Married Off

No one knows how to build you up or tear you down like your mother.  She can be your biggest cheerleader and your greatest critic, especially if you are Southern.  I am blessed with an incredible mother who encouraged me to move to DC with just a suitcase and a dream.  She has helped with rent so I don’t have to worry about getting stabbed every time I leave my apartment, and she buys a plane ticket when my homesickness gets out of hand.  She also does not hesitate to tell me that something used to fit differently (aka you have gained weight), I would look “disgusting” as a redhead, and if God wanted my hair curled he would have given me curly hair.  All out of love, or course.  

Since I turned 26, she has begun a new type of criticism mixed with guilt.  When we were talking the other day, she decided to bring up a guy from my hometown.  This guy is great, it is true, but my mom has been trying to get me to date him for a full decade.  He is now doing his residency post medical school.  Now, I will admit that I did try to date him in college, but he just wasn’t into it, or more accurately, oblivious to my efforts.  The rest of the conversation went as follows:

Harper: Mom, stop trying to marry me off!

Mom: You know I used to never understand those parents that tried to marry off their children.  Now I get it!  I just want you to be married.  I think a wedding would be fun!

Harper: Mom, yes a wedding would be fun.  You think I don’t want to be married?  It is not that easy.  I first need to find someone to date me.

Mom: I just don’t want your nieces to be my only grandchildren.  

It’s not like I don’t put enough pressure on myself for not being in a certain place in my life.  I do want to find a partner to spend the rest of my life with.  If I could will that to happen, I would be married already, but I can’t.  I have to let life run its course.  When I am ready, when my soulmate is ready, everything will fall into place.  Until then, I will have to deal with my mom trying to marry me off to the next “great catch” she discovers back in Mississippi.  

Her guilt trips sting more sometimes than others.  Last week, I found out that my high school love Daniel got engaged.  Daniel is, to this day, the longest and most serious relationship I have ever had.  Two years we were together, and I loved him.  He loved me, maybe more than I loved him.  I broke his heart twice, so it is only fair that when I fell back in love with him right after college that he broke mine.  I told him I loved him right before I was supposed to leave for DC.  I would have stayed if he had asked me to, but he told me to go, he told me we would only ever be just friends.  

I have loved a few people in my life, but Daniel is the only one of them who ever loved me back.  He loved me when I didn’t deserve it, and his heart broke at my hand.  I was young, scared, and didn’t appreciate the simple kindness of his love.  I often feel cursed, that I broke my first love’s heart, and therefore, every love after him will break mine.  Maybe he is the only person who will ever love me, the only person who will ever open their heart to me.  Now he is marrying someone else.  What if your person chooses someone else?  What happens then?  How do you survive if the only person that will ever love you chooses to stop loving you?  How do you move on from that?  

Maybe my mom is right for trying to marry me off.  Maybe I will never find love on my own.  It is quite possible that at 16 years old I threw away the only real love I will ever have.  

I am happy for Daniel.  I will always love him, and I am so glad he found his happiness.  I just wish I could find my own.