Chelsea Fagan

I know, if I am being honest with myself, that my harshest judgments and strictest standards are almost always reserved for other women, by reflex that I often cannot realize until I am mid-snark.

Don’t worry about ‘winning’ the breakup. You’re not going to become the first ballerina president astronaut unicorn by the next time they look at your Facebook, so don’t waste time trying.

What the people you don’t like post on their Facebook status (why are you even still friends with them?).

You were there through different relationships the way a people weathers different administrations, learning intimately what it is they are looking for and the mistakes they are making — mistakes you know you have to let them make for themselves, just as they allow you yours.

If your’e telling a story, have no concept of what you’re actually saying, and realize far too late that you’ve been talking for seven straight minutes about that time you thought you got rabies from that raccoon you tried to domesticate at summer camp.

See all of your friends from home one last time and remind yourself of how much you love them, how big a part of you they are, and how you should do better to keep in touch with them during the school year.

We all know that tragic couple who is constantly having some Maury-esque fight, vowing never to speak to each other again, sleeping together a week later, and putting that relationship right back up on Facebook the next day.

Somehow we can convince ourselves, at the beginning of June, that we’ll be fine when the end of August rolls around and it’s time to put things behind us. And yet, when that moment comes, we often start scrambling to make it work through the distance, the difficulty, and the new opportunities of the fall.

You deserve to look for love, if that’s what you want, and be ready to accept it when it comes your way.

I know that, personally speaking, I am guilty on countless occasions of passing judgment about another woman’s looks, of putting her into a category of some kind or making assumptions about her habits, lifestyle, or even the kind of person she is.

Take extra time in hot showers, try on lots of great new clothes, discover your body again, watch whatever cheesy movie your heart desires. And don’t apologize. Loving yourself, making yourself feel good and worthy, is essential to feeling complete, and being able to love anyone else.

At some point, best friendships just become a giant amalgam of inside jokes, moments that have passed between the two of you and have flowered into their own language, a sort of code that allows you to experience life through a shared perspective.

Many of them will take this opportunity to turn on you and hiss about how they’re doing JUST FINE THANK YOU as they shuffle away from you like you were about to mace them.

“Everything is gonna change,” you would whisper at night, staring up at the stars, passing a single bottle between you. “I know,” they would reply. And you knew, just knew, that it would always be the two of you seeing the change together.

You can make all of the “right” decisions and sound awesome to your parents’ judgy friends at dinner parties, or you can do what you really want and succeed or fail by your own terms.

It’s an undeniable trope in modern humor to have the woman be a perfectly normal, capable member of society — right up until she’s PMSing, at which point she becomes a many-headed hydra, only there to scream and complain, occasionally stopping to eat an entire pan of brownies and cry.

But beyond just making the waiter’s life miserable for the hour or so spent in the restaurant, this person clearly holds service jobs in general in extremely low esteem — something that should essentially be punishable by death at this point.

But there are the fears. And yes, life has gone on without you. And the longer you stay in your new home, the more profound those changes will become.