On being young, on getting hurt, on doing the hurting, on watching your friends get hurt, on the things that come up in ‘girl talk’… 

–

The problem is that we want somebody for when we’re lonely. We want bandaids that cover emptiness and perhaps we try to cover things up so much that they never get a chance to heal. We’re afraid of silence, and we haven’t quite learned how to spend time with ourselves, so we fill the void in the best way we know how. That’s the problem though – wanting somebody for when you’re lonely. We need to learn to want someone for when we’re not lonely.

–

If you’re not scared to fall in love, you should be.

Being scared is the whole point. Of liking, feelings, love, whatever. That’s why it matters – cause you do it anyway, even if you have no fricking idea if it will turn out or be the worst thing ever. You say you absolutely terrify me, but you know what, you’re worth it. It’s this feeling of holy shit and what if? So you fall in love, and yeah, you’re terrified, because what’s not there to be terrified of?

I’m afraid of feeling comfortable in people’s arms. I’m afraid because when I get used to sharing a bed with somebody else it gets harder to sleep on my own. That’s terrifying isn’t it? Loving someone takes a ton of courage, so if you’ve been loved, or if you are in love, don’t take that for granted. It can take a lot out of someone – as it should.

–

He can be the best damn thing in the world, the closest to perfect you’re ever going to get, but he still might not be perfect for you, and if you choose the perfect over the perfect for you, you’re not winning you’re settling.

Besides, the perfect person isn’t perfect at all.

–

We break people, we put ourselves first, we make decisions based off of momentary satisfaction, and then we get angry when we see other people do the exact same thing, because well yeah, it hurts. Perhaps the thought of holding ourselves responsible for our own very similar actions might hurt just as much.

The amount of times we’ve said, “boys suck,” and, “why the hell did he do that?” I mean, common, we know the answer don’t we? Have we not done the same things? I have been lead on, and I have also lead other people on. I have been rejected and I’ve also rejected other people. I’ve had my heart broken, and I’ve broken someone else’s heart. Guys can be assholes, but so can I.

–

Here’s the issue – I mean, one of the many issues – if something hurts, we think it must be wrong. This applies to so many things. You miss somebody, and missing hurts, so you think you should get back together with them. Somebody disappoints you, and it hurts, so you think they did something wrong. Perhaps it is a lesson in romantics to say that just because something hurts, doesn’t mean it is wrong at all. If I based my decisions off of what hurts and what doesn’t from time to time (which I am of course guilty of), I wouldn’t know which province to live in at the moment – I’d be in a relationship that I shouldn’t be in – and I would be holding on to anger towards several different people.

Sometimes, things hurt – like when a guy tells you they want to sleep with several different people but you were interested in something a little more monogamous – that sucks. And perhaps the delivery speech needs to be worked on and of course, you don’t have to agree with them by any means – it’s going to hurt – but can you really blame someone for honesty? It’d probably be a lot easier if we could, but no, I don’t think we can.

I think when you’re twenty-one you’ve got to take things with a grain of salt. He doesn’t want to be with you? Well, so what, you’re young. It’s never that easy, I know. I’ve cried over many people that weren’t worth the price I payed for the tissue box that only lasted me a day, but still. We are so young. Yet we falter over other people’s confusion, their broken promises that were never built on anything more than shaky foundations, we fall apart with the slightest gust of wind… But we are so, so young. Too young to come apart for people who are too young to know how to hold somebody together.

–

People hurt people. We should know that by now. So we should also know that that’s not the point. We have been hurt, and we have hurt others. We carry scars with names written on them like tattoos that cost far too much to remove. So if we can agree on that, if we can agree that what we are all pretty good at is hurting one another, can we not agree that the point of it all, the important part, is what you do after. How do you learn to forgive, how do you learn to love people despite the hurt, how do you know when to walk away, how do you learn to forgive yourself. People hurt people, how the hell do we all learn how to love?

–

I’m not innocent. I wish I was. I wish I had made all the best decisions in life so that when my friend’s screwed up I could tell them they’re being stupid. Because it sucks to watch your friends get hurt, or make decisions that you know in the back of your mind aren’t the best one’s. But before you go to say something you bite your lip, because if I was in your boat, I would have made the exact same decision too. In fact, I have. So we don’t tell each other what to do, but we break each other’s fall because we’re pretty good at telling when it’s about to come, because we tripped up over the same thing last week.