Short for Catherine Jackson.
I met her in Year 10. She was a loner and I was curious and interested as to why this was so. I discovered that she spent most of her time drawing and writing. She is a fantastic writer but a hard person to be near. I could tell she would one day be successful but until then this is some of her very early and beautiful work.
She did have friends but no one really close. She was very emotional about her work. I remember one time when in English class we were required to write a 1,000 word essay.Cathy wrote a nearly 2,500 word essay and therefore didn’t get an A grade because she went over the word limit and not because her work was of bad quality. She stormed towards the teacher and asked why this was so, he reasonably said because he had asked for a short 1,000 word essay and no longer, her face started to crumble and she began yelling, screaming and crying at the teacher for downgrading her work to a B grade just because she wrote more than was required. He didn’t change the grade but complimented her on her work and said the only way her work would ever be published is if she learned to keep to certain rules like word requirements.
The last I heard of her she was studying professional writing at university, that was more than three years ago, I suspect she is still struggling with rules at the expense of her work.
Her work I find to be really sad, which is understandable, due to her outcast type of position in the social structure of high school. I’d like to hope that she is doing well. She deserves to be. These are two of my favourite poems of hers Dreaming and Echo