Holly Riordan

She isn’t afraid of speaking her mind. She isn’t afraid of getting turned down. She isn’t afraid of having her heart shattered. The only thing she’s afraid of is what would happen if she never gave love a shot.

Now, she runs at the first sign of a red flag. Now, she protects her heart instead of letting it run wild.

You shouldn’t be an option, a backup plan, a second choice. You shouldn’t be the person he texts when it’s late at night and he doesn’t have anything else to do, when all of the people he usually puts before you are busy.

Aries: Chasing after him. If you triple text him and bail on your friends whenever he asks you to hang out, then he’s going to get bored of you.

You turn them down. You aren’t afraid that they’re going to break up with you if you decide you aren’t in the mood for sex one night. You know they’ll understand. You know they’ll respect your decision.

It’s a place where you bring your family — or the people that you’re so close to that you consider family.

She’s not going to trust you, unless you turn down girls that hit on you. Unless you delete all of your old booty calls from your contacts list. Unless you make it clear that you’re in a committed relationship and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Respect is introducing you to his friends as his girlfriend. It’s defending you when his mother makes a rude comment about you. It’s deleting all of his dating apps, because he doesn’t need them anymore.

“A murderer was on my front lawn with a gun in his hand. I have no idea what would’ve happened if I didn’t wake my grandpa, or if I didn’t wake up to get a snack.”

One day, it won’t hurt to look at them. One day, you’ll be happy that you have mementos of your past.

I want to kiss you, but I’ll keep acting like you’re just a friend.

We go out on dates before we’re ready. We find rebounds. We polish our social media to make it look like we’re happier now than we ever were in our relationship. We put in all our effort to make it look like we’re over the same people we dream about every night.

Date the boy that gives you a reason to laugh over the stupidest things, the boy that encourages you to tell embarrassing jokes, the boy that brings out a side of you that hasn’t been showed since you were a kid.

She doesn’t need some guy to tell her that she looks pretty in order to feel confident. She doesn’t need his encouragement in order to feel strong.

He never shows you pictures or videos on his phone, because he’s worried about the texts that might come through while you’re looking.

Pisces: He wishes he could tell you that you were more than his girlfriend. That you were his best friend and it really sucks now that you’re gone.

He hasn’t answered me for three days straight, so I claim that I’m finished with him. That I don’t want anything to do with him anymore. That I deserve better than scum like him. But then his name pops up on my phone screen and I forget all about the promises I made myself.

I don’t want my self-worth to be dependent on some guy, but it is. It wavers, depending on how much attention you’ve been giving me. Based on whether or not you seem interested on any given day.