Ari Eastman

While they’re always striving for self-improvement, confident women know not to belittle other women for accomplishing something that perhaps they haven’t yet done themselves. They don’t feel the need to be in constant competition.

You’re both experts in telepathy and have a freaky tendency to predict what the other one is going to say long before they ever open their mouths.

You’re always playing the role of matchmaker in your friend group. “Bobby is such a nice guy! Just give it one date, and if it’s horrible I’ll take you out to brunch. My treat.”

I won’t claim to love you through everything and never second guess where we’re going. And I won’t ask perfection from you. I don’t want your promises either. I just want your “I tried” and “I’m doing my best.” We can figure out the rest.

“Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”

He knows you’re pulling away so he holds you even tighter. You end hugs first and wonder if he knows you kiss him with a different mouth now. His insecurities begin to pop up and you hate yourself for it.

But when someone is worth it, I’ll throw on a life-jacket and dive into icy waters. When someone is funny and kind and reminds me life is fragile and unpredictable, I want to take the risk. I want to go all in.

Things don’t just go in a perfectly straight line. Sometimes we zig-zag all over the place. And you know what? That’s okay. That’s actually way more normal.

Driving somewhere and hearing the PERFECT song come on the radio that exactly fits your current life situation. In fact, you’re semi-convinced the song was straight up written for you.

That’s how it happens in the movies, right? They change their mind. They fall in love. They give some dramatic bullshit monologue in airports, “It was you! It was you all along!”

“It felt like the softer blow, you know? I thought maybe just fading out would make it less painful. But I think it just left her confused and me looking like the asshole. Maybe I was.”

When you hug them, pay attention to whether or not they smell your hair. Prolonged hair-smelling is a tell-tale sign of true love.

Investigate your crush online. And spend the next hour convinced you accidentally liked an Instagram photo from 56 weeks ago.

As a new puppy owner, he’s a doting dad. It’s attractive. Yes, there’s a reason all those dudes put puppies in their Tinder profiles. YOUR DOG MAKES ME WANT TO HOOK UP WITH YOU. IT’S SCIENCE, I THINK.

What do you even call them? Oh, that person I was talking to and we had a thing, but then we stopped talking and stopped having a thing? Sure, that just slides off the tongue with such ease!

For all the times I’ve wanted to die, I think about kissing new mouths or falling in love with someone and growing old. It would be an honor to gain wrinkles with someone.

“Every time you tell your daughter you yell at her out of love you teach her to confuse anger with kindness which seems like a good idea till she grows up to trust men who hurt her cause they look so much like you.”

I am my mother’s daughter
which is to say I am aware of my own strengths
so I don’t need you to remind me what they are.