Ella Ceron

I could hear a lone violinist playing Noel on a nearby street in the crisp night air, and I missed you the way most broken hearts miss their fractured pieces: most of all, at Christmas.

If you have roommates, don’t clutch the pearls when it’s their day of the week to dance around in their underwear. When you sign a lease with a person, there is an unwritten agreement that you will be okay with the sight of them without pants.

“Does that mean you only date other people with tattoos?”

If you go out to dinner, your parents will probably pay. (But if you’re doing alright financially, you should pay. It’ll feel really good to treat the people who changed your diapers and put up with that whole teenager phase.)

Now, here’s the thing—you can’t just outright give your scrappy 20-something a job with their dream employer. They will want to earn it (as well they should).

You will honestly have entire days in which you will forget that you are broken. There will, of course, be cracks, but everyone has cracks. Nobody is without their flaws. And holding yourself to some impossible standard without those flaws will get boring after a while.

Listen, if you’re not gonna be a nun or something, you might as well laugh.

These photos don’t show the fights our friends have with their boyfriends and girlfriends, the hour-long wait they endured to even sit at the bar of that restaurant, or the credit card bill that came with those shoes.

Offering to take them to to the zoo, the movies, or even out to lunch will A, make them feel like a mini-grown up; B, make them feel cool enough to hang with grown ups; C, give their parents a much-needed afternoon to themselves.

We couldn’t let everything fall to fate, and hope that infatuation alone would keep us afloat. I would have to learn how to be patient, and there would be things about me you’d find less than wonderful, too.

You want to know how you earn food? You breathe. You live. You deserve calories just by virtue of the fact that you exist. Not for any other reason.

You share cabs and don’t ask them to split the difference, but they make a point to pay you back anyway.

Two people’s citizenship holds little bearing on whether or not they are allowed to fall in love.

Any orange cat not named Crookshanks is missing out on a prime naming opportunity, in your opinion.

5. The Phantom of the Opera

Josh: You want to practice parking?
Cher: What’s the point? Everywhere you go has valet.

Run in the winter, in that calm and peaceful air that reminds you why you run. Because you couldn’t not run. Because not even weather could hold you back.

Pick a book that you loved, a book you hope the recipient will come to love, too, and fill it with Post-It notes or scraps of paper with your notes at your favorite parts.