verses from the abstract.

By RYAN O’CONNELL 

1. You can’t date a jerk and expect to turn them into a good person. Jerks are fully committed to being unpleasant. Those brief moments of tenderness they give you are designed to trip you up and give you false hope. It’s best to stay away altogether.
2. The rumors are true: your metabolism does slow down as you get older! That means if you’re still eating whatever you want, there’s a good chance you’ll start to gain an awkward amount of weight. It won’t be too drastic but your clothes will start to hang differently on your body and you’ll feel an overall feeling of unattractiveness. Start to be conscious of what you eat and strive to live a healthier lifestyle if you want to get your teen body back. (Let’s be real though, that might not ever come back.)
3. You’re going to lose touch with a lot of your friends. With some people, it will be expected but with others it will feel like a punch to the stomach. No friendship is truly safe in your twenties. You’re undergoing so many personal and professional changes that there’s bound to be some casualties along the way. Don’t worry though. You’ll end up with the ones that matter. If someone’s no longer in your life, it’s for a reason.
4. You’ll be jealous of everyone who’s more successful than you. That’s okay. Just transfer that jealousy into something productive, like working really hard so you can one day eclipse them and make them feel jealous of YOU.
5. You’ll question every decision you make and never feel completely certain that you made the right choice. It’s pointless to wonder though. You’re here now so you might as well make it be the right decision.
6. You’re going to give your heart to a few people who don’t deserve it. Then, one day you’ll come to your senses and ask them to give it back.
7. You’ll see your parents get older. You’ll come home during Christmas break and see new lines developing on their faces. One day it’ll just hit you that your parents are old and going to die. There’s nothing you can do about it, besides treat them with kindness and visit as much as your budget permits.
8. You’ll have a boss who makes you feel like you’re nothing. It doesn’t have to be in a Devil Wears Prada way. The cruelty can be much more subtle. Don’t let them get to you though. They have no idea who the hell you really are and you’re probably going to have their job someday so…
9. Doing drugs is fun until it’s not, until it starts affecting your life in negative ways and leaves you feeling guilty and wrecked. If that happens, you should stop doing them.
10. You’re going to puke in public. It’s fine. No one cares. Just puke.
11. You’ll know how to make twenty dollars last an entire week because you spent almost all of your paycheck on groceries at Whole Foods and drunk cab rides. This lesson in frugality will serve you well.
12. You’re going to betray your convictions. You’re going to feel shame. You’re going to continue to put yourself in situations that aren’t good for you. And then, slowly but surely, it will become less frequent. It might not ever go away completely but it won’t be as bad. In the meantime, stop shame spiraling about it. It gets you nowhere.
13. Loving yourself is hard. Hating yourself is harder.
14. You’re going to hook up with someone who you would never touch in the daylight sober. Just don’t freak out too much about it. Consider it to be your good deed for the day.
15. You’re going to have people in your life who are toxic. They may say that they love you, they may say that they have your back, but they don’t. Get rid of them.
16. You’ll have moments with someone that are so intense, it’ll feel like you’ve been electrocuted back to life. You’ll hold on to these moments for a long time. They’ll give you hope when you’re going through the motions.
17. You’ll always care about your first love. That doesn’t make you crazy, it just makes you human. When relationships end, it’s not so cut and dry. You carry everyone you’ve ever loved into every relationship thereafter.
18. You’ll enter your twenties as a fashion disaster and (hopefully) leave them looking fantastic. If you don’t know how to put yourself together by then, I really don’t know what to tell you.
19. You’ll realize that the Internet can be a cruel son of a bitch but, you know, www.whatever.com.
20. So much of what you think matters doesn’t actually matter at all. It’s kind of rude. Like, thanks for making me believe in things that are ultimately so inconsequential, you jerk.
21.  You’ll treat someone terribly. Whether it to be a lover or your friend, there’ll be someone whose feelings you take for granted. We focus too much on whether or not someone is hurting us. The reality is that we might actually be the one who’s hurting someone.
22. Doing “grown-up things” doesn’t make you a grown up. Shopping for housewares, buying a plant, embracing domesticity — these things don’t create maturity. If you’re still a baby who hasn’t figured things out, you’ll remain a baby, no matter how many times you pay your rent on time.
23. Don’t force yourself into loving anyone. If it’s not working in the beginning, it’s probably not going to work ever.
24. You are so lucky to have everything that you have. Stop crying about an unreturned text message and get some perspective.
25. Don’t go too long without having sex. Ever. 

    

Coyness is nice and coyness can stop you from saying all the things in life you’d like to…

I’m in need of newness. My life is in need of newness. A new anything, really - whether it’s a person, a conversation, a place - just something to revitalize my spirits. There’s only so much room for growth when you’re stuck in the same environment and I feel that I’ve reached my absolute limit. You experience happiness and pleasure and joy out of life by exposing yourself to things you’ve never seen or done before. I’m ready to be a stranger to any and everything, willing to learn and absorb all that’s around me. My eagerness stems from the bleakness I’ve been surrounded by and I need to break free of it all. I feel like I’m at a pivotal time in my life and I want to be able to look back at all the things I’ve done while I was still this young. I don’t want to be tied down to any obligations and explanations. I want to just be.

Simply be.

lunaoki:

I have wrapped myself round in my own personality again. How does it come about - these sudden, intense changes of view? Perhaps my life is unusually conscious: very vivid to me. But when I enter a complete world of its own, I realise that this is existing whether I exist or not; and so get bowled over. — Virginia Woolf, Diary Entry, 9 May 1926.

…so I can say this is the way that I used to be. So many thoughts yet I haven’t found the words to express any of them. My mind is constantly racing with a zillion thoughts going in different directions. I want to sort them all out but can’t seem to find the one track. I’ve been living inside of my head for way too long, to the point where I can’t focus on anything because I’m too busy thinking. Random thoughts will blurt out of my mouth without intention. My thoughts take their own course from intangible clouds to word vomit. I just want to make sense of it all. Isn’t that convenient? A psych major obsessing over trying to figure their self out. Despite my self-diagnoses, I still want a pure, unadulterated answer. It’s like all I want to do is have a second with God…or a therapist…only to ask one question - is it me or is it everyone/everything else?