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.  

A Crack in My Foundation of Strength

I know you have all been on pins and needles waiting to hear the recap of my trip across the pond, and you will have to wait just a bit longer.  Before I can get to the fun details and my love for London, I have to talk about something that happened there that has been haunting my thoughts.  The only way I am going to be able to get past it is to write about it. So here it goes - the incident that has me questioning everything about myself.  

You avid readers know that Chloe and my London adventure was prompted by Teddy moving there for a year.  On our next to last night Teddy said something to me at the pub that has really fucked with my head ever since.  The conversation went something like this:

*Insignificant Small Talk

Harper: *says something about not being able to pull off this very attractive younger guy.

Teddy: You know you could be really beautiful if you lost weight.

Harper: I’m sorry what did you say?

Teddy: I mean I think you could be a knockout if you lose a lot of weight.

Harper: Oh that’s what I thought you said.

Teddy: I mean your eyes alone.  You could be such a bombshell if you lost the weight.

Harper: (said something along the lines of) Well the reason you are alone is that you are a shallow douchebag.     

*Chloe comes back from the bathroom.

Harper: Chloe let me fill you in on the conversation.  Teddy was just saying how I need to lose weight, and if you will excuse me I need to going to the bathroom.

I barely made it up the stairs before the tears were falling.  It was as if someone punched me in the chest, knocking all the air out of me.  Everything I question about myself, every insecurity, was justified in that moment.  I was living my worst fears, the reality that I am undesirable the way that I am.  I am not a small girl, I never have been, but I am the biggest I have ever been, meaning my insecurities are at an all time high.  I am a size 16, and I teeter between straight and plus sizes.  I am 5’6’”, 195 pounds.  To quote Mindy Kaling “I fluctuate between curvy and chubby.”  My weight and size has been a constant thing of stress since I hit puberty, always seeking approval, like every good Southern girl does.  

By the time I reached junior high, being called fat was something I was used to.  It was the insult of choice for the pubescent bullies.  When I got to high school, I made an effort to skip meals when I could.  I would  tell my mom I ate at youth group and go to bed without dinner.  The truth is I didn’t have the discipline to be full fledged anorexic.  That, and I had a mother who paid attention.  She would support the diets like Atkins or what ever else I wanted to do to try to slim down, as long as I was eating.  I want to preface what I am about to say with the fact that I love my mother, and she loves me no matter what, but it hasn’t always come off in the best way.  My mother, someone who has struggled with weight herself, can be quite harsh when it comes to my body.  Telling me in high school, when I was size 12, that girls like us aren’t meant to wear bikinis.  

In college, fat was a word I continued to hear quite often when describing me, often times to my face, being called “Bee’s fat friend”.  Boys would not want their friends to know that we were an item, because I wasn’t the kind of girl people expected them to be with.  Even my own sorority sisters got in on the body shaming from time to time.  I was once told by a girl I thought to be one of my best friends that “girls like you don't land guys like the vice president of a fraternity.”  

My weight continued to yoyo throughout college as I went on and off Weight Watchers, but my self-esteem was consistently pretty low.  I looked for validation from the guys I made out with, or the many clubs and organizations I was apart of.  I never believed that I was enough.  Why would I?  Everything really came to a head when I was selected to be queen of my hometown the summer between Sophomore and Junior year.  This is an Old South tradition dating back to the 1920s with hoop skirts, cocktail parties, china patterns, and a lot of judgement spanning over a year.  I tried on the dresses of every “bigger” queen there had ever been, and none of them came close to fitting.  I remember standing in the seamstresses shop when she told me there was no way to make my favorite dress fit me.  The tears rolling down my face in silence, knowing I was the fattest queen there ever was.  That is the day that I decided I would do whatever it took to lose weight.  That is the day that triggered my eating disorder.     

I had 6 months to lose weight, and then had to stay exactly the same size for the next 4.  I started taking stool softeners and laxatives everyday.  No one knew I was taking those pills everyday; I seemed to have normal eating habits; I was working out.  Everyone just thought all the things that I had tried for years without results were finally working for me.  No one knew I was doing irreversible damage to my stomach in the name of beauty and conformity.  It was the thinnest I have ever been.  The pictures from the Spring of 2009 are my favorite pictures of me ever.  It was probably the only time in my life that I believed people when they told me I looked beautiful.                 

