Ella Ceron

There are two phases in your life in regards to your parents: the complete and utter bliss that exists before they drop the very first “give me a grandchild” hint, and then everything after. Nothing is ever the same after that moment.

I asked my girlfriends (who, it should be noted, all have vastly different opinions of what constitutes attractiveness in the guys they date) and pretty unsurprisingly, beneath nuanced types and funny fetishes, the core things boil down to be… the same. 

Because, come on. If you don’t squeal over a wobbly puppy, you don’t have a heart.

“It’s embarrassing, because it’s actually kind of a pretty upbeat tune, but because of that ONE FLASH MOB PROPOSAL in Home Depot, “Somebody Loves You” by Betty Who gets me choked up every time.”

The parts of you that are good and caring and hardworking and special — the things that make you who you are, and endear you to the people who love you — might become influenced by whatever tragedy life throws your way, but they are also so much more than that.

You write really long, formal emails, but you quickly realize that everyone else writes really casual, 1-2 sentence emails. The day you switch from “yours truly” to “yours” is nothing short of a graduation in and of itself.

Every person you bring over gets the feline death staredown, and though you say that “she’ll warm up to you eventually” and “she’s just wary of new people,” in fact, you take your cat’s icy aversion to this person as a huuuuuge red flag.

You have to remember that one fix doesn’t make life better. There will always be something else to chase.