Holly Riordan

Making slow, gradual progress is better than making no progress. Spending years working toward a goal is better than giving up on that goal completely.

You don’t owe your FWB anything, so if you take a few hours to answer their texts, it’s not a big deal. If you’re too busy to hang out for a few weeks, it’s not a big deal.

You’re used to your paranoia being correct. You’re used to your bad gut feelings paying off. You’re used to suspecting your person is fooling around behind your back and being proven right. 

They will swear they will never repeat their mistakes. They will look you dead in the eyes and promise it will be different this time. They will make you believe their latest mistake has knocked sense into them. They will trick you into thinking they’ve learned, they’ve grown, they’ve become a better person.

You keep misplacing your phone and keys and glasses. You keep zoning out while other people are talking. You keep thinking you’ve seen something or heard something that isn’t there.

They refuse to reflect on themselves. They refuse to apologize. They refuse to admit they’ve done anything wrong.

Instead of getting closure from your conversation, you might reopen old wounds. You might move two steps backward in your healing process.

You tell yourself you got through your latest meltdown and can get through the next one.

A part of you doesn’t want to get over your person. You want to keep thinking there’s a chance you’ll get back together, a chance everything will work out in the end.

CAPRICORN: You’re blunt. You never send mixed signals or leave anyone guessing.

If you’re accusing me of being cruel and heartless right now, just know that I learned it from you. 

Whether you’re picking at your lips or your forehead or your fingernails or your scalp, it can take up hours of your time. It can chip away at your sanity. It can make you feel insecure and unable to control your impulses.

We have trust issues because we can’t come up with any reasons why someone would want to date us — but we can come up with a million reasons why someone would want to leave us. It’s easier for us to accept heartbreak than it is for us to accept love. 

You want to give him a chance, but you don’t want to lead him on.

You can either hold onto the hope he likes you back and continue throwing yourself at him — or you can raise your standards and realize you’re worth so much more than someone inconsistent. 

It’s about wanting to cancel plans with a friend who means the world to me and not knowing exactly why. It’s about not wanting to show up at a party even though a part of me is dying to attend. It’s about having conflicting feelings about every good thing that happens to me.

I would give you another chance if you stopped playing the victim, if you stopped blaming other people for your own mistakes. If you showed me you’ve grown into someone mature, someone who takes ownership over their actions, someone who understands they are flawed and knows they have the power to fix themselves.

Forgetting about what happened doesn’t erase what happened. It doesn’t magically get rid your baggage, your insecurities, your deepest darkest fears.