Mila Jaroniec

You’re going to feel like the air suddenly has more oxygen, I don’t know; something is going to kick your blood into coursing and you’ll feel very almost painfully awake. You’re going to start seeing things differently.

I have an embarrassing confession: I love Jenna Marbles. For the tragically unfamiliar, Jenna Marbles is a hot girl on YouTube who weekly bestows genius pearls of life advice on her viewers while wearing a turtle backpack and balancing cute dogs on her chest.

Thank you for always being closest to me even when we were in separate time zones and separate stages of life. Thank you for not letting us get split by dumb facts like distance or time.

They don’t respect your time. Right NOW is the opportune moment for that tedious task/remodeling project/huge argument, damn it, screw your econ exam or flight that leaves in two hours.

Maybe you’re the one getting married and you don’t want to vom at your own wedding, which is pretty legit. But, don’t be surprised if everyone in your wedding party does — good job scheduling a May 6^th wedding, you sadist.

Quiet your own voice. Don’t do or say anything even mildly transgressive for fear of looking, sounding, or feeling ridiculous. Don’t make any definitive statements; keep your sketches and bad poetry confined to a journal and shake your head vehemently if someone asks to see.

But I’m going to tell you right now, I’m not upset about being single. In fact, I would venture to say I love it.

There is quite possibly nothing more irritating and homicidal-feelings-inducing than being somewhere with your girlfriend and having some unimaginative weirdo ask “So who’s the guy?”

Thus candy buttons, the most aggravating sweet treat ever, were born. Here’s how you eat them: peel one off ever so slowly so as to avoid getting that obnoxious chunk of paper. Get chunk of paper nonetheless and swear under your breath.

You’re not just paying for a service; you’re commissioning a work of art — the goal is not to get the best deal but to get something worth paying for.

While it’s true that tequila can mysteriously sneak up on the best of us at the end of the night, you actually like to start off with tequila, which automatically makes you a masochistic weirdo. However, it also makes you impressively goal-oriented: you don’t drink to get drunk, you drink to get cray, and how are you supposed to get there by sipping on weak ass cocktails for three hours?

And the main reason I’ve been avoiding it is because being naked sober is hard, damn it. At least for me it is — I still have all the body issues I had as a teenager, only now I’m able to identify them.

Rilke wrote that we all carry our death inside of us, that it grows, develops, changes with us until it’s strong enough to take hold. My brother’s death was unfurling like a dragon, fast and aggressive. It was coded in his DNA.

In our culture, sex outside of a monogamous relationship is typically frowned upon. We think it’s wrong, make all kinds of assumptions about the people engaging in it and like to think there’s something inherently damaged or incomplete about them. We tend to hate the idea of sex being a fun activity, of it being a purely physical experience.

I can make myself sick in every way I can think of. Drink too much, vomit bile, mute my thoughts with downers; burn through countless packs of cigarettes to keep my hands from shaking, curl up close my eyes and rub out the dull headache.

In a way, though, I know you didn’t really feel nervous. Sure you felt kind of out of place without a plan but I have a feeling you didn’t want one anyway. You realized early on that plans are more like suggestions, you can plan all you want but in each crucial moment luck and improvisation are your saviors.

Clearly, your parents have been telling you to eat your vegetables your entire life — there is no way a (well-thought out) plant-based diet can be bad for you. But because here in America we tend to be obsessed with steak and cheese, going vegan can be really hard. Or it can be really easy, depending on how you go about it.

Opinionated and abrasive, you go out of your way to make sure your worldviews conflict with everyone else’s. If you do happen to agree with a point someone else makes, you will find some minute detail to disagree on. For some reason you hate vodka with a passion, but you do realize gin is essentially juniper-flavored vodka, right?