14 Emotional Crisis Milestones Every Girl Has Hit At Least Once In Her Life

"I'm gonna dye my hair pink...no PURPLE. Should I get bangs?"

Updated 9 years ago, March 17, 2016

1. Eating everything in sight.

It starts slow. There’s popcorn in your pantry so you might as well just have a snack. But oh wait…you’ve got guac too. And string cheese. …And chicken nuggets. Suddenly, before you know what’s happened, you’ve dipped popcorn in guac and made a grilled cheese “Double Down” style with dinosaur nuggets and Target brand Monterey Jack string cheese. If no one saw you eat it and you do some half-assed sit ups during the commercial breaks of Scandal do the calories still count? Wait…is that Americone Dream in the freezer?!

2. Trying to Eat, Pray, Love yourself.

You know you’re stuck in a rut. You’ve been watching the same ASMR videos and clicking nostalgically (read: depressingly) through the same Facebook albums from high school where you were skinny and apparently had NO pores. It’s time to pull your shit together and do something with yourself. Maybe you’ll take up yoga! Nah…you hate working out in front of happy people. So you end up watching Wild a little too closely and then spend a solid afternoon at REI just kidding yourself that you could last even a DAY in the wilderness.

3. Feeling the insatiable need to dramatically change your appearance.

But you STILL need a change. And then it hits you. If you can’t hike your way to happiness, you’ll just change everything about yourself! How much do tattoos cost? You could TOTALLY rock a sleeve. What’s the deal septum piercings? Are they the new thing? What does your office dress code say about those?

4. But you can’t commit so your hair takes a beating.

Nahhhhh you’re scared of needles and definitely don’t want to deal with the healing time. But HAIR. Hair grows back! And plus if you don’t like it you can just slap some L’Oreal in “Almond” on top of it and presto-changeo: you’re fine. Should you go pink? NO. Purple! Should you get bangs? BANGS. You’d look SO cute with bangs. (Every girl has gone through emotional bangs.)

5. Deciding to cleanse because you’ve eaten everything in sight.

Ugggghhhhhhh. All of those late night popcorn/chicken nugget/shredded cheese directly from the bag fests have left you feeling like a bloated, greasy blob. So you dive a little too deep into Kylie Jenner’s instagram and see her promoting a juice cleanse. PERFECT. You just won’t eat anything but $200 worth of juice for a week and BAM. You’ll be back. Your abs will come in and you’ll be HAPPY. Buuuuuut this lasts about a day and a half because you bite the head off of someone in a blind hunger rage, and end up eating a hot dog on the curb outside of your work.

6. Crying at the stupidest shit imaginable.

You know what doesn’t quit? The crying. You’re constantly walking around, pretty misty and ready to burst at any moment. ANYTHING can set you off. Puppy videos, poems on tumblr, seeing someone wearing the same coat your ex has, seeing elderly people grocery shopping, that stupid gum commercial. You are a walking, emotionally unstable, about to start sobbing uncontrollably, time bomb.

7. Listening to the same “anthem” on repeat.

If Kelly Clarkson gets royalties for every repeat of “Beautiful Disaster” on Spotify she owes you a drink.

8. Watching your Google search history turn into the self-help aisle of Barnes & Noble.

All of a sudden Google starts suggesting things instantly like, “How To Be Happy” or, “Is it possible to be sad forever?” or, “Signs that everything is terrible and love never wins.” Your search history is the most honest place in anyone’s home and yours, my friend, is BLEAK.

9. Reaching out to people you haven’t talked to for eons.

It starts innocently enough. You just go on the ol’ Facebook to see what Jordan from the summer before Freshman year is up to. But then you add him on Snapchat. And you start messaging “hey remember when” messages with WAY too many lols. And then before you know it you’ve built an imaginary life where you just run into each other at your favorite dive bar and pick up where you left off and have SO much in common and end up growing old together. Reality: you get drunk and say something dumb and he blocks you.

10. Deciding that you too can be a Jennifer Lawrence level of cool.

Cool girls don’t listen to “Wrecking Ball” 18 times before 10 AM and definitely don’t “u up?” their high school boyfriend. Cool girls are chill, collected, DGAF kind of girls. You can be cool. You can wear baseball caps and have an effortless bob. It’ll be FINE. (Spoiler alert: you can’t, you look dumb in hats, and it won’t be fine.)

11. Tweeting/Instagraming/Pinteresting waaaaay too many inspirational quotes/song lyrics.

Slowly but surely your social media becomes all pictures of sunsets you didn’t take, captioned with phrases like “it’s always darkest before the dawn” in calligraphy. ~*cringe*~

12. Drinking everything in sight.

Eating everything didn’t make you feel better, but maybe drinking everything will! You build a bar from Ikea, stock it with lemons, limes, and “liquor for company” but end up just making 6:30 vodka tonics because you can. No that’s not lipstick, that’s permanent red wine mouth. But the alcohol only distracts you for a little while and eventually you realize it’s just hurting your sleep, your head, and your wallet.

13. Accepting your fate.

You will just be sad forever. You are a one-woman Eeyore. This is your life now and your memoir will make everyone depressed AF. There is no silver lining and Disney movies were invented to sell sweatshirts. Everything sucks and everyone dies and everything is terrible. But like…it’s fine?