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.        

The Good Out Weighs the Bad

Some days, you just like the way your dress fits, or the way your hair is laying.  Some days, you just feel 100% comfortable in your own skin.  These days are few and far between for me, especially during bathing suit season, but today is one of those days.  Maybe it is the fact that a cute boy from Tinder asked me out on a date.  Maybe it is how completely comfortable I am in my new job, and that happiness is spilling over.  Maybe it is the fact that I am feeling so blessed by the amazing friends I have surrounded myself with.  Friends that believe in judgement-free, unconditional support.  

More likely than not it is the cute boy.  Let’s call him Mr. South America, since he spends half his time there for work.  He is cute, taller than me when I wear heels, and constantly tells me how pretty I am.  I think most men underestimate the power of a compliment as simple as telling a girl you think she is pretty or beautiful.  “God, you're gorgeous” at random will make a girl melt, at least this girl.  Mr. South America and I met for late drinks and the chemistry was there immediately.  He made me laugh, so basically he found the two ways to melt my ever hardening heart, appeal to my vanity and my sense of humor. I broke my rule and let him kiss me in the bar, and stay the night on a first date.  Our sleepover was tame, clothed, and limited to making out and cuddling.  He only got the invite because we drank too much for him to drive home.  He wants to see me again when he gets back from South America in 2 weeks, and that excites me.  

I need it, a good date, a guy that actually wants to spend time with me, someone that makes it easier to love myself.  The creeps, users, and heartbreakers have been in full force lately.  There is the Facebook Messenger, who, after not seeing me for over a year, thinks I will just invite him over to have sex.  Which is even worse than the Saturday Morning Texter.  I am not 22 anymore.  I want more than a booty call.  It isn’t that I want more from either of them, just in general, I want more than that.  I don’t want a boy that makes me feel like the only thing I am good for is my ass or my nice rack.  Yes, maybe it is my own fault that one of them thinks his messages are ok.  Over the years when the loneliness is all consuming and the text arrives, the need to be touched overcomes my need for something more.  I have even been the instigator, sending a text or two of my own.  I have let it go on for so long, probably because once upon a time, I had feelings for him.  Once upon a time, I thought he and I could have had something real.         

The worst is Mr. Martini, who definitely deserves a martini thrown in his face.  I don’t begrudge him for meeting someone else that he is “head over heels for,” but I do begrudge him telling me in a text message.  I loathe him for acting interested, when he never really was.  I wish I could have back the hours of texting about movies, tv, and everything else we have in common.  It isn’t that he broke my heart, but more that he reminded me that I am too often the girl before “THE Girl.”  

I don’t know that things with Mr. South America are going to work out.  But I do know that he has already treated me with more respect than the above listed three.  Instead of feeding on my insecurities, he reminds me of my beauty.  I don’t need a boy telling me I am pretty to know I am pretty, but it sure helps to not have one pointing out your flaws.  My life is great, and today I am appreciating the good.  As frustrated as I get with all the boy drama, I know that its is the assholes, creeps, and heartbreakers that help me know when something is truly good.         

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.      

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.  

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!