Evoke Any Kind Of Emotion

"Being someone’s friend doesn’t seem like a difficult job. How hard is to treat someone you like with respect and, you know, be there for them?

Oh, right. I guess it’s really hard. People fail at it everyday! Bad friends are easier to find than good friends these days. Cool!

If you’re sitting there and wondering if you are, in fact, a bad friend, let me define it for you.

A bad friend is someone whose jealousies and insecurities outweigh their love for someone. Deep down, they might want to be a good friend and care but they’re too messed up in their own head to ever actually do it. Instead, they act paranoid and possessive, saying things like, “This is MY best friend. Oh, you know so-and-so? I’m super close with them!” This type of person can also be an unattractive mix of territorial and paranoid. They wonder if their friends are hanging out without them or if they’re being forgotten and left behind. People who are violently insecure don’t have what it takes to be a quality friend. Their own issues and neuroses get in the way.

A bad friend is someone who feels the need to undercut what you’re saying and take little jabs. Of course, with close friends, it’s always fine to take jabs at each other but you know whether or not it’s coming from a good place. Putting your friend down often isn’t “Ha, ha ha.” It’s more like, “Ew, with friends like you, who needs enemies?!

Bad friends are narcissistic and self-obsessed. They look for any opportunity to bring the conversation back to them. Worse, they might not even be aware that they’re doing it. In their mind, they might think they are the best friend ever, which is truly frightening.

Bad friends are fair-weathered. They’re by your side when you’re fun and you have something to give them but as soon as you’re going through a difficult time, they are conveniently MIA. They won’t bring you cold medicine. They won’t give you a ride to the doctor. Everything they do is self-serving.

Bad friends wince when you tell them good news. They say they’re happy for you but deep down they’re devastated that you’ve eclipsed them in some area of life. They’re not your cheerleader, they’re your detractor. You’re allowed to move up in the world when they do.

If you find yourself relating to a lot of these or feel like you have a friend who has these same characteristics, dump their asses and send them to Bad Friend jail immediately. Life is hard enough without you having to wonder if you have good people around you. Your friends are supposed to be the solution to your problems, not the source.

I feel like your twenties are a time when you cut the fat and find out who’s really meant to stick by you. In such an insane time of transition, friendships aren’t easy to maintain like they once were in college. Now we actually have to put work into it, we have to make a conscious effort to keep the friendship going. This shift allows you to really ask yourself, “Is this person worth it? Do they treat me like crap or what?” And if you have your doubts, chances are they  aren’t meant to be a part of your tribe. Toxic friendships do nothing but drag you down. Feeling heavy this summer? Thin out your contacts list! It’ll give you the same feeling as going on a liquid cleanse! (Uh, sorta.)

My point is that you have to take care of yourself and stop hanging out with douchebags. Only surround yourself with people who bring out the best qualities in you. It sounds corny but it’s true. If you don’t like the way you act when you’re around someone, maybe you should reconsider being around them.

It’s time to build your second family. The friends you have now will likely be the ones you have forever, so you might as well make sure they’re solid!"

"