I have spent the last 5 years of my life trying to become comfortable in my own skin.  Loving yourself is hard, at least for me it is.  It seems like the first 23 years of my life were spent being told I was not worth loving.  As a bigger women you are expected to squeeze into your shapewear and face the world knowing it still isn’t enough.  If you thighs touch, or your arm jiggles, you’re not beautiful, you're undeserving.  Our society puts numbers on beauty that are unrealistic.  After months of therapy and stints on antidepressants, I had found a version of myself I could love, most of the time.  A version that didn’t need a man's approval, or physical gratification to know I am worth something.        

Why am I telling you these sordid details?  I have decided if I am going to talk about body shaming and my body issues, I am going to tell it all.  I want to explain that eating disorders come in many forms.  I am going to explain in detail why Teddy’s comments have shaken me to my core, cracking the strength that I spent years trying to build.  

When I finally stopped crying, mainly due to the wonderful British girls in the bathroom who offered to punch Teddy in the throat, I went to face the physical incarnation of all my inner demons.  Teddy hugged me and said he was “coming from a place of love” and that he just wanted me to be “happy and healthy.”  I actually think that might have been more insulting than the original comments.  I looked at him and said, “What about me says I am not happy?  I am the happiest I have ever been in my whole life.”  Chloe and I left the pub shortly after that.  I cried the whole cab ride back to our flat.  I cried myself to sleep, and I woke up the next morning crying.  

I texted my mom and told her what happened.  I know from what you read above you might think my mom wouldn’t be supportive, but you would be wrong.  She has come a long way in the last decade.  She might pressure me about getting married, but she is more supportive about my body image.  I don’t know if seeing me struggle with depression was what flipped the switch, or if it was me finally telling her about all the teasing and the eating disorders I had hid from her, but whatever it was, I am grateful.  My parents think I am beautiful no matter my size.  My dad would have hit Teddy if he could have gotten his hands on him.  A man of few compliments, my dad said to me that skinny doesn’t make you pretty.  

I know I should have written off Teddy’s comments and maintained my long fought for sense of confidence, but that isn’t what happened.  I have withered.  He said out loud what I have worried every man I meet actually thinks of me.  It was verbal confirmation that I am indeed undesirable.  I flip between anger that anyone could be so shallow and a despair that I am truly less than I think I am.  Words are blows that bruise deep beneath the surface, festering and manifesting in the darkest most twisted ways.  In the last month, I have found myself evaluating every wrinkle, stretch mark, cellulite and fat pocket on my body.  I have been more conscious of how my clothes fit or don’t fit.  I have stopped in the drug store twice and look at the bottles of laxatives on the shelves, coming so close to putting them in my basket.  I have let those words put cracks in the foundation of confidence I had built up one therapy session at a time.     

The thing is, I know I am a pretty girl.  I have breathtaking blue eyes, that pretty much give away my every emotion if you care enough to look.  I have lips that have just enough pout to make them perfect for lipstick.  The idea that those things are not enough to make me beautiful because I am not a size two is beyond crazy.  That I COULD be beautiful if I just lost weight is one of the cruelest idea.  Could I use to lose a few pounds? Sure, I would like that even.  But to think that my beauty is contingent on my dress size is beyond superficial.  Beyond the physical, I am a beautiful person because I love with all my heart, I care for people so deeply that I often put their wants and needs before my own.  I am smart, thoughtful, and loyal.  Those things make me beautiful too.

There are no words to ever express the level of disgust, disappointment, and offense I felt and continue to feel about the situation.  I don’t know that I can ever look at Teddy and not feel all of those negative emotions.  I think the worst part about it is he thought what he said was coming from a place of love.  He thought it was ok to say them, he thought he was being helpful.  If he had said I am worried about your health, it still wouldn’t have been ok, but it wouldn’t have been as insulting as saying I am not beautiful because I am bigger.    

