Slipping ...

I can feel it.  It is creeping over me, slowly, with every ounce of bad news or bad decision.  I am slipping into my dark place.  I am trying to pull myself out, but I feel like I just keep slipping deeper.  It is like trying to climb up the side of a dark muddy hole, the harder you try to grip and claw the farther you fall, and the hole gets just a little bit deeper.  

This was supposed to be the year of Harper, this year of empowerment and good things.  I keep making decisions to try to prove I am living my life for me.  I dyed my hair red.  I said it was because I always wanted to, which isn’t a complete lie but it isn’t the whole truth.  I needed to know if the blonde bombshell persona I have been hiding behind all of my twenties was the only thing that made me me.  Am i more than a Marilyn Monroe wannabe?  You might be saying to yourself it is just hair, but our society puts a lot of emphasis on hair.  People spends ungodly amounts of money to color, cut, and protect their hair.  People sew and clip in someone else’s hair to give them the look of full abundant hair that society has told us is beautiful.  If I added up how much I spent on the salon and products every year it would probably make me sick.  So, how did going red make me feel?  At first I didn’t even recognize myself.  I worried that I had just taken away the one thing that helped make my features beautiful.  I found myself worried about what every person in my life thought about it.  Would I still attract the same men or any men at all?  It has been a month and I have decided to keep it red, at least for now.  I think in many ways it is making me face some of my fears.  Which is good, because the rest of my life just makes me want to run.

Why do I want to run?  Why am I slipping farther and farther?  This is really hard for me to talk about.  I am just going to blurt it out.  My mom is going to leave my dad.  At 29 years old, my parents are going to get a divorce.  Or at least my mom likes to talk to me about the selfish things my dad does and tell me she is looking at houses online and thinking about divorce attorneys.  I want them both to be happy, and if that means they need to be apart, then fine.  I know my life will turn upside down, but I am an adult; I can handle that for them.  It’s more that my example of love is broken.  No wonder I can’t find a healthy loving relationship, I didn’t exactly have the best example.  I date men like my father.  Men who only give you the little part of themselves that they want to share.  Men that never think about you when making decisions that will inevitably affect you.  Men who are selfish.  My mom tells me to break the cycle, to find someone who will adore me, but I don’t know how.  It is true, women end up dating their fathers.

I also am still not talking to Bee.  I sent her a message a month ago.  I know it was probably too late, but I meant what I said in it.  I love her, and I miss her.  I know that doesn’t change that we have things to work through, but it does mean that I want to try to figure things out.  I tried all summer to find the right words to say to her, but I never could figure out how to say how she has made me feel all these years without reliving every terrible moment.  I was too worried about my parents, and my job and just kept telling myself that it would keep.  We would work it out eventually, maybe we, maybe I, just needed some time.  Instead of time bringing us back together it has dissolved what we had.  How strong could our friendship have been if we can’t make it through this?  10 years, maybe that was the time limit on our friendship.

I try to forget Evan and the fact that when I tried to make something more of our causal relationship he just disappeared.  I try to brush away how deeply hurt I was.  I had really let him in, let him see all the parts of myself I try to hide.  Somehow he made me feel safe, and wanted, and alive.  I had given him more power to hurt me than even I had realized.  When he disappeared, the aching was palpable.  I wanted to feel anything else, anything but what I was feeling.  I have slept with boys to prove to myself that I am desireable, and to mask that I still care about Evan, still think about him.  

When he texted this weekend after 3 months of silence, there was a little part of me that wanted to believe the “I’m sorrys” and the “I miss yous”.  At least in that moment I was able to call him on his shit, to not let him off easy, to find some little ounce of strength.  I deserve more.  I was just starting to really be ok, and he had to pop back up, to remind me that my feelings for him are still there, fading but not yet gone.  

I try to grip a little harder, and I slip a little farther.  

