Chelsea Fagan

You deserve to look for love, if that’s what you want, and be ready to accept it when it comes your way.

That perfect buzz after 2-3 drinks where you’re not sloppy, but everything is just happy and you don’t run the risk of texting your ex/sobbing.

I know that, personally speaking, I am guilty on countless occasions of passing judgment about another woman’s looks, of putting her into a category of some kind or making assumptions about her habits, lifestyle, or even the kind of person she is.

I love you the way bros love ironically singing “Call Me Maybe” and secretly enjoying it more than they would ever let on. I love you the way bar owners love how much patrons do shots to encourage each other during karaoke night.

Take extra time in hot showers, try on lots of great new clothes, discover your body again, watch whatever cheesy movie your heart desires. And don’t apologize. Loving yourself, making yourself feel good and worthy, is essential to feeling complete, and being able to love anyone else.

And the constant barrage of expectations about what money should and should not mean to us — the degree to which it is acceptable to be poor — leaves many feeling as though real problems with money, especially those we were raised in and thus can feel defined by, are not to be spoken about.

He’s back!

At some point, best friendships just become a giant amalgam of inside jokes, moments that have passed between the two of you and have flowered into their own language, a sort of code that allows you to experience life through a shared perspective.

3. Not having someone call “Dinner!” upstairs to you, only for you to run down and be met with a plate full of hot, free food.

And it’s doubtful that “borrow” is an appropriate word, given how often the clothing items we pilfer end up just worming their cottony way into our wardrobe rotation. It’s a sad, profound moment when out with a girlfriend, looking across the table and thinking to yourself, “Jesus Christ, is that my sweater?”

And if you didn’t pick up? If my missed call just lingered, blinking silently into whatever empty room you’d left your phone in, waiting for you to come back and pick it up, what then?

When you’re a kid, talking back to your teacher could get you into detention, or an uncomfortable parent-teacher conference that might end with no dessert for, like, a month. When you’re an adult, talking back to your boss could make you homeless in a matter of weeks.

Wading through a marsh of mixed messages and friends at every stage of their lives can be, when in the moment, tedious and exhausting — but it is a time to figure out who we are and what we actually want against a backdrop of limitless options.

Apparently pulled over between a championship lacrosse match and the taping for a cooking show about Jungle Juice, Charming Bro displays the finest in athletic haircut, glassy-eyed stare, and smile that says “My dad’s lawyer wins cases like these for breakfast.”

It feels like when we’re not hanging out with the same group of people, we’re complaining about how we need to get out, and start meeting new friends, and going places that can at least give us new decor to stare at while drinking.

I love crying. Sometimes, I feel like a good cry, and I just get all hopped up on Death Cab and heartwarming puppy rescue videos on YouTube and have a nice sob for a half hour or so.

With his beautiful blue eyes, nervous smile, and conflicted moments of humanity constantly peering through his forced tough guy-image, he is the definition of the bad boy with a soft heart we all secretly want to run away with and live off of a suitcase full of meth money.

And liquid eyeliner — what absurd witchcraft is that? Whenever I see a girl who has that perfect, delicate cat-eye with the little flick up at the end, perfectly symmetrical on both sides — I want to steal her hand-eye coordination the way Usula stole Ariel’s voice.