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   

30

This week I turn 30!  Yikes, that seems so old, something that used to feel so far away.  Much like my Quarter Life Crisis at 25, I have not been handling the fast approaching golden birthday very well.  People who knew me in college might be surprised by that because I used to think 30 was the perfect age.  I used to think 30 would be when I would have life all figured out, I would be settled down. I didn’t expect 30 to be sharing my over priced apartment with no closet space with my newly adopted cat.  

I have been looking back on my 20s and have regretted some of the boys and the wild nights. Feeling like I have lost time on all the wrong people. Maybe I should be realizing that they were the right people to get me to where I am. That is what your 20s are for. Making mistakes, falling for the wrong people, realizing what you really want in the right one. Your 20s are for making unbreakable friendships, the friends who become family, the friends who know everything about you. Your 20s are for chasing your dreams and finding the career path that not just pays the bills but makes you happy.

But what are your 30s supposed to be for? What will this next decade (don’t like it) hold? Unlike the disappointing self inflicted expectations of my 20s I am not setting timelines for my life anymore.  I just want to live life as best I can. Travel and see as much as I can. Love the people in my life. Stop worrying about what is missing and focus on what I have.  

Even though 30 does not thrill me I am doing what I do best, and throwing a big party.  Well a two part extravaganza really.  It all kicks off Friday night with a rooftop party overlooking the White House.  There will be champagne and rose, flowers, friends, and Chick-fil-a chicken nuggets!  What more could a girl ask for?  Maybe a fun theme?  Well, I have that covered too!  Party Like a Pineapple!  Pineapples are sweet on the inside, stand tall, and wear a crown, just like me!  Pineapples represent hospitality, are something every home should have, and just happen to be something I collect.  The celebration will roll right into Saturday with a party bus to Virginia wine country with my nearest and dearest.  I will wrap up the weekend with a killer hangover that I will get over just in time to drink more wine while eating pizza and watching Game of Thrones!  It will be a weekend full of all my favorite people and all of my favorite things.  

Although I made some mistakes in my 20s, I can’t imagine my life being any different than it is right now.  I hope the next decade (nope still don’t like it) is full of more adventures with my friends and a time for me to continue to grow.  Also, full of wine … always more wine!

Slipping ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perfect Storm of Sadness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to be Friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four Years, How Far We Have Come

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goodbye, Hello: the Apartment Transition

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

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

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

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