Perfect Storm of Sadness

I am sad.  I am sad for a whole host of reasons.  I am sad because I am sleeping with someone I could actually really see myself with, but I am too scared to ask for anything more than occasional sex.  I am sad because M sent me a booty call text that made me so angry I could scream, and the fact that it made me feel something so extreme makes me sad.  I am sad because I finally told Bee how she makes me feel inadequate and she didn’t at all comprehend it, and now I feel like I am losing one of my oldest friends.  I am sad because maybe no matter how much self discovery I go through, I will still just be a girl seeking the approval of other people: of men, of friends, of anyone and everyone who might just for a second solidify that I am real and solid and worth something.  Maybe no matter how strong of a woman I have become there are moments when I am just a sad broken girl.

Sad and broken are the perfect words to describe how I feel in this moment.  All of this comes on the heels of things that should make me feel empowered.  I have a man who I enjoy having sex with and he enjoys having sex with me, and that should be empowering, to enjoy my body.  Instead I find myself just wishing Evan would want more from me than just my body.  I told him that the intimacy of staying the night with someone is just as important to me as sex, so he gave me that.  He stayed, he engulfed me in his arms, gently pressing his lips to my forehead.  He talked to me about real parts of his life.  I mistook him giving me what I told him I needed for him actually caring.  He cares about fulfilling my needs, not because he is falling In love with me, but it is what lovers do, they scratch an itch.  The problem with receiving intimacy from someone who doesn’t want to be with you is intimacy fosters feelings.  

So, here I am sad that I have contracted feelings for my fuck buddy and M has to go and text me.  We had been at a going away party for one of our friends, and I will admit I looked great, but losing 26lbs will do that for you!  M leaves early and while I am still sitting at the bar with our friends drinking cheap beer and debating the merits of everyone taking a fireball shot, my phone buzzes.  There it was, “Hey.”  It sat right below the message from January where he said “You are a pretty girl, I just can’t do this.”  That “Hey” was a punch in the gut.  What the actual fuck?  He has no right to text me.  He couldn’t even try to have a conversation with me for the 4 hours we were in the same room, but he thinks a drunk “Hey” is appropriate?  I have been such an adult about our whole situation, and he goes and does something as childish as testing the waters with a booty text.  I wanted so badly to text and ask if he was serious, but our friends talked me off the ledge.  I didn’t respond, and that should make me feel empowered.   

The worst part is since that text I have been so angry!  I have wanted to yell at him, tell him that he was the one that chose not to be with me, so he will never have the right to text me.  To scream that he needs to grow up, if not for himself than for his friends that have to constantly apologize for his shitty behavior.  More than anything I want to yell at myself for wanting to yell at all.  I have spent the last 6 months figuring out how not to care about M.  I tried to give him my heart and he didn’t want it.  He doesn’t get to want or have any other part of me, not even my anger.  

As I try to decipher my feelings for two guys that don’t want my heart just my body, I am also trying to decide what to do about my friendship with one of my oldest friends.  Bee and I have been friends for almost a decade.  There are very few memories about college that don’t have her in them.  I love her truly, but loving her and being her friend has not always been easy.  When we are one on one, Bee is the best friend that she knows how to be.  When we are in public, around other people, I have often felt like Bee’s sidekick.  Over the years, I have often felt like she acted like she didn’t know why I was hanging around when we were around people who didn’t know us that well.  Or that she wouldn’t stand up for me if it would affect the time she was having.  Maybe it has always been in my head, but I have, especially since we graduated college, felt uncomfortable and like I had to prove my worthiness.  I don’t believe Bee has any idea that she does this, but that still doesn’t make it right.  Just because she is the best friend that she knows how to be does not mean she is a good friend.  

After a recent wedding of one of our college friends, I actually stood up for myself and told Bee how I felt. After sending that message, instead of feeling empowered, I felt like I was going to throw up.  It took her a week to respond, and when she did, it was just hours before I left the country for 4 days I didn’t know how to process the novel she sent.  For the past month I have been putting it off.  Starting message after message, but never truly knowing what to say.  Am I ok with losing her?  Losing the one person who knows all my college secrets, heartbreaks, and triumphs?  Am I willing to settle for less than the kind of friendship I know I deserve?  How do you say I love you but you are a shitty friend without having to rehash every moment that they made you feel less important than they are?  I don’t know what to say, and it makes me sad.  

