Chelsea Fagan

If you have ever accidentally entered a club on 18 and over night, you know what it means to feel simultaneously incredibly out-of-place and bitter at the universe for having put you in this position.

Although the industry she was entering was undoubtedly dominated by men — and often dismissive of what a woman could possibly offer a board room full of computer nerds — Cara was insistent from day one that she make a career for herself in technology.

With your boarding pass, you have become one of those brave enough to take the plunge. You have scrimped and saved and missed out on nights at the bar long enough to make this purchase — and all the expenses which will come after it — a feasible investment.

I know people in my actual life who, at the ripe old age of 24, say to me in all seriousness that they can “no longer” fulfill their dream of coming to Europe, or that they are “too old” to take the night classes towards the Master’s they want.

If someone tells you they don’t want marriage and kids, and that they aren’t going to change their mind, please do everyone a favor and listen to them.

Feel as though each conversation is in a language you’re vaguely familiar with but stopped progressing in after an intermediate course — you can get the jist of what they’re talking about, but the context and nuance is indecipherable.

The thing is, we are raised to fear the sexuality of other women, and to judge it harshly. We are raised to see the sexual premium of female chastity as a collective thing, something another woman could “damage” by not taking it seriously enough.

And “I miss you” — is that only appropriate to someone who has left, someone you imagine will come back or at least longs to do so? What about the people who have never fully entered our lives, who have passed by it like a shiny car driving just slowly enough to get a glimpse at the people inside?

Apparently the only possible reason I could feel this way is because, on some level, I am seething with jealousy and bitter, childish rage over their ability to succeed in the face of my unequivocal failures.

Because you know — you must know, right? — that the way you kiss someone, the way you hold the nape of their neck lightly in your palm and bring them towards you, is as effective as it is unmistakable.

Because when someone — someone you love, someone you consider beautiful — alters the way they look, what does it say about your looks? What does it say about your desire to remain “natural,” to work with what God gave you, and to not bend to society’s whims of what is most aesthetically pleasing?

The sale products are often in fairly odd places, such as the caps at the ends of rows where no one usually looks, so go hunting for them (or ask for help to find them #noshame).

Actually make a recipe from one of the cooking shows you watch so often, even if it comes out looking (or tasting) absolutely nothing like what it’s supposed to.

We are entertained in a visceral, almost WWE-like way by the spectacle of women going after one another, especially in a public forum. To put another woman down, aside from providing the high of righteous indignation and moral superiority, is often very lucrative.

He refers to things other than homosexual couples as being “gay.”

I fear, though, that even in its most generous descriptions, the idea of any one person completing you or fulfilling you in a way that renders all other love secondary or even irrelevant is dangerous.

Omg I love youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu you are so beautiful can I please have your babies ok thanks

“I stopped reading the comments section (nothing good ever happens there), and I eventually stopped reading the articles altogether. My dad still reads everything and gets really upset about it, though.”