If this post seems disheveled it is because my thoughts are disheveled.  I haven’t been able to get my head on straight since that night.  I second guess everything about myself.  But that stops now. This is me taking back my life, some might say this is my fight song.  I am going to find my confidence again.  I am not going to worry that if I lose weight, I am proving Teddy right.  I am going to do whatever makes me feel comfortable in my own skin.  I am beautiful and no person’s opinion can change that.      

Crossing the Pond

Tomorrow Chloe and I will embark on our UK adventure!  We have been planning our trip to London for the past 6 months, and I am ecstatic it is finally here.  We of course will be spending some time with Teddy, and hopefully the hot British friends he has made.  I can not wait to take in the palaces, gardens, and parks that I have been dreaming about for as long as I can remember.  This trip is a dream come true and I am so glad that I get to experience it with my best friend, Chloe.    

I can not wait to tell you all about our adventures when we return!  So prepare yourself for tales of the glories of London, and the many cute British accents that I am bound to fall in love with along the way!  

A Final Attempt

I guess Dressgate was totally worth it since I have never had so many compliments on a dress in my life.  I felt pretty, and that was exactly what I was going for.  Taste of The South was such a fun event, although I still can’t feel my toes.  It was wonderful to see so many people that I rarely run into anymore.  There is one person who I still can’t decide how I feel about running into, Liam (The Many Loves of my Life, Strangers Now?).  

It’s been two years since I've seen Liam, yet he looks exactly the same, he looks good.  Boy always has looked good in a suit, and in a tux dear god!  It’s funny how seeing someone can trig things you haven't felt or thought about in quite a while.  I can’t remember the last time Liam had crossed my mind, but the moment I saw him I had a knot in the pit of my stomach.  I don’t know if it is because I will always have feelings for him, or if I just have never known what went wrong with us, but seeing him throws off my equilibrium.  

After a few cocktails I decided that I looked too good not to take this opportunity to talk to him.  Shoving my throbbing feet back in my heels I threw caution to the wind and went and said hello.  He was nice, cordial, asking several times if I was well.  We said let’s get drinks and catch up sometime and that was it.  I had done it, probably a little drunker than I should have, but at least I had talked to him.  

Although I am proud of myself for talking to him, I have not been able to shake him from my thoughts.  Liam and how our friendship abruptly ended with no explanation is one of my life’s mysteries.  I decided that I would email him.  Just a quick good to see you.  Glad to know you are well.  Let’s grab a drink some time.  Short and sweet and cordial, like our run in at TOTS.    

Sometimes you do things not because you expect something in return, but for yourself.  You need to know you did everything to try to possibly save something that once meant so much to you. That is what that email was for me. It was my attempt for him to get to know the woman I have become, and to find out what kind of man he has become. Four years ago I was a girl trying to figure out what it meant to be an adult. I was idealistic, believing that life could be as simple as falling into the job I always wanted and meet an amazing boy all at the same time.  I had yet to take off the rose colored glass that I wore to look at the world.  

Liam was the light in that world that was starting to be so much different that I had dreamed.  He was more kind to me than any boy had ever been in all my life, and truly no one has been as kind since.  I was used to being called fat, and written off by the guys I went to college with.  When Liam would tell me I looked pretty his eyes showed that he was sincere.  The way they would twinkle and the corners of his mouth would curl into the hint of a smile always gave his thoughts away.  Seeing him I felt like I was that 23 year old girl all over again, looking for that twinkle and that hint of a smile.  But I am not that girl, I am so much better.  I am a woman that seeks approval in myself, not others.  I know who I am, what I want, and that I am the only one that can get it for myself.  

I don’t know that I can ever truly express how much Liam meant to me back then, what he represented, or how hard I would fight for him in my life if it was a possibility.  That is what my email was, one more attempt to fight, just so I can know I did.  Liam won’t respond, I knew that when I sent it.  The final decision about our friendship was made by him long ago.  I guess I was just holding on to a tiny glimmer of hope that he might have forgive whatever it was that destroyed our friendship.  Now I know that any hope for that is gone.  Maybe now my heart won’t flutter if I see him, maybe now I can finally let go.  