Sadness scares me.  Sadness is the slippery slope to that dark and twist place that I fight so hard to avoid.  But sadness is a part of life, and I know that.  I just wish I wasn’t smack in the middle of the perfect storm of sadness.  

How to be Friends

As time passes and I end up having to be in a room with M, more and more I wonder why it hasn’t gotten any easier.  I don’t still want to be with him; I am not even that attracted to him anymore, but for some reason, it still makes me anxious.  I don’t talk to him at all these happy hours, bridal showers, and birthday parties.  I am not rude, and I don’t avoid him per se.  I just don’t have direct conversation with him.  I am beginning to wonder if it is ever possible to be friends with someone who rejects you so directly.  

The thing about M is that I never thought about him romantically until he kissed me.  After he kissed me, I began to think, “oh ok, I could see this working”.  He wasn’t the kind of guy I typically would have pursued.  He wears cargo shorts, and prefers basketball over football, and if I am really honest, he isn’t pretty enough.  I didn’t love the way he kissed me, but I didn’t hate it either.  All in all, M was someone who didn’t immediately make my heart flutter and the sun shine.  But I thought maybe that was a good thing.  Maybe that is how it should really be, instead of the manic intense disasters that all my other past relationships have been.  So I gave him a shot; I started envisioning a very comfortable life with him, and then I really began to care about him.  In all reality, I think I convinced myself to fall for him.  I convinced myself he was what I wanted.   

Do you know what happens when your backup plan chooses not to be with you?  The person you convinced yourself to fall for just can’t be with you.  A part of you breaks.  Not because they broke you, but because you broke yourself.  You convinced yourself this person would never hurt you, that they were safe, they were worth it.  Then you realize you can’t even keep the kind of safe guy who should worship the ground you walk on, the kind of guy who you would never love with unabashed passion but love enough to have a comfortable happy life.  

It might not hurt so much if you didn’t have to see him.  Being in a room with someone who blatantly said you are not enough for them is like a continuous panic attack.  You look at them, and you hear the words all over again.  It is like someone constantly screaming in your head, “YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH!”  No matter how much you really don’t want him anymore, it is a constant reminder of your failure, your inadequacy.   

Although deep down I know that it was him.  M is a child, and our friends let him get away with too much.  He doesn’t grow up because no one makes him.  I am adult and he is a child.  I wanted something real, and he wanted a fuck buddy.  I should have moved on on my own accord.  I liked having someone though, I wasn’t ready to have no one again.  I didn’t want to start over for the thousandth time.  

Maybe that voice will fade with time, when I meet someone new.  When I have found someone who actually wants me, all of me, not just when they are bored or drunk.  Maybe it will fade when I don’t feel like everyone is watching to see how we are going to act together.  Sometimes it feels like all our friends are waiting for me to have a meltdown or get mad at M or drunk cry.  I mean sometimes I do drunk cry about the situation, but in the privacy of my own home or to Layson.  

I don’t know that I will ever be able to be friends with M.  I know everyone expects me to, and I will always be civil, but I can not see the day that I will be M’s friend.  Maybe as I get older I am too jaded to pretend.  Maybe I am hard like my mother says.  But really it boils down to this, if I offer you all of me and you reject it. you don’t get to have any of me.  

Four Years, How Far We Have Come

Four years ago, I said hello to the blogosphere, not quite sure where this would go or what I would be willing to share.  I liked writing, and I knew that it was something I really felt like I needed to take the time to develop.  I thought I would write witty posts about the things I was obsessed with, or jazz up the stories about my drunken nights to entertain.  I wrote those things, but I also began to write about the boys who would pop up in my life.  Some of it was sexscapades, but I also began to write about my heartbreaks, the twisted relationships that, good or bad, were beginning to shape me.  I began to pour my soul out every time I took to the keys.  Soon, I couldn’t decipher how I really felt until I was able to write about it.  

I surprised myself with how much I was willing to share.  When I would begin to write, my heart would open, my words didn’t filter, I said things I wouldn’t have the courage to say out loud.  I shared my sordid inappropriate, unhealthy, non-relationship with D.  It was on this page that I admitted to myself and all of you that I loved D, and it was on this page I finally let go, let him go.  

