Chelsea Fagan

If you’re rocking the button-downs with Nutella stains and suit pants about two inches too short, you’re never gonna progress. You’re just not.

You basically scar this person for the rest of their life, and turn them into the kind of human being whose natural response to a moment of suspicion is to go through every text message their partner has sent or received in the last six months.

I can feel you holding my hand, that new-and-scary feeling of someone else on your palm that you weren’t quite sure liked you back yet. I can feel the sand under my feet, and my head on your shoulder.

Be really nice to old ladies while out and about, helping them with things and paying them nice compliments.

When something that you intentionally didn’t spend a lot of money on breaks on you. (Let those Forever 21 dresses go — let them go.)

Even rape culture, one of feminism’s most important crusades, is often blind to its own inability to consider other axes of privilege.

You apologize for things which are not your fault, even for things which hurt no one. You will bump into a table and mutter that you are sorry to have hurt it, you will excuse yourself.

My happiness as a kid was, in many ways, measured in chicken nuggets.

You are that Brandon Boyd-esque stoner hottie who is sailing through life on a cloud of half-launched music careers and cheekbones that could cut glass.

Asking people what they want physically, or romantically, when you are in a relationship. Not being offended by the idea of being told how to love someone better, or understanding that no two people want exatly the same things.

I guess I was not prepared when I opened up my internet this morning, only to see her sprawled out on a bed with my slightly-nebbishy-yet-undeniably-foxtastical husband.

When ‘shuffle’ magically knows all of the things you want to listen to at the right times, and makes the perfect soundtrack for your afternoon’s activities.

It is a girl who is thirsty for love and affection in a way we generally aim to stifle by labeling it as “needy” and shaming her for being such an open wound of emotional want.

Perhaps I have become addicted to your disapproval, or maybe I just want a standard I know I’ll never be good enough to reach.

There is a direct correlation between the kind of clothes you wear and the amount of respect you deserve.

You can tell when you send them a good-morning text message, or mail them a gift, or take the time to do something for them that you know they’ll barely appreciate — this isn’t going to be reciprocated.

Tell everyone he was j/k about the whole Hitler Youth thing, he just thought it was “swaggy as hell” to have a badass come-up story.

If there is something more oppressive to the human spirit than the act of sleeping with someone who you have not yet found the courage to break up with, I don’t want to be aware of it.