Why I've Stayed Away

I know I am WAY late on this, but Happy New Year!  As for my absence from the blogosphere, all I can say is life has been complicated the last few months.  I know it seems that my life is always a little on the complicated side, but this has been a different kind of complicated.  I wasn’t ready to write about it, and I didn’t know how to write about anything else without addressing it.  

On December 5th my grandfather lost his 4 year battle with pancreatic cancer.  Cancer is a bitch of a disease.  There is no eloquent way to describe cancer and the havoc it wreaks on the body.  Watching the person you love deteriorate is so very heart breaking.  I made a choice not to see him when the cancer started progressing more quickly.  That is a decision I have second-guessed many times over the past couple of months, but I can’t change it, and I have come to peace with that.  See, my grandmother succumbed to cancer when I was 15, and I can’t only remember her sick.  I just remember the frail shell of a women, and that is not how I wanted to remember Papaw.  I want to always remember him as the husky prankster with the best chuckle I have ever heard.  I want remember him on his Goldwing motorcycle and not in a hospital bed.  If cancer was going to rob me of my grandfather, I wouldn’t let it rob me of my memory of him.

What has been harder than my own grief has been watching my mother grieve.  My mother is one of the most giving women I have ever met.  She is strong and selfless.  Watching her say goodbye to her dad was even harder than saying goodbye to my grandfather.  As she made trip after trip to Illinois to just sit at his bedside and take him to doctors’ appointments, it was like a piece of her was deteriorating too.  With every phone call where I could hear her crying on the other line, I knew there was nothing I could say to fix it.  She couldn’t fix him, and I couldn’t fix her.  Cancer made everything terminal.   I know at some point in each of our lives, if we are fortunate enough, we will have to say goodbye to our parents.  It is part of the neverending cycle of life.  But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier when it happens to your family.  I am relieved, if that is the right word, that he is no longer suffering - that is the silver lining I suppose.  But if it were up to me, I would have him here and healthy.  

Writing about my are-we-aren’t-we relationship just didn’t seem right when I had not addressed the only thing I will remember about 2014.  When I look back on 2014, it will always be the year my grandfather died, the year the cancer gobbled him up and left my world a little less bright.        

Make a Donation to the American Cancer Society and help in the fight to find a cure.  

   

Falling into Melancholy

Fall is starting to creep in.  The brisk mornings are becoming more frequent and before we know it, we won’t be able to leave home without a jacket.  I love boots and tights, sweaters and dark nails.  I love football Saturdays and Sundays, and the sense of comradery that doesn't seem to be there any other time of year.  The warm aromas of spice, pumpkin, and burning wood in the crisp air are comforting.  There is nothing like melting into your favorite sweater for the first time in months with a glass of red wine in your hand.  My playlists tend to slow down, and my nights in tend to increase.  Fall is the slow beginning to the long cozy winter hibernation.  As much as I love the changing leaves and lack of humidity, I often find myself a little melancholy and don’t quite know why.  

Maybe it is my newly increased age finally sinking in.   Maybe it is my DC anniversary reminding me how long I have been here, and how far away from my career goals I still am.  Or maybe it is because I was two sizes smaller back then, with confidence and a string of boys.  Maybe it is because fall reminds me of some many beginnings, that had such tragic endings.  I have always fallen in love in fall.  I look at all the epic relationships I have ever had, and they all began with the brisk autumn air.    

Daniel shyly asked me to the movies at the fall Hot Air Balloon festival when I was 15. I met Bryan on a cool Mississippi September night my freshman year of college.  Adam sat next to me in my political theory class fall of Sophomore year.  D asked to buy me a drink after trivia one night in October 3 years ago.  Stefan and I spent the fall starting something that I thought was going to be great.  For so long fall was for falling in love, until last year when fall was for falling apart.  

I won’t blame my dark time all on fall, but fall is when I realized how deep I had slipped into an emotional state that I couldn't get out of on my own.  It is when I began the fight back.  The thing about depression is that the downward spiral is the easy part, it’s climbing your way out of it, really dealing with it that is difficult.  It is taking the medications that make you sleepy, dizzy  and kind of numb, and having to share every dark and twisty part of yourself with a licensed professional, who is also still a stranger, that takes everything you have left.  Yes, I am stronger for all of it, but it took the of the magic out of fall for me.  

