Kendra Syrdal

Making your younger sibling drive you around when you’re home for the holidays, because cars are scary and you forgot how to be a person.

Life may be plastic, but it’s not always fantastic.

I compartmentalized every last piece of loving you and wanting you and needing you until I was absolutely sure I didn’t. I bit down and suppressed every piece of missing you until I could believably say that I didn’t care.

“Roses are red
Violets are blue
Your best-friend tried to fuck me
And I said no because of you.”

Realize that the only person responsible for your own confidence, and your own self-love, is you.

I try to have easy love, boring love. The kind of love that isn’t written about in poetry, or on walls that witness fighting, or that lingers in scars that cover my heart. I try to have the kind of love that comes from comfort, comes from quiet.

You’re still not going to be looked at like a Giselle or an Angelina. Nope. You’re going to be greeted with an, “Awwww! Babe!” because you have a baby face. And there’s really no way to be a sexy baby.

She was never embarrassed to say your name or to hold your hand in public. She was never unsure of where she stood because the answer was always, “Right next to him.”

Someday she’ll probably burp and it will shake the foundation of your home. Hazard of the hops.

Stop letting the inherit need to not rock the boat keep you from getting things off your chest. It’s not whatever; it’s important. You’re not whatever. You’re important.

She tasted like the wine I swam in when I was freshly broken, and like the confusion I once called my best friend. She reminded me of the huckleberries we’d eat before they were fully ripe, but we liked the way they bit our tongues so we kept coming back for more.

Leave a candle in your bathroom just in case, and have some around to make sure that your place always smells like a place where you would want to be. There’s nothing worse than a stinky house.