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.    

2016: The Year of Harper

How I ended 2015, and how I have started 2016 feel like opposites.  Although I had an amazing New Years Eve with my single girl-friends, there was a part of me that was deeply sad.  We got dressed up, went to an amazing long dinner, and spent midnight watch the ball drop drinking champagne and playing Cards Against Humanity. But I guess there was a part of me that couldn’t get Christmas Eve out of my mind.  

Christmas Eve is supposed to be a joyous night, and it started off that way.  I shouldn’t have gone out to the bar with my brother after our family dinner.  I should have stayed in and watched Hallmark Movies with my mom, in the safe spot on the couch in my childhood home.  Instead, I went to the same dive bar I used to sneak into before I was 21, hoping to see old friends and let nostalgia comfort me.  Instead I encountered judgement and an icy reception from people who never left our small town.  So I drank more than I probably should have.  With that, the feels I had been pushing down for months came bubbling to the surface.  

See, in 2015 I kissed one person, just one.  I walked away from him, let’s call him M, because I cared more than he did.  He started it, he kissed me, but the hard part is he didn’t really mean it.  M wanted someone who was ok with being an afterthought in his life, and all I want is someone that wants to make me, and our relationship, a priority.  I tried to stay away, not to flirt when we were at the same parties, but for some reason I just seemed to like him more.  The more I tried not to care the more I seemed to.  His face, his weird laugh, they just made my heart flutter despite myself.  I knew our lives were in very different places, but there was just this part of me that could see what it would be like down the road when things fell into place.  That is probably why the night I accepted my new job he was who I wanted to spend it with; although I told myself it was because I just didn’t want to be alone, that the moment was too big to not share it.  

When I showed up to a Halloween party a month later and saw him kissing his new girlfriend, I fell apart.  I always thought the reason we weren’t together was because he didn’t want to commit to anyone.  Apparently he just didn’t want to commit to me.  I cried myself to sleep that night.  I allowed myself to be sad for one day and then pushed it all deep down, pretending that it didn’t matter, that he didn’t matter to me.  It was easy enough to keep my emotions in check, I have a lot of practice at it.  That is, until he texted me the week before Christmas.

I had been very cold with M every time he texted, hoping that playing hard to get would make him want more from me.  The problem is it just made me miss him more.  That is exactly what I was feeling on Christmas Eve, add wine and you get a text that never should have been sent.  “I miss you.”  Something about me felt desperate to know if he felt anything for me.  I couldn't start another year waiting around on him, hoping he would wake up and realize he wanted to be with me.  His response was not what I hoped for.  He “is all over the map” and doesn’t know what he wants.  I, in true Harper fashion, felt like I had to lay it all out on the table, like it would make a difference to send some romcom declaration.  I told him, “ I want someone who really cares about me and wants to be a part of my life.  If that isn’t you then I will move on.  But know that this is it with me.  This is me giving you another shot before I move on.  But for the record I have always wished it was you.”         

This lead to the 2 shots of Fireball, and making my brother take me home.  We fought in the car about how I pick jerks, and he doesn’t understand why I fall so hard.  The irony is on the walk from the car to my front steps I did fall hard, flat on my face.  Bleeding and bawling like a baby, I sat in my mom’s bathroom telling her I didn’t understand why he didn’t love me while she doctored my scrapes.  I said something out loud in that I hadn’t fully realized until that moment.  I just don’t know how many times I can keep starting over like this.  I don’t know what is left of my heart, it has just been broken so many times.  

When M said he thought we should talk about my feelings in person a few days later, I was too proud to take the opportunity.  I told him I didn’t think it was necessary.  Maybe that was a mistake, but in that moment I just couldn’t sit in front of another man while they told me it was them not me or whatever version of that conversation he planned on having with me.     

As the ball dropped and 2015 officially ended I couldn’t help but wonder who M was kissing at midnight.  Although I was in a room with 3 of my very best friends, doing the things we love to do, I wasn’t completely there.  I was deep within myself trying to both mourn what will never be and heal my own heart.   

At Chloe’s famous New Year’s Brunch on the 2nd, on hour 9 or 10 of drinking I texted one more time.  Then said sorry I shouldn’t be texting.  Having a man tell you to do what is best for you, and “you are a pretty girl”  somehow makes it all sting worse.  Like being pretty is a consolation prize for someone rejecting your heart.  Crying in Chloe’s bathroom I felt like such a fool.  I decided in that moment that in 2016 I didn’t want to be foolish anymore.  