I want fall to be about wine tastings and brunches.  I want the excitement of a football game or an election night party.  I want to enjoy pumpkin flavored treats while wearing cute sweaters.  I want to flirt with men while talking about bourbon.  I want red lipstick pouts peeking out of scarves.  I want the rush of being walked home from the bar with the man’s jacket over my shoulders to keep warm.  I want fall to be about the twinkle in my eye again.  I am not saying fall has to be for falling in love with a man, but maybe the way to shake this melancholy is to try to fall in love with fall again.              

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.        

A Bend in My Road

As I turn on my computer at work for the last time in my little cubicle, I am feeling things I never thought I would be feeling.  I am happy, ecstatic even, to be moving on to a better job with a big raise, better commute, more vacation and more room for growth.  I am also sad to leave some of the people to whom I have grown close and a job that was here when I so desperately needed one.  This place made room for me when I had nothing, it brought the industry I grew up in and my passion together wielding them into something fulfilling.  Unfortunately every opportunity has a ceiling; you can only grow so tall before you reach it.    

I am also frightened.  What if I am not as good as I think I am at what I do?  What if, at the end of my 3 month provisional period, they decide to let me go?  I know this is just nerves talking.  I am sure on Sunday night I won’t be able to sleep.  I have already picked out the perfect first day outfit, decided on how to wear my hair, and if I should wear lipstick or not.  I will, as always, control the things I can about the day.  It is like the first day at a new school, hoping and praying that you will fit in. but I have to remind myself that they picked me.  I am who they want for this job, and they see something in me that tells them I can do it.  

My career has taken many bumps and turns over the last four years, and I have ended up in places that I never thought likely.  It reminds me of something my mom has always told me, “Man plans and God Laughs.”  I may not be a highly religious person at this juncture of my life, but I am spiritual and believe in the power of prayer.  I knew making the decision to leave my current job was a life changing one, and I prayed for clarity.  Although I am nervous, and frightened about what lies ahead for me I have no doubts about my decision. I am coming around the next bend in the road of my life, and am ready for what lies ahead.  

When I started this blog 2 years ago it was mainly about boys, and one in particular.  This blog, much like my career, has taken many unexpected turns.  While writing about my Tinder adventures and my heart breaks, my sexscapes and my insecurities, I found something, me.  Between the lines of every post, in the space between my fingers and the keys I found a happier, more fulfilled version of myself.  That is why I will continue to share the twists in my road with you, as my journey continues on.   

Social Pariah or Self Confident

You can’t hide forever.  Eventually there is going to be that thing you can’t run from anymore.  I have the sneaking suspicion that my running days are over.  Whether it’s from Hadley or D, or both, I am not entirely sure.  This weekend, while rocking a sexy red cocktail dress, I was informed that I am a social pariah.  I was aware that it was a possibility, but to hear it out loud was a different thing altogether.       

I thought it would bother me more, to know that people are practically getting shunned for talking to me.  It is actually kind of liberating.  I don’t have to care, and I know I shouldn’t anyway.  I have nothing to hide or be ashamed of, I did nothing wrong.  For the first time in maybe forever I feel comfortable in my own skin.  I don’t feel the need to please other people if it means doing something that I don’t want to do.    

As for D, I know it is my choice to go back to that weekly social gathering for the last month it ever exists.  It has been almost a year since we have been in that rather small room together.  I think I can handle it, but tonight will be the test.  It is bigger than him, it is a place I used to call home, my Cheers, closing down.  My heart is still racing out of anxiety, out of fear of what I might feel.  He is not worth my time and it isn’t about him.  Still, I can’t help but be nervous.  For over a year we have been skillfully avoiding each other. I can’t hide forever.  Not from D, not from Hadley, not from the fear of irrelevance.  

