Letter to My Future

As I have watched my parents relationship fracture and crumble, I have seen the man my father truly is.  As the lies are exposed and the rose colored glasses are removed, I wonder if I will ever be able to trust a man fully again.  How do I continue to believe in love when my example of love is broken?  Somehow I still have hope that someone is out there for me, and if they are, I have a few things to say to them.   

Hello,

I am not sure if you are out there looking for me, or if we have already met.  Maybe you are still sowing your wild oats, and that is ok.  When we make our way to each other I want you to be ready.  We won’t be young and stupid or trapping each other.  I want us to choose each other.  I want you to see my flaws with open eyes and love me because I am not perfect, not in spite of it.   

Be forewarned, I come with baggage.  I have spent my life being an afterthought for the men in my life, neglected and ignored.  Make me a priority, because you will always be my priority.  Hold my hand when we are walking through a crowd so that I never feel lost.  Never hush me or try to dampen my light because you never want me to feel small. Learn the small things about me, like how I take my coffee or what I want on my hamburger.  Those small everyday things are more important than the big romantic gestures to me.  I would rather you really know me than have the big social media worthy moments.

Accept my eccentricity, they are what make me interesting and who I am.  It took me a long time to not hide behind pearls, a southern accent , and a smile.  I am not ashamed of my fandoms, or all the cat pictures on my phone.  Embrace the things that bring me joy, even if you don’t understand them.  I will always embrace the things that make you you.  Make an effort to get to know my friends; they are my chosen family and aren’t going anywhere.     

It doesn’t all fall on you.  I promise to tell you how I feel instead of internalizing things.  I will listen and pay attention to you, because what you say matters to me.  Laughter will be something I strive for with you every day because I want you to be my best friend. I know we have both been independent for a long time and will respect that we need our own space.  I never want us to lose who we are as individuals just because we are together as a couple.     

I am waiting for you because I know our love will be worth it.  I won’t settle for someone else out of fear you might not come or impatience that you are taking too long.  Actually, I will never let fear or insecurities drive our relationship.  I have watched what fear of being alone can do to a marriage over 38 years.  We will not be my parents. I will remember you are not my father.  

While I wait, I will let life happen, but know I am ready when you are.  

Until we find each other,

H   

No More Wedding Blues

I have dreamed about my wedding my entire life.  I would play bride by wearing my flower girl dress from my uncle’s wedding.  I would buy old wedding dresses at garage sales and consignment shops for my dress-up box.  When my grandmother was sick she would buy bridal magazines and we would flip through, cutting out the gowns we loved.  I have been a flower girl twice, a junior bridesmaid once, and a bridesmaid four times so far in my life.  I love weddings, and I have had mine planned since I was probably 7, though many of the details have changed along the years (puffy sleeves and tiaras had to be nixed).  I had no doubt in my mind that I would get married someday - because that is what you do.  You fall in love, get married, and have lots of babies; at least that is what I was always told.

When I went to, or was in a wedding I would think about when I get married … but now I think about IF I get married.  The idea of meeting someone, falling in love, and getting married used to seem just so natural to me, since family members, friends and the hundreds of characters in movies made it seem so seamlessly effortless.  Now, as an adult, I see people on Facebook getting engaged and married and I think “How does that actually happen?”.  I mean it, how do people find love, or how does love decide who is worthy enough to have it.  What makes someone lovable?  

I have shed my delusions that I will 100% get married some day.  Trust me, this has been a hard pill to swallow.  Unlike what I was told as a girl, not everyone gets a chance to be a bride and that is ok.  Not everyone finds the love of their life, or at least not everyone gets to marry them.  Not getting married is not life ending, because I would rather be single than marry someone just to get married.  I don’t want to be the kind of woman that gets a little older and settles for a relationship that is lacking something just to be in a relationship.  I never want to have to give an ultimatum to receive a proposal.  IF I get married, I want it to be to my partner and equal on every level, someone who cannot imagine going a day without me in their life.         

I like to think I was raised to want more than just a husband.  I think my mother sometimes regrets telling me I don’t need a man to be happy because she just assumed that one would fall in love with me anyway.  Now that I am 27, she is worried she was wrong.  She sees the people I grew up with moving back to our small southern town, getting married, and having babies.  What she doesn’t see is that I chose a different path.  I chose the big city, the career, the path less traveled by the women where I am from.  I have built a life for myself that not only doesn’t revolve around a man, it doesn’t even have a man in it.  Arguably I have built a life that might not even have room for a man, but that is an entirely different post.  The truth is, I have built a life that I love, with people that I love.  It hasn’t been easy, and I haven’t always been happy, but that is life, and especially for someone who struggles with depression.

Yes, I sometimes get lonely and crave the physical attention of a man.  Yes, my hopeless romanticism sometimes gets the best of me.  Yes, I sometimes panic that love will never find me, meaning I will never have the opportunity to be a mother.  The thought of never getting the opportunity to shop for a wedding dress with my mother or having that dance with my dad at my wedding makes me sad.  Thinking that I might never know the look the love of my life has on his face the moment he sees me walking down the aisle breaks my heart.  But, at the end of the day, if I never get married I will be ok.  Don’t mistake me, I want all of those things, sometimes so bad it hurts, but if they aren’t in the cards for me I will do more than survive, I will thrive.    

I believe, and maybe it’s because I come from the girl power generation, that your fiends can be the loves of your life.  Maybe it is because of the Spice Girls, Now and Then, and Sex and the City that my real friends are my family, my soul mates.  If I marry or if I am an old spinster Chloe will still be my perfect dinner companion and the most important opinion; Lisa will still keep me grounded in my southern roots; Connor will always help me defuse my mother; BethAnn will still be able to talk me down; May and Farah will always be there to make me laugh; and Bee will always be there to remind me of how far I have come.  On other occasions I have told you about The Many Loves of My Life, but the real loves of my life are those listed above.  They are the people that know my every flaw and love me more because of them.  They know what I look like when I ugly cry; that I get a lazy eye when I am really drunk; that hanger is no laughing matter; and that my confidence is so easily shattered.  

I might never get the chance to say “I Do!” to some dashing man who loves me.  I might never get to put on a beautiful white gown and walk down the aisle.  I might not ever know what it is like to hold a child of my own in my arms.  That doesn’t mean that my life is not valid, that I can’t be happy, and that I haven’t really lived.  I know passion, I know success, I know loyalty, I know love, and I can not think of anything that could make a life more valid, more fulfilling than a life with those things.        

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.