So here we are 15 days into 2016, and so far it is going pretty well.  I got a raise.  I have found a new 1 bedroom apartment in the most adorable building on Capitol Hill..  I joined Weight Watchers, and have already lost 8 pounds.  Couch to 5k is kicking my ass, but I haven’t given up yet.  2016 is going to be the year of Harper.  I am going to get healthy and feel good about my body.  Instead of working to find a boyfriend, I am going to focus on my job.  The opportunity I have with my new job is amazing, and I want to make sure I make the most of it.  

Of course my heart is still hurting, but instead of letting it bleed into every part of my life, I am trying to leave it in 2015.  I am looking at what I had with M as personal progress.  I spent 2015 trying to make things work with one person instead of running around kissing anyone who would kiss back.  M didn’t have a girlfriend, and he wasn’t ruthless with me.  Just because things didn’t work with us doesn’t mean he isn’t a good man.  With time, my heart will heal, but I don’t plan on giving it to anyone anytime soon.  2016 isn’t about love for me, at least not romantic love.  2016 is about loving the things I already have, the people that already make my life so full.  I might have ended 2015 heartbroken, but I am starting 2016 full of hope and love.        

Blissfully Boring

The curse of my writing process is that when I am happy, the words don’t come to me.  When things are good in my life I don’t feel the need to take to my keyboard.  I am drawn to the blank page when I need to figure something out, determine how I feel, or voice my shameful acts.  When life seems to be falling into place, I don’t need my own words of encouragement.  What does that say about me as a writer?  What does the fact that I only find words when I am lost, lonely, wallowing in my own misery say about me?  Frankly, I am not very interesting when everything's going right.  When I am in a happy, healthy place, I am not out hooking up with random guys, or having crazy drunken nights, or existential crises.  Happy me is blissfully boring, spending her nights in stretch pants drinking wine and catching up on her always full DVR.

At the same time I feel more myself when I am writing.  How do I reconcile not feeling compelled to write, and the personal comfort and self-awareness I find in writing.  Am I only granted the comfort of writing when I am tortured?  We all know the idea of the tortured artist, but is that the only kind?  Can I be blissfully, boringly happy and still write compelling words worth reading?  And if not, can I be fulfilled without writing, without sharing a gift that I now realize comes with limits?  

Lately I have found myself in that odd blissfully boring place.  I started a new job three months ago, and I love it.  I feel like I have purpose again, like I am back on the career path that I wanted when I moved to DC 5 years ago.  That’s right, I have been in DC 5 years now.  It’s hard for me to believe that it has been that long since I packed my bags and got on a plane, not knowing what this city would hold for me.  DC is home, the center of the life I have built for myself.  I have a sense of pride when I think about my life, my friends, what my normal is.  It might not be the life I planned out when I was younger, but I wouldn’t have done any differently.  Although my mother would love for me to “settle down”, I am so glad that I have built a life based on not settling.  Although I am not always off having wild crazy adventures to tell you all about, that doesn’t mean I am not living the exact life I want to live (within my budget).  

Train Wreck?

I just saw Train Wreck, and of course Amy Schumer nailed it on the head.  When you get past all the awkward, gut-wrenching humor, there was a layer to the story that was kind of a wakeup call for me.  I might not be as extreme as Amy’s character is, but I have spent a lot of time hiding behind booze, sex, and self deprecating humor.  Two years ago I was in a boozy, angry, sad downward spiral.  I may have fought my way out of it with therapy and antidepressants, but that doesn’t mean that those tendencies aren’t there, lingering under the surface.  

I turned 28 last week, and although I pretended to be happy about it, said things like “age is just a number” and all the other things you say when you are aging with grace, deep down it bothered me.  Not because the number itself but the fact that I still don’t have anyone to go home with at the end of the night.  I know, I’m still young, blah blah blah.  It’s the fact that I am honestly starting to believe that there isn’t anyone out there for me.  Not everybody gets a happy ending.  I know, I eat lunch with 2 amazing women in their 60s who never got married.  Just because we want something doesn’t mean we get it, or that we deserve it.    

