Chelsea Fagan

I have had my heart broken, and have broken hearts. I have gone through breakups that made me question whether or not I was beautiful, smart, or ever worth loving again. I watched romantic comedies that, while a bit patronizing, made me feel a little less alone in the world and in my heartache.

There is going to come a moment when you look around and realize that you have received a request from an ultrasound with its own Facebook, and it is at this moment that you will lose all faith in your generation.

Taking a break from her busy schedule of talking about how much she loves rough coitus and dying her hair, Rihanna drops by to make a perfectly par-for-the-course Guetta number.

Just stand here on the corner looking out onto the bustling city before you like some kind of mid-18th century British naval commander wearing fabulous heels.

We are ready to drop those closest to us like an overfull backpack, running unencumbered to the people who don’t deserve our attention. We can even see them (as much as we hate to admit it) as a nuisance in the face of greater opportunity.

Many of them will take this opportunity to turn on you and hiss about how they’re doing JUST FINE THANK YOU as they shuffle away from you like you were about to mace them.

“Everything is gonna change,” you would whisper at night, staring up at the stars, passing a single bottle between you. “I know,” they would reply. And you knew, just knew, that it would always be the two of you seeing the change together.

These two are truly the dream team of talent, charm, and almost boyish humility. Can they just have a sitcom where they have to share an apartment in Manhattan and get into all kinds of crazy antics? And it’s a musical? ABC ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?

Deli sandwiches stacked so high as to resemble Bibles made of meat.

You will watch Bravo shows in your jammies, and then have a serious discussion about North Korea over dinner at a chic Manhattan bistro. You will also probably get to use the word “summer” as a verb. He is a Vanderbilt, after all.

You can make all of the “right” decisions and sound awesome to your parents’ judgy friends at dinner parties, or you can do what you really want and succeed or fail by your own terms.

This is what thick, well-applied foundation looks like up close. This is what sun damage can do to skin. This is how wrinkles develop as you age. This is what these people look like when not put through the beauty-ideal destroying process of photo editing.

Gone are the days when you can just tear through a bag of Cheetos and raise your orange-stained fist up against the forces of constant fatigue and doughy weight gain around your middle section.

When you think you have that sexy summer glow going on while dancing at a party, but then you catch a glimpse of yourself in a reflective surface and are like, jk, I look like a swamp creature.

We keep ourselves at a palpable distance from our joys because, should we come to rely on that warm feeling of blessed complacency, we will be easily knocked off our pedestal.

The kitchen of nearly any restaurant is where all of the various parts of society who weren’t interested in or had too much of a criminal record for an office job decided to coalesce, yell at each other, be around scalding heat, and talk about women.

Often pronounced “vokka shots,” this is undeniably the entry into the part of the night where things are getting just a little bit too awesome, and you might have to start screaming at the DJ to play a certain song.

You’d essentially have to have lived under some enormous, wifi-less rock for the last four or five years to not know who Phelps is, but just in case you are really that uninformed about the pinnacle of human achievement and physical prowess that is the Olympic Games, let me inform you.