Ari Eastman

Keep suppressing the feeling. Ignore the signs that something that should be good is making you unhappy. Bury it deeper and decide it’s your problem.

You know when you’re about to go on a trip and have this panicky feeling that you’ve forgotten to pack something? It’s like having that uneasy feeling ALL THE TIME.

While a level of awareness is good, being too obsessed with if/how we might embarrass ourselves can keep us from so many experiences. If you accept that, sometimes, you’re going to look and act a fool, it won’t seem quite as terrifying to put yourself out there.

There is a boy in San Francisco
who flicked apart my flesh
like I was nothing more
than something you pass
on the side of the road.

Forced love is not love. I say it in the bathroom before splashing water on my face, trying to disguise my tears as something else. Something far less pathetic than the dirtiness of unrequited affection.

Every now and then, she’s going to ditch you to hang with Mama. Don’t take it personally.

You aren’t at fault for all my burning. Sometimes, it’s just me.

For the past few months, I’ve felt like a potato. Kind of sad, unmoving, semi-mashed. I was doing a successful job of ignoring my health and pulling the “I’ll deal with this later” card. Which, turns out, means you rarely will do it later. Because later just keeps being…later.

I don’t know how I’m supposed to pretend you don’t turn my stomach into a butterfly mortuary, that they flew around so fast and frantic, all of them died. I’m a graveyard of everything I’ve ever said to you.

“How reckless, the way that I love
like the first chapter of a ghost story.
Like the gentlest hand
reaching out of a grave.”

Sometimes, my hands are too rough and I don’t know how to smooth out the parts I should. I don’t always remember the right ways to care for someone.

Why was your brain even thinking about that? Have you secretly wanted to have sex with them this whole time?

Have a ton of friends. This is a PSA to Taylor Swift: having that many friends is A) not normal B) not normal and C) a lie???

You fall on literally nothing.

You don’t text me to see how I’m doing, or ask about my family. You want to know when I’m in town, how my ass curves in jeans.

“When I tell them my problems, does it make me feel relieved or more stressed?”

“Not go to Coachella. I think it will be pretty easy to achieve this one.” — Dave, 25

You allow your lips to relax and sing along, obnoxiously. Loudly. Unapologetically. It’s your birthday, dammit.