Maybe that is why I enjoy the idea that I am a social pariah, the idea that being despised is better than being unnoticed.  I know I am better than that, have come to far to fall into that trap again.  I don’t need to be liked, but I don’t need to be hated or even noticed to be happy either.  As long as I am being myself, it doesn’t matter if people acknowledge me.  The people who are worth my time will like me for me, be there no matter what, and won’t be scared off by other peoples’ feelings about me.  But to be true to myself I also have to stop making my decisions based on who may or may not be somewhere.  My decisions are my own, not affected by anyone.  I will not be controlled by fear, I will not hide, and I will not be weak just because someone expects me to be.  

Over the last 8 months I have become the strongest version of myself.  I look in the mirror and don’t just see my flaws, or the extra pounds I want to lose.  I find the features that I love about myself.  I love mouth, the cupids bow of my top lip and the poutiness of my bottom lip.  I love the way my blue eyes give away exactly what I am feeling if someone cares enough to notice.  I love the natural arch in my lower back right above bubble butt.  I love my strong calves and the way they look in my sky high heels.

I now also really believe that I deserve more from men than what I have settled for in the past.  I believe I deserve to be asked out on a date, and have made it a requirement before I will even kiss someone.  Before I always wanted more, to be treated better, but I never demanded it. It is ok to weed out the frogs because I am not 22 anymore.  I don’t need to find a prince, but it is not too much to ask for someone that wants know how my day was.  Standards show that I love myself, and that I deserve someone else’s love.  

Loving myself is not easy, it is a constant struggle that I don’t always win.  I still am too quick to judge myself, but then I realize that the only person that hurts is me.  When I think I look fat in a dress instead of thinking it is unflattering that is just me giving into my insecurities.  No one is perfect, I am far from it myself, but even with my flaws I am a much better version of myself.  Social pariah or not, I am finally starting to see myself as a person of worth.  

Perfect?

The moment that someone leans in and kisses you for the first time is a moment of pure unadulterated romance. I am not talking about the boy that drunkenly, sloppily kisses you after a tequila shot. I am talking about the guy that walks you home just to make sure you get there safe. When that guy leans in and gives you a chaste kiss on the lips your heart skips a beat. The sounds of a mellow indie rock love song play in your head.  Every first kiss like that seems like possibly the beginning.  

Unfortunately not every kiss is the beginning, and not every romantic moment is part of a greater romance.  Sometimes a moment is just that: fleeting, insignificant, and forgettable.  Romance can be falsely manufactured for a boy’s own purpose.  Hope can be given as a means to an end.  

When the other shoe drops and the moments of pure ecstasy are revealed as purely moments of convenience, your heart breaks.  Not because you were in love, but it breaks that the possibility of love is no longer there.  Being disappointed by someone you have pined over, been sweet talked by, can make another tiny piece of your heart harden.  How long until your whole heart is cold and hard?  

My heart breaks because I am just as far from finding a relationship, a partner, love than I was a week ago, maybe even further away.  Maybe it is because I don’t know how to reconcile the romantic side of me with the sensual side.  How do I be the bombshell with a heart?  If I am one, they want the other.  I don’t know how to shake my sense of inadequacy when every corner I turn, I am being told I am not good enough for something or someone.  All I want in life is to be not just enough for someone, but to be someone’s own idea of perfect.  

I have spent so much of my life trying to please everyone, to be perfect and put together, hiding behind makeup and clothes.  I will never be perfect, because the reality is I am a mess.  But there is someone out there that will think that my neurotic, obsessive, nerdy tendencies make me their own idea of perfect.  

Besides, that guy, that I believe is looking for me too, I have to learn to see myself as MY OWN idea of perfect.  I have to love my curves and the fact that my hair will never grow long.  I have to adore the fact that one of my eyes gets droopy when I have had too much to drink, and that my left knee will always hurt when it rains.   I have to stop chastising myself for not being what I think I should be.  There are some things about myself I can never change, and those are the things that make me unique, the things that make me Harper.

Instead of trying to be what I think will attract romance, I need to be me.  Maybe then, instead of a fleeting moment, I will find my great romance.            

