I’ll always look back on 2004 as the year that I changed. I’m not sure whether I would classify it as a maturing year for me, or a year which got me back on my feet after a few idling years of confusion; I would just simply say, for better or for worse, I changed.
Not drastically. I’m still Cat, of course. I still roll my eyes at the morning sun or birds chirping. I still interject sarcastic comments into every available space in a conversation, whether I was invited to or not. I still haven’t found the time to join a gym to try and gain some semblance of muscles in my legs, and each time I try and work out in Justin’s gym, the TV calls out to me and I end up watching something on Comedy Central with popcorn in my hand.
But then, how have I changed? Surely I’m just the same, cynical girl that I was a year ago?
Well, yes, I am. But this time around it’s different, because I have a boyfriend.
Have you ever noticed that as soon as you drop the phrase, ‘My boyfriend and I’ into a conversation, everyone abruptly stops and listens to you? You suddenly have something interesting to say, you have the membership card to the ‘Couple Club’; people hold you in such high regard, just because you’re in a relationship.
Particularly so when it’s, ‘My boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, and I’. Every time I casually drop that phrase into a conversation, it’s as though I’ve whispered, ‘abracadabra’, and I get treated with the respect and admiration I so clearly should have received all along.
So, who do you think instigated this cocky, arrogant, ‘I’m the shit, and don’t you forget it’ attitude that you’ve never heard from me before?
I’ll give you three guesses.
Even after five months, I’m still getting used to being ‘Justin Timberlake’s girlfriend’. Every day I wake up and look to my right to see him still sleeping beneath the covers, one arm thrown protectively over my waist, and I think, is this really happening? Have the events of the past year just been the crazy daydreams of a desperate girl? Am I going to wake up any second and find myself living at Diane’s, working in the grocery store, and very much alone?
I pray to God not.
I’m sure everyone is confused when they see us together. Here I am, this insecure, anti-love, sassy girl, who is on the arm of a gorgeous, happy, confident specimen of a man. What could we possibly have in common? To be frank, I don’t know. Our outlooks on life are completely different, our personalities can clash dreadfully at times, and let’s be honest, I don’t follow the pattern of his slew of beautiful girlfriends.
So it’s true. We don’t match. We’re the odd pair. The pair people raise their eyebrows at and tut disapprovingly, because they know we’ll never last. The rulebook would probably classify us as truly fucked.
The odd thing is, neither of us care.
I never tell anyone this, because it makes me sound like one of those crappy romantic novels you read on planes because they’re long and take up a portion of your traveling time, but sometimes I think I love Justin so much it hurts. It’s as though he’s my oxygen, and without him, I can’t breathe. I’m almost afraid to close my eyes, in case I open them and find that he isn’t there. I love him too much.
But don’t tell anyone I said that. I do have a reputation to uphold, after all.
---------------------------------------------------
If there’s anything I’ve learnt over the past year, it’s if you want something bad enough, you’ll get it. I wanted peace and quiet from the press, which I got. I was finally away from parties, alcohol, girls, I got that too. I wanted to just have a year living as a semi-normal guy, goofing around with my friends, which I got.
I wanted Cat so badly I thought it was going to tear me in two, but it didn’t, and I got her as well.
Maybe it’s a little conceited to assume I ‘got her’ After all, I was the one who was dragged under by her sarcasm and her ability to make me laugh when I least expected it, so much so that there was a point where I could do nothing but pine for her. When I say I got her, it’s as though it was just another thing I conquered, but it wasn’t. I know for a fact she was this close to staying with Sean and forgetting all about me. I suppose it would be fairer to say she got me.
I thank God everyday she didn’t pick him. I mean, he was the easy way out, he was the more obvious answer. I couldn’t give her the promises of forever like Sean could. I don’t have the intelligence that they have. I didn’t have the acceptable appeal that Sean did.
But she did choose me, as she reminds me when I’m bitching about the fact she’s still friends with him. She said she ‘owed it to him’ to at least be civil, it was the least she could do after everything that had happened. My reply normal is whatever. Cat is a great catch, even though it may have taken me a while to figure it out, and I know if she wasn’t my girlfriend, I’d wish she was. Actually, I’ve already been there, but anyway…I trust her completely, but if he makes one move that I deem less than appropriate, that guy will wish he was never born…
It feels good to be able to talk about Cat like that. To be all protective over her, and to have the right to claim she is ‘mine’, even though if she heard me say that, she’d go all feminist on me. Just because we’re in a relationship doesn’t mean she’s any less independent. She keeps any affection for me behind closed doors. She refuses to admit she loves me if other people are around. You probably wouldn’t even know we were together if you saw us together.
But, like I said, behind closed doors, when we’re alone, she’s so different. She allows herself to be much more defenseless and exposed, and doesn’t keep so many secrets. I’ve learnt more about what goes on in her head during one of our midnight talks as we lay in bed than I did throughout our entire friendship. In a rare moment of vulnerability, she admitted she felt safe when she was with me, as though she could let her guard down a little, and not be what people expected her to be.
I know what she means. Everyone expects her to be funny and dry all the time, when sometimes I know she just wants to sit in the corner and observe what’s going on around her. I think she’s always felt as though if she wasn’t that way, people wouldn’t like her. I had known Cat was insecure when we were friends, but she always made it seem funny. It was as though she could turn anything into a joke, so she’d say her legs were like tree trunks, and that was just the calf, stuff like that. It was funny, but when I realized she actually meant it, it wasn’t funny at all.
I don’t know whether we’ll be together for ever. I can hope, and I can be thankful for the blissful few months we’ve had, but I’ll never really know. But even if we aren’t, and I’m left a shell of a man because I quite frankly can’t live without her, as long as she’s happy in her own skin, that’s all that matters.
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