23 Signs You’ve Retired From Being The Crazy Girl

1. You start a lot of your work conversations with “Did you see that documentary on Netflix?”

2. When a guy is playing really hard-to-get (AKA not replying to your text messages because he doesn’t give a shit), your brain no longer finds that incredibly sexy and romantic.

3. You are capable of going out to the bar and having fun with everyone, being in bed with a glass of water by 12:30, and not feeling like you’ve missed out on the whole night.

4. Your vacations have to be carefully planned out, and the idea of just “hopping on a plane and going somewhere” stresses you out immensely. (The money! The logistics! The time off from work!)

5. You’ve actually gotten good at planning out your breakfasts and not just panicking every morning and buying a breakfast sandwich on the way to work.

6. When you look back at some of the guys you dated, at least one of them makes your whole body shiver with remorse and confusion, and you think to yourself, “Never again. Never. Again.”

7. Your happy hours end at two drinks, and don’t turn into “shutting down the dance floor on a Tuesday night and then working through the world’s worst hangover.”

8. For more outings than you’d like to admit, you’re left scrambling to a reason not to go that isn’t just “I’m tired and would rather lie in bed and watch TV.”

9. When you’re browsing through your old pictures on Facebook, there is a slow, palpable descent into Crazy Girlhood, usually peaking during one particular year. (Mine is 2009, for anyone who’s curious.)

10. In terms of taking risk, you’ve calmed down so much it’s ridiculous. Where you used to laugh in the face of getting arrested for yelling at people outside a club with a boob hanging out, you now legitimately fear jaywalking tickets.

11. You cannot identify with Ke$ha, though you remember the part of yourself that could.

12. You can still almost kind of identify with Rihanna, if only because she seems to be the more mature, thinking woman’s Crazy Girl.

13. You occasionally find yourself yelling at the television during incredibly dumb relationship behaviors. When Carrie is cheating on Aiden with Big you’re like, “NO, GIRL, HE IS A 6’4, EMOTIONALLY AVAILABLE WOODWORKER. WHAT ARE YOU DOING??”

14. Your closet contains several outfits where you’re like “Lol, no, never again,” but you hold onto them out of nostalgia.

15. Wearing torturous shoes that make your ass look good is no longer enough of an incentive, and you’re fine with wearing ballet flats (or wedges, the ballet flat of high heels) to the bar.

16. Sometimes you see a pack of rampant Crazy Girls and you’re like, “Ahh, you. I know you.”

17. You catch yourself giving sage, almost weary advice to girls who are no more than two years younger than you. (You punctuate this advice with, “You’re so young.”)

18. You’ll still get excited about group dance songs, but you’ll get kind of tuckered out and leave the floor halfway through it. That first half of the Cha Cha slide, though, you’re there for it!

19. You no longer feel that you can magically outsmart your hangovers, and you can already feel their shadow over you when you reach for that third vodka soda.

20. Running down city streets cackling and being obnoxious is not an attractive behavior to you anymore, even when you are the one doing it.

21. You no longer feel like you have to say “yes” to every event just to say you were there. You’ll just trust everyone’s assessment that the indie rap concert in the unfinished basement was cool.

22. Forcing yourself to enjoy shitty beer to hang out with dudes makes you tired just thinking about it.

23. Every now and then, when the moon is high and the weather is just right, the Crazy Girl comes out of retirement and you are the one dragging your coworkers onto the karaoke stage on a Monday and ordering a round of shots for the entire bar. (And maybe kissing a guy named Cash with a lip piercing.) But then right back into retirement you go, à la Michael Jordan. You’re the Jordan of Former Crazy Girls.