You can’t date a jerk and expect to turn them into a good person. Jerks are fully committed to being unpleasant. Those brief moments of tenderness they give you are designed to trip you up and give you false hope. It’s best to stay away altogether. The rumors are true: your metabolism does slow down as you get older! That means if you’re still eating whatever you want, there’s a good chance you’ll start to gain an awkward amount of weight. It won’t be too drastic but your clothes will start to hang differently on your body and you’ll feel an overall feeling of unattractiveness. Start to be conscious of what you eat and strive to live a healthier lifestyle if you want to get your teen body back. (Let’s be real though, that might not ever come back.) You’re going to lose touch with a lot of your friends. With some people, it will be expected but with others it will feel like a punch to the stomach. No friendship is truly safe in your twenties. You’re undergoing so many personal and professional changes that there’s bound to be some casualties along the way. Don’t worry though. You’ll end up with the ones that matter. If someone’s no longer in your life, it’s for a reason. You’ll be jealous of everyone who’s more successful than you. That’s okay. Just transfer that jealousy into something productive, like working really hard so you can one day eclipse them and make them feel jealous of YOU. You’ll question every decision you make and never feel completely certain that you made the right choice. It’s pointless to wonder though. You’re here now so you might as well make it be the right decision. You’re going to give your heart to a few people who don’t deserve it. Then, one day you’ll come to your senses and ask them to give it back. You’ll see your parents get older. You’ll come home during Christmas break and see new lines developing on their faces. One day it’ll just hit you that your parents are old and going to die. There’s nothing you can do about it, besides treat them with kindness and visit as much as your budget permits. You’ll have a boss who makes you feel like you’re nothing. It doesn’t have to be in a Devil Wears Prada way. The cruelty can be much more subtle. Don’t let them get to you though. They have no idea who the hell you really are and you’re probably going to have their job someday so… Doing drugs is fun until it’s not, until it starts affecting your life in negative ways and leaves you feeling guilty and wrecked. If that happens, you should stop doing them. You’re going to puke in public. It’s fine. No one cares. Just puke. You’ll know how to make twenty dollars last an entire week because you spent almost all of your paycheck on groceries at Whole Foods and drunk cab rides. This lesson in frugality will serve you well. You’re going to betray your convictions. You’re going to feel shame. You’re going to continue to put yourself in situations that aren’t good for you. And then, slowly but surely, it will become less frequent. It might not ever go away completely but it won’t be as bad. In the meantime, stop shame spiraling about it. It gets you nowhere. Loving yourself is hard. Hating yourself is harder. You’re going to hook up with someone who you would never touch in the daylight sober. Just don’t freak out too much about it. Consider it to be your good deed for the day. You’re going to have people in your life who are toxic. They may say that they love you, they may say that they have your back, but they don’t. Get rid of them. You’ll have moments with someone that are so intense, it’ll feel like you’ve been electrocuted back to life. You’ll hold on to these moments for a long time. They’ll give you hope when you’re going through the motions. You’ll always care about your first love. That doesn’t make you crazy, it just makes you human. When relationships end, it’s not so cut and dry. You carry everyone you’ve ever loved into every relationship thereafter. You’ll enter your twenties as a fashion disaster and (hopefully) leave them looking fantastic. If you don’t know how to put yourself together by then, I really don’t know what to tell you. You’ll realize that the Internet can be a cruel son of a bitch but, you know, www.whatever.com. So much of what you think matters doesn’t actually matter at all. It’s kind of rude. Like, thanks for making me believe in things that are ultimately so inconsequential, you jerk.  You’ll treat someone terribly. Whether it to be a lover or your friend, there’ll be someone whose feelings you take for granted. We focus too much on whether or not someone is hurting us. The reality is that we might actually be the one who’s hurting someone. Doing “grown-up things” doesn’t make you a grown up. Shopping for housewares, buying a plant, embracing domesticity — these things don’t create maturity. If you’re still a baby who hasn’t figured things out, you’ll remain a baby, no matter how many times you pay your rent on time. Don’t force yourself into loving anyone. If it’s not working in the beginning, it’s probably not going to work ever. You are so lucky to have everything that you have. Stop crying about an unreturned text message and get some perspective. Don’t go too long without having sex. Ever. " "You will fall in love with someone who annoys you, whose orgasm face looks and feels pathetic. Despite all of this, there’s something keeping you drawn to them, something that makes you want to protect them from the harsh world. What you fail to realize, however, is that you are the harsh world. You aren’t their noble protector — you are someone to be protected from but it takes a lot of dates, a lot of nights where you question whether or not you are actually a good person, for this to ever resonate with you. When it’s over and whatever love is left is put back in the fridge like a sad plate of leftovers, you will finally understand that you have the power to hurt someone. You can either hurt them or love them and it’s up to you to decide what kind of role you would like to take on in future relationships. What feels more comfortable — being the one who loves more or being the one who’s loved less? You will fall in love with someone who’s cold and always seemingly pushing you away. When all is said and done, they will be forever known as the one person you couldn’t get to love you. Unfortunately, it will hurt and sting worse than the good ones, the ones that chopped up your meat for you and picked out an eyelash from your eye and were nice to your mother, because love often feels like a game we need to win. And when we lose, when we realize we couldn’t get what we ultimately desired from a person, it makes us feel like a failure and erases all the memories of those who loved us in the past. It’s a permanent smudge on your love resume. You will fall in love with someone for one night and one night only. They’ll come to you when you need them and be gone in the morning when you don’t. At first, this will make you feel empty and you’ll try to convince yourself that you could’ve loved this person for longer than a night, but you can’t. Some people are just meant to make cameo appearances, some are destined to be a pithy footnote. That’s okay though. Not every person we love has to stick around. Sometimes it’s better to leave while you’re still ahead. Sometimes it’s better to leave before you get unloved. You will fall in love with the old couple down the street because to you they represent the impossible: a stable, long-lasting love. You’re trying to get someone to like you for more than ten minutes. A monogamous “never get sick of ya” love seems unfathomable. “What’s your secret, sir? Do you just say yes a lot?” You will fall in love with smells, the good and the bad kind. You will want to wear your lovers shirt because it makes you feel close to them and you’re okay with being that PSYCHO who is legitimately sniffing their shirt in public. You will fall in love with sweat, certain perfumes, the smell of the season in which you fell in love. This particular love smells like fall. It smells like Halloween and a roaring fire and leaves and fog and mist and candy and food and family and whiskey and sex and the lint that collects on sweaters. When it ends, if it ends, you will never experience another fall without thinking of him, her, it. The memories will stick to the ground like a mound of leaves and will only dissipate when the weather drops. You will fall in love with your friends. Deep, passionate love. You will create a second family with them, a kind of tribe that makes you feel less vulnerable. Sometimes our families can’t love us all the time. Sometimes we’re born into families who don’t know how to love us properly. They do as much as they can but the rest is up to our friends. They can love you all the time, without judgement. At least the good ones can. This is where I’m supposed to tell you that you will fall in love with The One, a person who isn’t too cold or too nice. Their “O” face is perfectly fine and they’re not afraid to show how much they love you. This person is supposed to wait for us at the end of the twentysomething road as some kind of reward for all the heartache and loneliness. We deserve them. We’ve earned this kind of love. So fine. You’re going to fall in love with The One. You’re going to fall in love with someone who will make sense beyond college or a job or a particular season. They’ll make sense forever and won’t ever want to leave you behind. I’m telling you this not because it’s true but because it NEEDS to be true. Everyone is entitled to this kind of love, so why not? Have it. It’s yours. Blow out the candles on your 30th birthday, holding their hand, and let out an exhale that’s been waiting for ten years. Do it. Now"