When my life turned dark and twisty, I wrote about my depression.  I wrote about going to therapy, and the things I did to work my way out of the dark hole  I had found myself in.  This blog became a place of self-discovery.  Even if I had to learn the same lesson over and over again, I found it cathartic.  As friendships crumbled and other grew I could write about it all here.  Even if no one was out there reading it, it was the process of writing that mattered.  Putting words together, yielding them into something worth reading or that can make people feel holds a certain power.   

Over the years I have had moments in my life when it was difficult to find the words.  When I lost people I loved to suicide and cancer, the grief was too much, too big to fit on a page.  If I am honest, it was something I had to own by myself for a while before I could share it.  Putting how I felt about losing my grandfather into a post just made it feel so definite, so much smaller than the feeling that engulfed me.  I also couldn’t bring myself to write about anything else, until I wrote about such a huge moment I couldn’t write about what else was happening in my life either.

My self-image, my confidence in who I am has faltered over the years.  It’s a struggle I have had since I was young, and it took a lot to share that with all of you, to write about eating disorders, bullying, and my own self-hatred.  I felt it was important, to share my struggles in case someone else might be going through something similar.  Something I have learned is, for people like me, loving yourself is a daily battle.  You have to take the world one day at a time.  Body image is much more of an inward struggle than an outward one.  

I am a mess.  I have always been a mess, but after 4 years of writing about all the moments that contribute to the making of me, I am a much more self-aware mess.    

Who am I now?  I am a strong Southern woman who is fastly approaching 29 (Eeek, panic!).  I work very hard at a job I like, even when it stresses me out to the point of tears (about once a week).  My family and friends are the most important thing in my life.  I would do anything for the people I care about, I mean like the person you call if you had a dead body to get rid of type of friend.  I make mistakes, lots of them, especially where men are concerned.  I want people to like me, a habit that I am trying desperately to break, but it is true I like to be liked.  I am not particularly funny, at least not on purpose.  I am a huge nerd!  I fangirl over all the things: Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, all the superhero shows.  That is probably because I am passionate, I love with all that I am, I feel very deeply.  All I want is what I what I think most people want out of life: to be happy and to be loved.

I want to say thank you for reading my melodramatic ramblings.  It has been a rollercoaster of emotions over the past four years, and I appreciate you taking the time to read what I have to say, and for allowing me to find my voice.  

Goodbye, Hello: the Apartment Transition

As I sat in my studio apartment for the very last night, I was overwhelmed with emotion.  As ecstatic as I was for bedroom walls, a dishwasher, and a fireplace, there was a tinge of sadness.  That was the apartment where I feel like I finally became an adult.  I overcame my fear of living alone.  Living alone doesn’t have to mean you are lonely.  For three years that shoebox of an apartment became my sanctuary from the shitty days at work, the heartbreaks, and the missteps. I accepted jobs sitting in that room.  I kissed boys who I thought were right, and ones I knew were wrong in that room.  There were plenty of single girl Saturdays, wine nights, visits from friends that all took place in that small little room. Those 500 square feet made up my home; they brought me into adulthood.   

Now, weeks later, I sit in my new home that doesn’t quite feel mine yet, even though there are touches of me everywhere.  I am still figuring out where things should go and finding a routine.  This is a real adult apartment, with color on the walls, and more than one room.  It makes my tiny studio feel like it was a dorm room pretending to be an adult apartment.  I look around my new living room and think of all the things that will happen in this room.  What big life moments will this apartment witness?  How many times will my life change inside these walls?

It frightens me a little to think that this is the place where I will finish out my 20s.  As my 29th birthday slowly approaches I am having to reconcile the fact that some of my dreams for my 20s won’t come true.  It is hard to believe that I was the 20 year-old who dreamed of being 30, and now I dread it.  I said goodbye to the life plan I made in college at 25, but now I am having to accept that my hopes I made at 25 or 26 are now slipping away.  I accept the wins I have achieved.  I celebrate every raise, every time I do something fun that married friends couldn’t do with the same ease.  I am celebrating this apartment, but a little part of me knows that this is another home for one.  A space with no room for anyone else.  I fill up every nook and cranny.  I can’t visualize anyone else in the space with me.  Does that mean I have resolved to be alone?  Does that scare me or am I accepting my mother’s opinion that I have become too hard to share my life with someone else?  