2014

I know we are a few weeks into 2014, but it is never too late to tell you about my New Years Eve, New Years resolutions, and my outlook on 2014.  

I could not have dreamt up a better way to start 2014.  Ok maybe there could have been a few slight improvements, like a New Years kiss, but seriously, my New Years Eve was practically perfect!

Elle, Hadley, my new and wonderful friend Layson, and I got all dolled up in sequins and headed to a wonderful four course meal at Lavanga.  The food was spectacular, and the company superb!  We laughed, stuffed our faces, and mocked the 60 year-old women with cleavage for days.  After our delicious meal we snuck into a private, open bar party at our favorite bar.  We made friends, got boys to buy us shots, hung out with all our favorite bartenders, and overall had an amazing time!  We could not have planned a more perfect night with friends.  Hadley kept finding boys willing to give up their party hats until we all had one.  

I want 2014 to be the year of Harper.  I plan to do things that I like, things that make me happy, and things that better me.  So, here are some promises I have made or goals I have set for myself.

- Read 52 books this year.  That is a book a week.  I spend an hour on the metro everyday, and have started reading during my lunch hour.  There is no reason why I can’t find the time to read a book a week.  

- Lose weight.  I know what you are thinking.  This is every typical woman’s resolution.  What makes this different than years before is why I want to.  I want to feel good about myself.  I don’t want to lose weight to win some boy, I want to do it to like the way I look in clothes.  I know there is nothing wrong with being a 14/16, but I would like to be able to go into any store in a mall and find something that fits me nicely.  I have started Weight Watchers, and have already lost 5lbs.   

- Spend my money on big moments instead of nights at the bar.  I would rather save up so I can have the memories of something like Taste of the South than spend all my money at my neighborhood bar doing the same thing every week.  I am too young to give up on living.

- Leave the past in the past.  I have to stop carrying around all my past heartbreak and let myself move on.  As long as I hold onto the past I will never be able to have a future.

-  Be confident in my own decisions.  I need to make decisions and not second guess them.  

- Spend time with true friends.  I want to continue to develop my friendships with the people that are always there for me.  It isn’t the quantity of friends you have, it is the quality of your friendships that matter.

- Have fun!

The year of Harper has so many other goals and objectives, but no need to bore you with them all.  I am really looking forward to what 2014 has to offer.  The best part of the New Year is the idea that you can start fresh, eliminate bad habits, learn from your mistakes - with that comes the ability to change..  So, even though this is a few weeks late, I hope you also have plans for yourself in 2014.  If not, it is never too late!   

18th Amendment ... the End of an Era

When most people here 18th Amendment they think of Prohibition.  For me 18th Amendment has another meaning.  I think of a bar on Pennsylvania Avenue in SouthEast DC.  A bar that I am sad to say closed its doors this weekend.    

18th Amendment is hallowed ground.  It is where so much of my first years in DC were lived.  For a long time, it was the place where every exciting moment of my life took place.  Every Thursday many Hill staffers made their way to 18th to sing karaoke and drink cheap Miller High Life.  Many of my friendships in this city were made at 18th Amendment over a song, a High Life, or a late night shrimp poboy.  It used to be great, I used to be great when I hung out there.  

The Harper of 18th Amendment was bold, sassy, and empowered.  It was in those walls that I did some of my very best flirting.  I made out with several cute boys there.  I danced even if no one else was because I wanted to.  I sang many terrible songs, with groups of friends, and didn’t care that my voice can make cats cry.  This is where I learned to shoot Jameson like a pro and realized that it was sexy to do so.   

It wasn’t all cocktails and good times.  Life hit me pretty hard a few times while sitting in that bar.  We were at 18th Amendment the night D told me he had a girlfriend.  After shit hit the fan, I sat at the bar and drowned my sorrows with Vicki and Deek.  The night several months later, when D got jealous, and told me he didn’t like seeing me with anyone else, the conversation that ruined our functioning friendship took place at 18th.  When I lost my job, 18th Amendment is where I went to drink away the disappointment.   

