Everyone Has Their Harry Styles

It's 5am and my phone is ringing. No, it's not an emergency, well, not a someone's on their way to the hospital emergency. More like a when Facebook stalking makes you hate yourself emergency (which, let's face it, is more often than not). Yes, this moment brought to you by whatever the hell makes us look up exes on Facebook or Instagram in the middle of the night. Seriously, what is that?? Do we all secretly hate ourselves and believe we deserve to suffer? Really, it's the only explanation I can think of for why strong, confident, successful women (and men too I'm sure) continually stoop to this level of degreation. And, lest you think it's only whiny teenage girls and Taylor Swift who experience this, I draw your attention to Lisa Nowak, remember her? Lisa Nowak is (was?) an astronaut. An astronaut people, do you know what it takes to become an astronaut?? Me neither but I'm guessing it takes a hell of a lot of confidence to launch yourself into the stratosphere, litteraly. And yet, when you hear her name, do you think of an amazing woman who specialized in robotics and has been awarded many medals? Nope. When you hear the name Lisa Nowak, you immediately picture a crazed woman speeding down the highway in a diaper towards a confrontation with her rival in a supposed love triangle. Sheeh. An exemplary military career, awards galore, and a trip into friggin space! How does a woman like that get reduced to a punchline?? Simple, she lost her damn mind over a man! And what was so special about this man, William Oefelein? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He's just some guy she met at work. But for him, an otherwise accomplished woman who is at least intelligent enough to get herself a career in space (which I'm guessing means she's pretty darn smart), threw caution, livelihood, and sanity to the wind. Ugh! Why??? Why do they have this effect on us?? Why do we allow these men to turn us into caricatures of ourselves? And, the truly sad part? We all have a story like this, well, hopefully no one else's story involves involves a year of probation and becoming the answer to a trivia question, but we all have a story that involves crazy behavior...and a man. My own? Ugh! Back when my ex-husband and I were still dating, we had an argument over...oh, who knows what? Anyway, I happen to have been out of town during this perticular dust up, so our rather heated exchange took place over the phone. And, not just our phone. Oh no! Like I said, I was out of town at the time and after a round of pointless back and fourth he hung up on me (sadly, this would become a theme in our relationship). At this point what I should have done was nothing. Take a deep breath and calm down and give him a chance to do the same. Yeah, that's not what happened. What happened was I spent the next hour or so trying to get him to talk to me...by calling everyone he knew and trying to convince them to call him on my behalf. Yes, I was that girl. Sigh. Definitely not my proudest moment. But, in my defense, it might be an inherited trait; my mother is one of the smartest, most creative, caring, loving, and strongest individuals I know...until it comes to my dad. My dad is a ill tempered toddler crossed with a Disney Villan. Yet, my mom sticks with him. I have no idea why and neither does she. It's like I said, Taylor is not alone when it comes to bad boys she has a hard time expunging from her life, we all have our Harry Styles. And, right from the start, we knew they were trouble when they walked in.