'Catherine Parker' that is my insignificant name that fits well into my insignificant life, except for the traumatic part that is.
My mother gave me my name and I still believe to this day that she didn't give it much thought, I picture her seeing it on some magazine or hearing it from one of the nurses at the delivery room. I like to imagine that once I was delivered she looked away in annoyance and declared the name just to get them off her back just like she wanted to do with me at that very moment but for some mysterious reason kept me around until I was around 8.
I don't remember her well, my mother, I can piece some memories here and there but that's it. I still don't know the answer to why the first eight years of my life seem so blurry when I try to think of them but from the few videos online I think they called it' trauma response '.
And it really is traumatic for a person to live with a negligent mother. For your mother to forget to feed you and you end up at the hospital at the age of 4, taken from your mother only for you to end up with her again after 6 months because she' seemed fit and willing to raise you'.
Or for her to forget to enroll you to school like all the other kids and then abandon you one Friday evening at a gas station at the age of 8.
That is the highlighted summary of my life with my mother before I started moving from one foster home to another.
'The beginning of memory' as I call it, because all of what I know before was conveyed to me by others or in files.
My journey through foster homes was a tough one because I remember every detail of it, it was hard for me to adjust between group homes and being moved around a lot. I was known as the retarded kid who didn't know how to read at 8 years old.
But that didn't last long, because I became obsessed with studying and soon was known as the nerd girl who didn't have any time for anything but studying. I liked the praise for studying and mistook it for love, I thought that if I was a good girl who studied hard I would be loved and adopted eventually into a loving family.
But that never came true, and eventually solving equations turned into a great distraction from the reality ; I loved math because it was clean cut, easy to understand and without complications to me, far better than emotions and reasons why I wasn't like the other kids with mothers and fathers and homes.
I was always alone, I never had friends because at some point I stopped trying to befriend. It was too painful to get used to someone just for them to be moved to another home or be adopted while you were left behind.
I was always left behind that I sometimes wondered how it would feel to be the one leaving.
All well that ends well. At the end of those miserable childhood and teenage years, I was accepted at college with a scholarship and got to study finance.
It was at college when I first saw him... Darrius Astor.
I ran one day to economy class and there he was explaining on the board while the professor and students were following along. I was late and being my clumsy self I had to trip and make a scene with my books on the ground and a loud shriek that alerted everyone. When I looked up, our eyes met and his dark blue orbs sucked me in ; and while his were shining with amusement like everyone else mine were filled with wonder at who this beautiful man was and better yet why was my heart pounding so hard and my breath hitched every time he turned from the board.
It was love at first sight... I, the girl who never had any interactions with the other sex for 21 years of my life, was now unable to take my eyes off Darrius Astor.
I learned that he was a graduated student who started his own company at the Age of 26. He was the son of a wealthy family but his company was purely his own work with zero reliance on his privileged background.
He was there to give a lecture about investment given that our professor was his teacher and mentor.
I never forgot about him ever since, I was obsessed. Then again, I was always the obsessed type, anything I liked I would put all of my facous on, spend nights on days thinking and writing and speaking about it.
One of my obsessions was to be loved. Ever since I could remember, love has been a curiosity of mine, the idea that someone would love you infinitely was mesmerizing and foreign given that I never experienced it before.
I never had loving parents, so the Cathy who had an 'unknown father' and a troubled mother, knew about love only from books and movies, and the occasional kissing scenes from her classmates.
But now, I was in love with Darrius and it was all I could think of. I would skim magazines to crop his pictures and read about his latest feats. I would sometimes see him at college and time would freeze, I'd stand there and stare at him before he would leave not knowing anything about me.
I wished and hoped and day dreamed that one day he would notice me, I pictured myself joining one of his discussions with my classmates and impress him so much that he would ask me out ; but I was too timid and scared to embarrass myself or give away what I actually felt towards him.
And so I loved him from a far and planned out my whole future around him.
Success to me was not the day I graduated with honors, it was the day I was accepted as a trainee at his company 3 years after first laying eyes on him.
And the minute I first stepped foot into D&R Financials, I knew that my life would change forever.