“You’re missing something. You’re watching everything pass you by and it’s making you anxious but you’re not quite sure how to catch up. A small part of you doesn’t even want to catch up. You’ve become comfortable in your complacency, comfortable in your own mistakes. Your slip ups have become some kind of solace. They’re yours to keep. Flaws have become some sick substitute for a relationship and you take them to bed with you.

You’re too young to be completely happy. You’re currently living your lost years and even though it’s taking you down, you’re not ready for the alternative. Something that no one likes to admit is that it sort of feels good to screw up. You don’t think you know exactly what you’re doing? You can pretend to be naive to spare everyone else’s feelings but let’s not get confused: you’re in control here. Every step of the way.

Your life is precarious. When you were in high school and college, you treated your mortality like it was a crappy purse. You stomped on it, broke a strap, let a vodka bottle spill out and ruin the leather. You did all of this believing it would all be repaired while you were sleeping, and it usually was. You reach a point, however, when the leather stays torn, when the piece of crap bag becomes beaten beyond repair. Simply put, you have to take a more proactive role in maintaining your happiness and well-being. You’re not just someone watching their own life from afar. You’re in it now. And if you don’t take care of it, it will fall to pieces.”

“

I want to know you. You seem like someone worth knowing. Every day I feel like I’m surrounded by people with hard edges and sour faces but I get the sense that you’re different. Too often people seem to think that they have the answers to everything. Their faces are trapped in permascowls and they can’t be bothered with anything besides their own narcissism. You aren’t like that. You still ask questions. You’re still looking for the answers.

People with kind hearts make me feel dirty. Like I need to give my personality a bath or something. Rub it clean of my neuroses and judgments. But that’s a good thing. When someone inspires you to take a long hard look at yourself and question all of your bad habits, they’re someone worth keeping around. It’s all about finding that person who’s able to hold up a mirror to your life and cause you to reevaluate the noise. It’s all about wanting to be a better man.

