Chelsea Fagan

No one wants to look like the open wound who cannot take a hint, or has to bring the painful, awkward conversation about what has happened to the two of you in front of their face. Many people are happy just letting uncomfortable truths go unspoken until they decide to bury them indefinitely.

If you are going bald, and are past the point of creating a reasonable facsimile of hair with a few good products and swishes of the comb, you just have to run with it.

When you were a little kid, all of your dolls/stuffed animals were in long-term, committed relationships with one another. Two of your teddy bears would be soon nearing their silver anniversary.

Realizing that some people are making the transition from “crazy kid who parties a little too much” to “person who has a serious problem with drinking/drug use,” and that there may be nothing you can do to help them.

I remember hearing a friend say, more offhand than anything else, over lunch: “Popping pills is never good. It only makes the problem worse.”

Suddenly, your lack of action has become the only thing that comes to mind when you think about the way they used to smile, or how intoxicating it was to be around them.

Everyone will tell you that you’re going to forget about this, that one day it will seem like nothing, that it will be a blip on the horizon behind you.

Maybe I’m biased, but I am just really drawn to girls who aren’t afraid of a bold red lip and always go over their paperwork with a fine-toothed comb.

Meeting a person from a much older generation who is just as open-minded and socially progressive as all of your friends.

They swept their hair out of their eyes in the same way, they put two sugars in their coffee the same way, they played with a fray on their jeans the same way. But there was an invisible inner part that you could sense had evaporated from them, maybe even overnight, that was not going to come back.

The women who rejected them are but one bullet point in a longer list, for many of these Nice Guys.

The thing about orgasms is that they can come from anywhere. If the Peen Patrol isn’t bringing them, why not take her to Tongue Town or Vibrator Valley or even Fingerblast Forest? Your options are limitless, no need to cry!

“When something starts hurting enough that all I can hear is a repeated ‘Cancer. Cancer. Cancer.’ in my head and I finally force myself to go to the doctor for a much-delayed checkup.”

If our parents and bosses are telling us that the ones who aren’t making it are simply “lazy,” why should we feel any differently?

Imagine how cruel people can be when they interpret outgoingness for sexual availability and then are turned down when their ego is most easily bruised. Remember not to make that mistake yourself, and to learn the very human differences between wanting to start a conversation and wanting to start a courtship.

It’s like when you’ve lived in a city so long that you’ve completely forgotten all the beautiful monuments and awesome restaurants which are right within walking distance of your place. Then a friend comes along and you show them around, noticing as you go how wonderful everything is, and how easily you forget it.

So when you wake up in the morning and catch a glimpse of yourself in the bathroom mirror looking like a greasy combination of a used makeup-remover pad and comb filled with sporadic hairballs, the only thing keeping you from tipping over into the frothing pit of insanity is knowing that other people look like this before getting ready, too.

The comparisons were often made between “telling murderers not to murder,” or “telling thieves not to steal” (perceived as ludicrous and ineffective) and “telling rapists not to rape.” The idea is that sexual assault, like any crime, is one that happens as a result of bad people who are just going to do bad things.