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.  

Dating is Hard

I am sure all of you are tired of the self-discovery, emotionally-settled Harper because I give you nothing juicy to read.  The truth is it kind of bores me too.  I am trying to have a healthy dating life and all that means is a lot more lonely nights.  I am not supposed to kiss a boy unless he takes me on a date first, which puts quite the damper on my kissing whore ways.  I know it is for the best, and if I want something real I have to actually spend my time with other people looking for the same thing.  

So, I pay for Match.com, and I have gone on a total of zero dates in the past 2 months.  The men that want to talk to me ignite zero spark.  I go through my daily matches and I message the men I am interested in only to be disappointed by the lack of response.  Tinder is a confidence booster and Match.com is a confidnce killer.  Maybe that is why I broke all my rules for a tall lobbyist with mesmerizing green eyes.  Evan was the only guy in all of Jack Rose that I wanted to talk to.  I spent hours trying to figure out a way to get him to talk to me, and finally his group split enough for me to find an in.  While ordering a drink at the bar we struck up a conversation and before I knew it he was paying for my drink and getting my number.    

As we went back to our respective friend groups my phone buzzed.  As we texted and made plans for a date the next week I couldn’t help but want to kiss Evan.  Out of the blue, a drink appeared in front of me, and yet Evan didn’t stick around to talk.  Could it be his motives were pure?  The rules went out the window.  I had to make out with this man, but right when I made my decision, his friends insisted that he leave.  Shortly after my own group started to break apart, and I decided to head home alone.  While in the cab my phone dings and it was a certain lobbyist wondering if I was still out.  

I knew I shouldn’t break my rules but the idea of that tall gorgeous man kissing me, touching me put me over the edge.  The invitation was extended, he was in a cab heading my way.  I frantically picked things up around my apartment and stuffed them in drawers and closets, damning my lack of cleaning in recent days.  I checked my make up, peeled off my spanxs and replaced them with something lacey.  Although, I made it very clear that if he came we were just making out, what adults remain fully clothed when rolling around a bed, even if they are just making out?

I buzz him up, anxiety coursing through me.  When he walks through the door he kisses me, grabbing my face with one hand and slightly lifting me with the other to bridge the foot difference in our height.  Damn.  That was all I could think, damn.  He pulls away gazes into my eyes and says, “hi.”  I reciprocate the greeting and then he says something so simple yet so sexy, “I have been wanting to do that since the moment I saw you.”  How can you not kiss someone after hearing something like that?

As he breathed my name into my ear I felt my whole body ignite.  There is something exhilarating about a man whispering your name while they explore every curve, unwilling to stop touching any part of you that they are allowed.  It is empowering, intoxicating, thrilling to have someone unable to get enough of you, unwilling to leave your bed, in awe of your beauty.  It’s a high, and I know I am like an addict that just fell of the wagon.  The physical touch does not fill my craving for love, just intensifies it.  It begins the “will he or won’t he call?”

Surprisingly, Evan was a man of his word, at first at least.  He texted me on the first day of my new job, and he made plans to take me to dinner that he actually followed through on.  I had a lovely time and felt this spark with him, but after that dinner I never heard from him again.  After igniting a spark he left me to alone to go up in flames.  That is why I don’t break the rules, that is why you stay on the wagon, to avoid that feeling of not being worth the real thing.  

I know I deserve the spark, the electricity, and the relationship.  That is why I shouldn’t kiss someone before they earn it, shouldn’t share my bed with someone that can’t take the time to take me on a date.  As much as I pretend I am a modern woman that can separate the physical and the emotional when a boy lays in my bed, looks me in the eyes and tells me I am beautiful I melt.  Dating is hard, and it is anything but simple.  But I am not giving up just yet.      

Chosen Family

I read an article on Buzzfeed today about why gay men love The Golden Girls.  There were a lot of fascinating points to why gay men relate to the show, but one that resonated with me in particular is the idea of the “Chosen Family”.  These women were not only friends; they became family to one another - a family that each of them constructed for themselves.  As a single career woman in my mid-twenties living 17 hours from my biological family, I have also developed a chosen family.  

I think several of the most unforgettable television shows are those that create this idea that friends are your family: loyal, caring, irreplaceable, and ever so slightly crazy.  Think about Will and Grace, Friends, Sex and The City: these are shows that helped shape the way generations look at friendship.  They are the standard to which much of our society judges true friendship, and the blueprints to creating a chosen family of their own.   

I am a person who is loyal to a fault.  I build a lot of walls around myself, and if I let you in and trust you completely, then you can expect my unadulterated friendship, you are now family.  These are the people that pour you another glass of wine and hide your keys when you lose your job.  The people who text you during your mutually adored shows, edit your blog posts, and gchat you at work all day.  These are the people who would punch your cheating ex in the nose if they ever run into them again, or at least say they would on a regular bases.  The people who can make you laugh with a look, and don’t flinch when you burst into tears for no apparent reason.  These are the people that know all your physical and emotional scars and love you because of them, instead of inspite of them.  This is a chosen family.  

I take great care to construct the best possible chosen family.  To let the right people in, but when you depend on someone you are always leaving the door open for disappointment.   When someone you love hurts you, it never gets easier.  When it is a friend, a member of your chosen family, the cut runs deeper.  This is the person with whom you are supposed to be in the trenches of life, not the person that hits you with a grenade leaving you bloody and broken.  The thing about family, even the chosen kind, is that you love each other enough to get past the things that have wounded you, at least you should be able to.  A chosen family member, unlike a biological one, always has a moment when they prove they are family.  There is a test of your friendship and sometimes you realize they weren’t family at all.  It is the people that will weather the storm with you who deserve the designation, the one who knows you, what will hurt you, and when you don’t mean the terrible things that you said.  Those are deserving, the elite, the chosen ones.  

When someone says a member of your family is a jackass, and it might be true, but they are your jackass and no one else gets to call them that!  In my case, I am everyone’s over dramatic “emotional time bomb,” but my family will stick up for me because I am their ticking time bomb.   No one gets to talk shit about your family but you, end of story.  

I love my chosen family!  The people that have been to the bottom of the bottle and back with me.  I would not have survived my 3 ½ years in DC without them, and I know I can not survive moving forward without them by my side either!  To Chloe, Lisa, Elle, and Conner: thank you for being my chosen family, for seeing me and loving me at my worst, for accepting my eccentric ways, and knowing that I am always just a phone call away.  I love each of you more than you will ever know!