I know you’ll surprise me. I know you’ll take a right turn when I’m convinced you’ll take a left. All of this may seem arbitrary (why does it even matter if you take a right instead of a left?) but it provides me with a giant sense of relief. Do you know what it feels like to go through life rarely being surprised? The person who you think is going to hurt you ends up leaving you alone at three in the morning. The person who will never understand your jokes or passions turns out to be a stranger forever. You sleep with them, go out to dinners, and even run away to a bed and breakfast on a long weekend, all in hopes that they’ll start to make sense to you one day. But they never do. They just get more and more foreign each day. Experiences don’t always breed intimacy. Sometimes they just make the distance more apparent.

I want to know how your weekend was (I never want to know these types of things but you’re the exception to all my rules) and I want to know how you got that scar on your knee (biking accident when you were twelve? Tell me more! This story is more riveting than The Hunger Games!) and I want to know about your mom and dad (Are they assholes? No matter! We’ll start our own family!) I want to protect you. I want to preserve your innocence and drink it up for myself. You learn from me and I’ll learn from you. Deal?

You’ll open me up like an orange, leaving a mess of pulp and sticky peels everywhere. Certain parts of my personality will be extracted and I’ll find myself feeling stuff I never knew was possible. It’s strange to think how many things we’re capable of without really knowing it until we have a proper catalyst — something or someone to bring it to the surface. Dig, dig, dig. No, you might need to dig a little deeper. I have a lot of crap sticking on top of the good stuff.

In order for all of this to work though, you have to let me know you. You have to let me cut you open and trust that I won’t accidentally hit a nerve. You have to accept me for my shortcomings and understand that you’re a better person than I am. I’m a little rotten. Please don’t let that deter you though. Because when I look at you, I see someone who makes sense. I see an anomaly — someone who’s untouched by all of the modern inventions and hang ups.

I see someone I want to know."

“… Before I met this boy, I was convinced that I was dead inside because it had been two years since I had so much as a crush on someone. I had fake crushes, of course. The kind where you meet someone and will yourself to become obsessed with them before you have any idea who the fuck they actually are. Oh, sure. I had plenty of those. But deep down you always know you never actually like them and that it’s just something you do to feel human.

With this boy, it was different. The spark was instant. He was on my level. He got it. I hadn’t felt this way in a long time and the times I did were starting to feel like a dream, like I had made them up in my head.

Oh, okay. This is what it’s supposed to feel like. This is still possible for you to experience.

It sounds insane to think that you can actually forget this. You can forget that it’s possible for you to like someone. But if you go long enough without anything “real” in your life like I did, it can definitely happen.

It’s amazing how your heart can adapt to loneliness, even though it never forgets what it feels like to be close to someone. That’s the brain’s job. The brain forgets what it has to in order to make it through the goddamn day.

***

For awhile there, I was determined to tell him how I felt. I planned elaborate scenes in my head in which I would come clean about my feelings. There’d be no point to this, obviously. It would be an entirely selfish act. I would do it just so I could get this weight lifted off my shoulders, even if it meant destroying a special friendship.

To tell you the truth, I found the passion of such a confession to be enticing because it had been so long since I felt anything remotely powerful. Things had been flatlined and I was desperate for something to evoke any kind of emotion other than “whatevs.”

I was never going to do it, though. Maybe if I was 20 years old and still treated my relationships like they were garbage bags for me to take emotion dumps in, I would have but sweet mother of Christ, I am not that person anymore. Besides, it really didn’t matter that this boy knew I liked him because the friendship had already given me the most important gift of all, which is that it let me know that I wasn’t defective. I could love someone again; I would love someone again. Something hadn’t broken inside of me.

People—even the wrong ones—come into your life to teach you the lessons you can’t learn on your own. It is your job not to make a fuss about it. You just sit, listen, let their words bleed into your scalp, and get the hell out at the appropriate time.

This particular boy taught me that the ones who aren’t able to love you often teach you the most about love. Isn’t that funny?

No it’s not. But it’s something.

”