One step can be one step to far

I knew this day would come.  Her echo is back.

Caitlyn

It had to come eventually.  When I first posted my 'goodbye' post on Caitlyn's Masks, I vowed that I'd "Stay Away" from anything Caitlyn for at least one month.  No posting, no attempts at capping, no commenting.... nothing.

At least nothing on an 'active' scale.  I would still visit blogs, read caps, and most importantly read posts from other cap artists.  But I wouldn't lest myself interact.  It would have been just too easy to slip back into that mask and try and speak with her voice.

So I went quiet.  Like the submarine from Red October.  I'd become what I was before Caitlyn... a lurker. But eventually that would have to end, and for two very good reasons.  1) I want to ensure that the Masks blog stays up.  2) I want to interact with my friends... just not as Caitlyn or any imitation of her.  So eventually I'd want to comment on someone's blog.  Eventually I'd want to update the blog.  At that point I'd face the spectre... the echo.. of Caitlyn again.

That time is now.


Really it started up August 1st.  Rauk was leaving the capping world and posted his final cap "A New Transformation".  Even if I didn't get anything out of the cap, I knew I was going to post a comment to say goodbye.  But the cap itself... WOW.  The sentiment that he shared could have come right from my own heart.  So I posted a comment.  The dam had broken.

Around the same time Dee posted a DIY caption series that involved a masked woman.  A black and white photo where only certain areas were colored in.  She even invoked using 'Calvin/Cailtyn' as the names in the cap.  And her cap... well it was like a song for the last year I had tried to cap.  All about wanting to be something and sadly accepting that you couldn't be that thing.  So I commented there too.

Now, in my quiet time, I would hit up blogs on an irregular basis. I would go on random days at random times and have no real goal.  I wasn't looking for a new cap, or comment, or anything like that.  But posting comments brought back old habits.  Now I wanted to see any reactions to the post that moved me and any reactions to my own comments.  I started to regularly go visit both Rauk's and Dee's blogs.  I'd even skip over all other blogs on some days and just 'check in' with those two.

And that's exactly how I'd act as Caitlyn.  I didn't see it then, but then I took the next step.  I updated the Masks blog.  I had had an idea previously of picking one of my old caps and talking about how I looked upon it now.  I had even thought of doing that before leaving Caitlyn behind... kind of a 'how would I make this cap now?'.   I never explored it as Caitlyn, but making a post, carefully reading the process I used to make the original cap, carefully reading the cap (I picked a steamy one), and then writing up my feelings.... well that's Caitlyn's behavior.

A quick asside... if you're confused about how I refer to 'Caitlyn' and 'me'... well join the club.  I get confused myself.  She's not a separate person.  She is a separate person.  She's both.

I continued to follow her behavior.  Once I got home from work I checked in to see how the post had gone over.  I logged into the blog and looked at the view count.  I checked out how it performed over the first few hours of posting and saw that it hadn't exactly blown the doors off previous posts.  But then again it was posted fairly early in the morning, it didn't involve a new cap, and my day-to-day audience is a smitten of what it used to be.   I could probaly get those numbers up if I just posted it later in the day.  And if I made this a fairly regular scheme... say posting a couple times a week... I could probably build up a more regular audience and get those page views to come back up.  Heck.. if I made a new cap I could even...

WHAT THE FUCK!!!????

No exaggeration... that's the thought process I went through as I looked at the graph of page views.  I was already well on my way of trying to 'come back'.  Not as an innocent (well... I've never been innocent) bystander, but as a cap artist and contributer to the community.   In a few short hours I had completely blocked out the problems and pain and utter darkness that chasing that... that way of being... did to me in the past year.  How I couldn't make it work.  How I would get so pissed off at myself for failing to make something that I loved.  How even though my life is going good, I started to look at myself as a failure.

I guess I didn't really transform... I just blocked out.

What this really reminds me of is quitting smoking.  I had quit smoking for about 3 weeks once.  I honestly thought I had beat the beast back.  Then one night while getting drunk I bummed a smoke off a friend.  It couldn't hurt to smoke just one.  The next (hungover) morning I had another cigarette.  Smoking around drinking wasn't the same as smoking on a regular basis.  But it had opened up a dam.  By the end of that week, I was a full time smoker again.

Well... not this time.  I'm not Caitlyn any longer.  I don't' want to be her and don't want to try to be her... no matter how much I DO want to try.  She hasn't brought me happiness for so long, and no matter how happy I was being her, that time is gone.

So... maybe two months was too short of a time.

I hate to treat myself like a petulant child, but in this way I AM a petulant child.  I won't log into the back end of the blog for at least a month.  I won't comment anywhere for the next week or so... not even to my own recent post.  I'll allow myself to email, and I'll allow myself to visit blogs.  But if this feeling doesn't go away again, I'll have to limit that too.

Yes... in a way I'm grounding myself.  I'm wagging my own disappointing finger at my own pouty face.  I've been a bad gir... NONONO!