I haven’t been by in months; I don’t think any of the old group has.  Somewhere along the way, life happened.  We got more responsibility, and we had to give things up.  People grow apart, and the places you used to go together lose their luster.  I have thought about stopping by a million times, but something always seems to come up.  Never did I think that there would be a day that 18th wouldn’t be there. In my mind, Vicki would always be ready to pour me a shot and tell me that all my problems lie in my poor taste in men.     

I want to pay homage to one of the places that helped shape me and my life in this city.  If the walls of 18th Amendment could talk, I am sure they would have some great stories to tell, and several of them involving me.     

Birthday Blues

How is it possible to love your life and be so sad at the same time?  I guess it is the birthday crisis setting in.  I am going to be a year older next week - 26.  I love my life, but then I see the lives of people with whom I grew up or went to college, and their lives seem great too.  Completely opposite, but wonderful still.  They are getting engaged, married, having babies: what I always thought I would be doing at this time in my life.  

Living in DC, I wouldn’t want to be married right now, but you step out of this bubble, and you see people all around you moving forward in life.  In DC, we move forward with our careers, but our personal lives are stuck in college.  We are all stuck in a dating cesspool, where people hook up and have “complicated things”, but it is rare to find something real and lasting.  I chose to build a life in a city where everyone postpones love to a more convenient time.

Somewhere in the last three years, I have evolved into something about which I am not sure.  I have allowed myself to morph from this Marilyn sex symbol that I was proud of to “Momma Bear”.  When did I become the sensible, put together one?  When did my life become nothing worth writing about?  I have struggled over the last several weeks to come up with something to share with all of you.  There have been no exciting stores of sexscapades or outragous nights.  There have been no new crushes or the potential of falling in love.  I have become uninteresting.  

My reality at 26 is that I have 4 different dating apps on my phone, and yet not been on a date with anyone from them.  I haven’t been in a serious relationship in a decade, haven’t had sex since Valentine’s Day, and haven’t had good sex since Stefan.  

There was a time when I was vivacious, confident, and unwavering.  When I left college I had found a comfort in myself, and in many ways it is still there, but the voices of the frat boys are creeping back in.  I hear them calling me “Bee’s Fat friend” all over again.  I was thinner back then.  I would kill to be that small again, and yet I let so many boys define me in such derogatory terms.  I let my own self worth be based on a bunch of drunk frat boys who wanted to keep me their dirty little secret.  I tried to leave that behind me, but even my relationship with D painted me as the dirty mistress.  Keeping me at arm’s length, and playing my own insecurities against me.    

One of the biggest things I can be proud of in the past year, besides getting an amazing job, is walking away from D.  Looking back on my Quarter life Crisis (my birthday last year), it was predominantly because of my relationship, or lack thereof, with him.  It was like coming up for air for the first time in a year and half.  What I didn’t realize was, that as long as I was hiding behind my feelings for D, I didn’t have to face the reality that I was become less desirable.  I am the kind of pretty that only gay men and other women appreciate.  Well dressed, hide my flaws well, hair and makeup always done.                   

As I prepare for my birthday party, I continue to worry about all the details.  My private party in the basement of my favorite Hill bar now carries the burden of being epic.  I need it to be epic.  I need the excitement.  I need to be reminded that I am not irrelevant in peoples lives.  I have decorations, a playlist, and Anna is making the cake.  My dress is picked out, I am getting my makeup done, and my crash diet is underway.  Even though I am sharing the night with Chance (against his protest), and most people are coming because of him, I want a moment to remember.  

Birthdays used to be one of my favorite things in the world.  It is the one day (or week) that the whole world has to celebrate you!  I loved getting older!  I couldn’t wait until I turned 30.  Now I see them for what they are - milestones of broken dreams.  A reminder of all the things you wanted to do but haven’t been able to.  A warning that you are getting older but you aren’t getting any smarter or (insert adjustive of your choice).  I never thought I would have the birthday blues.  

I know that Saturday will be fun, not because I need it to be, but because all the people that care about me will be there to help me celebrate.  I will be surrounded by love and lots and lots of shots.  Yes, I might not be the sexpot that I used to be, but I’m not 22 anymore either.  And that is ok.  It is ok to age gracefully, and to do a little growing up along the way.