Chelsea Fagan

It’s like when you’ve lived in a city so long that you’ve completely forgotten all the beautiful monuments and awesome restaurants which are right within walking distance of your place. Then a friend comes along and you show them around, noticing as you go how wonderful everything is, and how easily you forget it.

So when you wake up in the morning and catch a glimpse of yourself in the bathroom mirror looking like a greasy combination of a used makeup-remover pad and comb filled with sporadic hairballs, the only thing keeping you from tipping over into the frothing pit of insanity is knowing that other people look like this before getting ready, too.

First, one must understand the circumstances of the Girl Pee. As we have generally not been blessed with a protruding organ for indiscriminate urination, we must find our own accommodations when not provided with a safe space in which to let loose.

Read a book from your childhood that you used to love, and remember all of the things about it that made you first fall in love with reading. Highlight your favorite parts, and maybe even make some of the quotes into art for your walls.

It appears that the Internet Gods have heard my muffled cries of agony and have ended the few day-long dry spell of no new things to ogle.

If you are even slightly unconvinced by the word “no” in all its perfectly-clear-unless-you’re-being-willfully-obtuse forms, you are never going to be good in bed.

It will be like loving a brick wall. You are head over heels enamored with everything they are, and all they can see is this ugly collection of flaws and how undeserving they are of your love.

Not learning something as quickly as other people do, even if someone tells you that this particular math problem is “way too easy” and something “anyone” could do.

It’s not as though my entire friendship with him was a ruse to get him in bed, I genuinely fell for him over the course of getting to know him, and upon being rejected, remaining in such close proximity was beyond my ability to undertake.

When these nights come along, you can’t fight them. I mean, technically you can stay home and sulk on the internet, but you know that you will end up hating yourself.

Work relentlessly on your sexual technique, but don’t be all slutty and gross about it. Practice on a banana or something. A banana with a condom on it.

Perhaps in a very distant future, you will be able to pick and choose the memories you want to keep, but for a very long time, one memory will always bleed into another.

It provides no closure, gives you nothing tangible to work on, and doesn’t even make for good bouts of self-loathing. You just have to kind of absorb the blow and accept that sometimes things don’t work out even though you did everything right, and there is nothing you can do about it.

The amount of time you spend obsessing over your outfits in the mirror before you leave the door, and how many times you tell yourself that you look ugly/lumpy in everything you try on.

They will be angry. You will confront them, and they will hate it.

Be humiliated by them. Be out one night and get asked by a mutual acquaintance how long you have been together, only to be pre-empted by your lover saying, “Oh, we’re not.”

Few things are more overrated for you than having an active social life. You see all the people who are constantly going out to these parties and bars and Roman orgies and you’re like “Really? Haven’t they heard of Dr. Who?”

If you’re not making a lot of money, if you have a terrible breakup, if you get kicked out of your apartment for unforeseen circumstances — they still treat you like a good person, deserving of respect.