I know I am supposed to be so happy sitting in this living room full of pretty new things, but part of me just sees what this place isn’t.  It is an adult’s home, not that of someone who does wild spontaneous things, but not that of someone with the responsibility of sharing their life with another human.  It is a home of someone somewhere in between.  Maybe I need to fill it with my friends for it finally feel like home, for me to feel the joy I am supposed to feel, to remind me of how full my life is.    

2016: The Year of Harper

How I ended 2015, and how I have started 2016 feel like opposites.  Although I had an amazing New Years Eve with my single girl-friends, there was a part of me that was deeply sad.  We got dressed up, went to an amazing long dinner, and spent midnight watch the ball drop drinking champagne and playing Cards Against Humanity. But I guess there was a part of me that couldn’t get Christmas Eve out of my mind.  

Christmas Eve is supposed to be a joyous night, and it started off that way.  I shouldn’t have gone out to the bar with my brother after our family dinner.  I should have stayed in and watched Hallmark Movies with my mom, in the safe spot on the couch in my childhood home.  Instead, I went to the same dive bar I used to sneak into before I was 21, hoping to see old friends and let nostalgia comfort me.  Instead I encountered judgement and an icy reception from people who never left our small town.  So I drank more than I probably should have.  With that, the feels I had been pushing down for months came bubbling to the surface.  

See, in 2015 I kissed one person, just one.  I walked away from him, let’s call him M, because I cared more than he did.  He started it, he kissed me, but the hard part is he didn’t really mean it.  M wanted someone who was ok with being an afterthought in his life, and all I want is someone that wants to make me, and our relationship, a priority.  I tried to stay away, not to flirt when we were at the same parties, but for some reason I just seemed to like him more.  The more I tried not to care the more I seemed to.  His face, his weird laugh, they just made my heart flutter despite myself.  I knew our lives were in very different places, but there was just this part of me that could see what it would be like down the road when things fell into place.  That is probably why the night I accepted my new job he was who I wanted to spend it with; although I told myself it was because I just didn’t want to be alone, that the moment was too big to not share it.  

When I showed up to a Halloween party a month later and saw him kissing his new girlfriend, I fell apart.  I always thought the reason we weren’t together was because he didn’t want to commit to anyone.  Apparently he just didn’t want to commit to me.  I cried myself to sleep that night.  I allowed myself to be sad for one day and then pushed it all deep down, pretending that it didn’t matter, that he didn’t matter to me.  It was easy enough to keep my emotions in check, I have a lot of practice at it.  That is, until he texted me the week before Christmas.

I had been very cold with M every time he texted, hoping that playing hard to get would make him want more from me.  The problem is it just made me miss him more.  That is exactly what I was feeling on Christmas Eve, add wine and you get a text that never should have been sent.  “I miss you.”  Something about me felt desperate to know if he felt anything for me.  I couldn't start another year waiting around on him, hoping he would wake up and realize he wanted to be with me.  His response was not what I hoped for.  He “is all over the map” and doesn’t know what he wants.  I, in true Harper fashion, felt like I had to lay it all out on the table, like it would make a difference to send some romcom declaration.  I told him, “ I want someone who really cares about me and wants to be a part of my life.  If that isn’t you then I will move on.  But know that this is it with me.  This is me giving you another shot before I move on.  But for the record I have always wished it was you.”         

This lead to the 2 shots of Fireball, and making my brother take me home.  We fought in the car about how I pick jerks, and he doesn’t understand why I fall so hard.  The irony is on the walk from the car to my front steps I did fall hard, flat on my face.  Bleeding and bawling like a baby, I sat in my mom’s bathroom telling her I didn’t understand why he didn’t love me while she doctored my scrapes.  I said something out loud in that I hadn’t fully realized until that moment.  I just don’t know how many times I can keep starting over like this.  I don’t know what is left of my heart, it has just been broken so many times.  

