And then one day you start to get firmer with your standards. You learn that good people do shitty things but that doesn’t mean you just let it go right away. You learn to walk away, to stop waiting up past midnight for people that don’t show up, and that not everyone feels the same way as you do about them – even if its as friends. You learn that there are few physical differences between what you can do with a lover or a stranger. And so maybe the lines become blurred. Maybe lust and love get confused and what if you really don’t know how you feel – what if it didn’t matter to you either way. You learn that everything has an expiration date and most are visible but you choose to look away, anyway. You learn that you can wake up lonely even if you wake up next to somebody and you decide you never want to feel that way again. You learn that some things are worth holding out for. You learn that people can tell lies with their eyes and you will believe them every, single, time. You learn that the worst lies are the one’s you tell yourself, over and over again. You learn that the best days are the days you stop wanting people that don’t want you – the days you go to the beach in mid January and fall in love with the sun and the sound of the ocean all over again. You learn that nothing makes everything feel better like walking for hours on the coast line. You learn that most people have relatively good intentions and it’s nobody’s fault that you got wrapped up in their own confusion. You learn that if you have something to say, to say it. You learn that one day you’ll be a writer even if you don’t want to be one, because you don’t know how to set the pen down.