Maybe it’s the fact that I like inappropriate men.  I like men who are a little too good looking, or a little bit of an asshole, or are in my friend circles.  I find something wrong with every man  who actually likes me or I self-destruct.  I just hear the voices of every guy that has ever said anything negative about me playing over and over again in my head.  If I was fat 20lbs ago, why would anyone want me now?  I used to use sex to try to prove to myself that I was desirable, but now that I am not getting laid, I just feel worse.  It’s kind of like another Amy Schumer skit “Last F***able Day”.  Have I, at 28, seen my last Fuckable day?  Am I no longer desirable to men?  I remind myself that I want so much more than sex, I want someone who will actually love and respect me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be wanted.  

The last guy I liked, and I did, I really liked him - I still like him -  I walked away from because I knew it would never work.  He doesn’t have his shit together; he may never have his shit together.  He wanted a hookup buddy, and I want a boyfriend.  He wore cargo shorts and is younger than me, things I could have overlooked if I thought there really was potential for us to be something.  I know he isn’t what I ultimately want, and that is why I put a stop to it before I got in too deep.  I have not relapsed with him; I have stayed strong.  But there is that voice, the one that says well, at least he wanted you, that just comes up every time I am a little drunk and very very lonely.  

I am lonely.  I know I shouldn’t be, but I am.  How do you stop being lonely?  I have amazing friends who I talk to all the time and am content with my companionship, but there is a different type of lonely.  I am not talking about being horny either.  I am talking about when you just have a shit day, and all you really want is to curl up on the couch with someone while they stroke your hair and tell you everything is ok.  I am talking about when you are nervous about walking in a crowded room so they place their hand on the small of your back.  Or when they can tell something has upset you so they squeeze your hand to remind you that they are there.  I also want the opportunity to be that person for someone, to support someone in the way that only a significant other really can.    

I believe you should be a complete person all on your own, but there can be that person who complements you perfectly, who brings out the best in you.  I sure know that I have found several people who have brought out the worst in me over the years, and I have seen some of my friends find that much desired balanced relationship.  But there is a part of me that has hardened, that is beginning to believe that maybe, just maybe, I am the kind of person who ends up alone.  In a dating world where it is so easy to just keep swiping instead of exploring the potential of someone, how do you really find love?  

Is my lack of love because I spent too much time partying and hooking up, sometimes just to prove that I could.  Did this high school prude become overly sexual to the point of forever loneliness?  Although I feel like I have really gotten my life together, not settling for less than the relationship I really want, and not hooking up with some guy out of need for validation, am I still a train wreck?  Deep down am I still one drunken hookup away from self-destructing?  Can you be too damaged to find real love?         

Amy Schumer’s character found someone she wanted to try with, like every rom-com, ending up with the guy.  Can you be a recovered trainwreck and still end up alone?  

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!  

Does everyone deserve a 2nd chance?

I am looking at a disarming email from someone I had long filed away, closing off my heart to both the friendship and the heartbreak that I associated with them.  I find myself wondering if there such a thing as letting too much time pass, or damage beyond repair.  This email does not beg for forgiveness or ask for another chance, instead it’s exactly the kind of thing she would have sent when we were the best of friends.  Maybe it is her olive branch.  The question is what will I do with it.  

I know I have said this many times but I will say it again - my friends are like family to me.  I love and I trust with all my heart.  When I let someone in, I share all of me, and, in many ways, I blindly trust that the people I truly let in will never intentionally do anything to hurt me.  So when someone that I have grown to see as one of my best friends hurts me the way this person did, I don’t know if amends can ever be made.  People who don’t know the specifics might think that our falling out was over a boy, and yes there was a boy involved, but our friendship didn’t end over a boy.  Our friendship ended over her blatant disrespect for my feelings, over broken trust, and over her lack of respect for my need for time and space.  

I never thought I would be sitting here contemplating accepting a very small gesture that seems to be a start in making amends.  If I am honest, I never contemplated it because I never thought she would ever reach out.  Now that I am in this position - I don’t know what I should do.  Do I ignore it?  Do I respond?  Do I even want to open the door, even just a sliver, to reconciling?   

Some cuts run too deep, some things are unforgivable, I just don’t know if this is one of those things.  Could I trust her again?  Could I even fake a smile and be civil with someone that in so many ways broke my heart?  

I’m just not sure.