When M said he thought we should talk about my feelings in person a few days later, I was too proud to take the opportunity.  I told him I didn’t think it was necessary.  Maybe that was a mistake, but in that moment I just couldn’t sit in front of another man while they told me it was them not me or whatever version of that conversation he planned on having with me.     

As the ball dropped and 2015 officially ended I couldn’t help but wonder who M was kissing at midnight.  Although I was in a room with 3 of my very best friends, doing the things we love to do, I wasn’t completely there.  I was deep within myself trying to both mourn what will never be and heal my own heart.   

At Chloe’s famous New Year’s Brunch on the 2nd, on hour 9 or 10 of drinking I texted one more time.  Then said sorry I shouldn’t be texting.  Having a man tell you to do what is best for you, and “you are a pretty girl”  somehow makes it all sting worse.  Like being pretty is a consolation prize for someone rejecting your heart.  Crying in Chloe’s bathroom I felt like such a fool.  I decided in that moment that in 2016 I didn’t want to be foolish anymore.  

So here we are 15 days into 2016, and so far it is going pretty well.  I got a raise.  I have found a new 1 bedroom apartment in the most adorable building on Capitol Hill..  I joined Weight Watchers, and have already lost 8 pounds.  Couch to 5k is kicking my ass, but I haven’t given up yet.  2016 is going to be the year of Harper.  I am going to get healthy and feel good about my body.  Instead of working to find a boyfriend, I am going to focus on my job.  The opportunity I have with my new job is amazing, and I want to make sure I make the most of it.  

Of course my heart is still hurting, but instead of letting it bleed into every part of my life, I am trying to leave it in 2015.  I am looking at what I had with M as personal progress.  I spent 2015 trying to make things work with one person instead of running around kissing anyone who would kiss back.  M didn’t have a girlfriend, and he wasn’t ruthless with me.  Just because things didn’t work with us doesn’t mean he isn’t a good man.  With time, my heart will heal, but I don’t plan on giving it to anyone anytime soon.  2016 isn’t about love for me, at least not romantic love.  2016 is about loving the things I already have, the people that already make my life so full.  I might have ended 2015 heartbroken, but I am starting 2016 full of hope and love.        

Blissfully Boring

The curse of my writing process is that when I am happy, the words don’t come to me.  When things are good in my life I don’t feel the need to take to my keyboard.  I am drawn to the blank page when I need to figure something out, determine how I feel, or voice my shameful acts.  When life seems to be falling into place, I don’t need my own words of encouragement.  What does that say about me as a writer?  What does the fact that I only find words when I am lost, lonely, wallowing in my own misery say about me?  Frankly, I am not very interesting when everything's going right.  When I am in a happy, healthy place, I am not out hooking up with random guys, or having crazy drunken nights, or existential crises.  Happy me is blissfully boring, spending her nights in stretch pants drinking wine and catching up on her always full DVR.

At the same time I feel more myself when I am writing.  How do I reconcile not feeling compelled to write, and the personal comfort and self-awareness I find in writing.  Am I only granted the comfort of writing when I am tortured?  We all know the idea of the tortured artist, but is that the only kind?  Can I be blissfully, boringly happy and still write compelling words worth reading?  And if not, can I be fulfilled without writing, without sharing a gift that I now realize comes with limits?  

Lately I have found myself in that odd blissfully boring place.  I started a new job three months ago, and I love it.  I feel like I have purpose again, like I am back on the career path that I wanted when I moved to DC 5 years ago.  That’s right, I have been in DC 5 years now.  It’s hard for me to believe that it has been that long since I packed my bags and got on a plane, not knowing what this city would hold for me.  DC is home, the center of the life I have built for myself.  I have a sense of pride when I think about my life, my friends, what my normal is.  It might not be the life I planned out when I was younger, but I wouldn’t have done any differently.  Although my mother would love for me to “settle down”, I am so glad that I have built a life based on not settling.  Although I am not always off having wild crazy adventures to tell you all about, that doesn’t mean I am not living the exact life I want to live (within my budget).