Chelsea Fagan

It’s weird because, for the last 27 years, I’ve known better. I’ve been in this skin and not been found attractive by the opposite gender.

It doesn’t upset me that people post comment after comment about how “beautiful” or “lovely” or “gorgeous” the little girl suffering from progeria or leukemia on my Facebook news feed is. I know that their hearts are in the right places, and that they really do see beauty in the girl’s strength and happiness in the face of adversity.

We often forget that so many of the mundane, grating downsides that we attribute to the cities we’re in are often simply a symptom of the life we surround ourselves with.

Feeling the discomfort of even mild politeness being received as an open invitation to follow you down the street or insist on continuing a clearly-unwanted conversation is something you don’t have to be particularly gorgeous to experience.

Pocahontas, also known as Watch This Hot Blonde Guy Check His White Privilege for An Hour and A Half, is a movie worth noting for its demonstration of a woman’s ability to overlook a guy’s shortcomings in the name of love.

Whether you like him in his clean-shaven, hopeful early days, or his scruffy, overgrown, widow-boning, depressed days, Noah is inarguably one of the greatest fictional boyfriends to ever not exist outside of our collective imaginations.

I am tired of looking at you through the prism of your body, convincing myself that I know you just because I have touched you 1,283,394 times.

Lend me your sweater with the vague-and-absolutely-correct notion that I will be keeping it.

I know, if I am being honest with myself, that my harshest judgments and strictest standards are almost always reserved for other women, by reflex that I often cannot realize until I am mid-snark.

Don’t worry about ‘winning’ the breakup. You’re not going to become the first ballerina president astronaut unicorn by the next time they look at your Facebook, so don’t waste time trying.

The higher you climb, the more competent and successful people you are surrounded by, the deeper the ocean of ways in which to self-doubt proves to go.

They will be difficult but, oh, they will be so worth it. You could have some loser who enjoys watching football and going to bars, or you could have a complicated dreamer who takes notes on Henry Miller books in his Moleskin. I think the choice is clear.

But as we launch into the worlds of professionalism, propriety, responsibility, bills, and sensible happy hours — where do our new platonic love affairs come from?

There is no magnifying glass which can quite reach the degree of detail that I want, and so I pull out the microscope: “What is your worst childhood memory?” “What do you love most about yourself?” “Do you want to become like your parents?”

4. Reaching for the box of your favorite cereal, only to find that someone ate all but the crumbs and put it back, apparently just to torment you.

You should have the perfect job. You should wake up every day and be within walking/biking distance of the kind of place that at once inspires, challenges, and supports you. Your coworkers should be friends, and your boss should be your role model and mentor.

What the people you don’t like post on their Facebook status (why are you even still friends with them?).

I, like most of you, greeted this news this morning with an actual sadness. These two people seemed so perfect together, so much like each other, and something I could understand.