted yet still standing upright sisters and brothers the words to this blast from 1984:

“We’ve got the right to choose it! There ain’t no way we’ll lose it! This is our life … this is our song! We’ll fight the powers that be .. just don’t pick our destiny ’cause you don’t know us! You don’t belong! Oh, you’re so condescending! Your gall is never ending! We don’t want nothin’ … not a thing from you! Your life is trite and jaded … boring and confiscated! If that’s your best, your best won’t do! We’re not gonna take it! NO! We ain’t gonna take it! We’re not gonna take it … ANYMORE!”

Do you get what I’m saying, people? Some say oblivion is bliss, but I say FUCK all that blissful oblivion! Being brave enough to finally open up your eyes and stare into the wreckage you availed from, as well sometimes the eyes of the monsters standing over that wreckage that some of us had to call “parents” and say,

Umm, yah! FUCK THIS SHIT and FUCK YOU, TOO, “mommy” or “daddy“! I neither signed up for OR deserved ANY of these heaping piles of bullshit you forced me to literally choke on while you were ramming them down my throat with those fists full of poison, so, DUECES! I’m OUT! K, bye bye!

And so, with that, indeed it’s true that if your adult kid doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore, YES, it is your fault! Didja hear me? YOUR fault! It’s YOUR fault! It’s ALL your fucking fault! Now, stop you’re damn crying like a Jean-Claude Van Damn effing victim and either fix what you broke or swallow this truth serum and STFU about it! But hey, what do I know, right? Lol! Oh, and one last thing: HAPPY 35th BIRTH MONTH to this actual “Mad Max-men” of a song!

DECEMBER 7, 2023: “Gambling With My Power + Grace” …

The Diary Of My Perfection

BACKSTORY:

I walked into a local car wash I’ve been patroning for 25 years today. Keep in mind that my sole purpose for even leaving my house in the first place was to go the car wash then Hobby Lobby for the supplies I needed to make the annual Christmas basket I’ll take to the cemetery in the morning for my daughter. I was in a happy, contemplative, and reflective headspace, because having the strength and resilience to bring flowers to my dead child’s grave as often as I do with peace and joy in my heart and not sadness and bitterness is something I’m very thankful for.

Meanwhile, the little bitch who’s been working their register for five or six years and always gives me an attitude no matter how much I try killing her with kindness saw the “Lions Den Live” shirt I was wearing:

“Oh, now it all makes sense,” she said.
“What makes sense,” I asked.

“The Lions Not Sheep people … they all think they’re better than everyone else.”

REALLY?

That’s when Satan jumped IN my actual ass, crawled up my spine, then expelled himself out of my mouth in an abysmal and very public display of vile. Am I disappointed in myself for just handing her my cards and giving her the upper hand? Umm, YAH! I mean, I’m a human, not a machine. Have I gotten over it and forgiven both her and myself? Yes, I have.

A very wise man once said that yet another very wise man once said:

You know, I’ve been asked a couple times why I always write “power and grace” and “love and respect” … It takes two things to make it in this world: Power and grace. Being powerful enough to project and to be assertive and stand for what you stand for, but have it be graceful at the same time, and having gratitude for those that, you know, come in contact with you, and so on and so forth. Love and respect, he said, was the second half of that, because to have power, you have to show those two things ~ love and respect. To have grace, you have to own both of those things ~ love and respect.
(Ivan Moody)

At the end of the day, while I was, indeed, powerful in my assertiveness and standing for what I stand for, I wasn’t at all graceful, loving, or respectful towards those I came in contact with. For that reason, I’ve spent a fair amount of time since then straightening my crooked crown, having a come to Jesus with myself, and recalling messages from my favorite battle anthems as well the voices of my ancestors and Earthen scions. I needed to remind myself that I’m SO much better than the way I behaved.

I’d like to think that if one of my ancestors was standing behind me in that lobby today, they’d have pulled me aside afterwards for a cigarette, a light, and a ‘lil chat that would have prolly gone something like this:

If you’re gonna play the game, girl, you gotta remember to play it right! You already know how to hold ’em, you’ve had to learn the hard way when to fold ’em, but now we just needa work on that “knowing when it’s time to walk away” piece. Umm, hello? Don’t you know who you are? You know damn good and well by now that THE secret to survivin’ is in the art of all the SILENT wars and never countin’ all that money when you’re either sittin’ or standin’ in front of the table!

By the way, if my husband’s ghost was standing behind me today watching all that shit go down, let me tell you that boy must have wanted to kick my ass! Had he been alive still today and standing there with me, he would have kicked my ass, been rightfully disappointed in if not ashamed of me, and would have read me a whole new kinda riot act on the way home from there, if not sooner.

For the record, I’ve already ordered How To Make Shit Happen from Amazon and will most definitely be bringing both it and a “LIONS NOT SHEEP” shirt to her one day next week, at which time I’m told I’ll be getting an apology from her. Regardless of my wresting with myself over the way I was triggered today and how much of an idiot I must have looked while representing both Sean’s brand and my own small but steadily growing platform of “love and light“, no one gets to assume that I or anyone “thinks they’re better than everyone else”, which by the way, is hilarious, since as far as I’m concerned, just her thinking and saying those words out loud to a complete and total stranger, did, indeed, make me “better than her” for at least that moment.