The People You Will Fall In Love With In Your 20s

The People You Will Fall In Love With In Your 20s

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 PYSCHO 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.
--Ryan O’Connell

We Are Made of Star Stuff

Naivety is humankind's downfall. And so I fell.

I was just trying to get it right, whatever that meant.

If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't.

Sometimes we expect more from others because we would be willing to do that much for them.

And being unheard is the ground floor of giving up, and giving up is the ground floor of doing yourself in.

There's never a dress code if you're cute enough!

"If you're going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair."
--Scott McKenzie

Caring is loving.
Loving is knowing.
Knowing is thinking.
Thinking is overanalyzing.
Overanalyzing is going to kill you.

So that's when all the trouble started. First of all, my long blonde hair kept getting darker and darker until it finally turned brown. I know it doesn't sound that terrible, but one of Mom's magazines said that if you have "dishwater brown" hair, you should take that "boring" hair and make it more "exciting" by dyeing it red or platinum blonde. Then next to the article there were these pictures of three different ladies with brown, red, and blonde hair. The redhead and blonde lady were smiling like those people who go on game shows who win trips to Hawaii, but the lady with the brown hair looked like she was about to cry. So now I'm stuck with hair that makes you cry. But that's just part of what's happened to me since second grade. Believe me, it gets a hundred times worse.

"She's tough. She tries to hide it. She's difficult. But if you make the effort, she's worth it. She's worth the effort."
--'Grey's Anatomy'

It was the first time either of us had ever promised anything. But it felt all right. I guess making little promises made us braver about the bigger ones.

"I make mistakes. That's what I do. I speak without thinking, I act without knowing. I drink so much I can barely walk. I'm a fantastic lover though, and an amazing friend. God knows I mean well."
--'Sex And The City'

We all need something we consider worth getting up in the morning for. Whether it's real or not; healthy or destructive; tangible or false is irrelevant. When you've got nothing to hang onto, deception can seem pretty inviting.

"The truth of the matter is you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it."
--Norman Schwartzkopf

Don't let people make you think that just because you're young you're useless.

Ballet flats: There are a few moments [very few] when you have to give your heels the boot in the name of practicality. Let's review [1] in an airport, when you may have to make mad dashes [2] on the first day of the Barney's sale, when you will have to make mad dashes [3] on sand which is actually quite tragic, because there is no better time for a high heels boost than when you are half naked [4] when driving. Even if you think that you've mastered the technique, you have not. And insurance hikes can put a damper on a girl's shoe budget.

There's a little truth in every "just kidding". There's a little curiosity in every "just wondering". There's a little knowledge in every "I don't know". And there's a little emotion in every "I don't care".

Don't believe that old cliché that good things come to those who wait. I think good things come to those who want something so bad, they can't sit still.

Maybe that's what bothers you. The idea that she might end up happy, and you can't quite get there.

I've come to realize that people are just people, & none of them should make you nervous.

She doesn't have to be your entire world. Just a tiny village. Somewhere. Anywhere. On your map.

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history...with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

Peace: it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.

"Dress slutty and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman."
--Coco Chanel

It's never bad enough to just leave or give up, but it's never good enough to feel right.

Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.

Sometimes you're further than the moon; sometimes you're closer than my skin.

If its a good idea to you at the time, go ahead and do it. It's much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.

"The truth is I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them."
--Marilyn Monroe

She likes to see the best in people. Me? I like to see the truth.

How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterwards.

Also people think they're not computers because they have feelings and computers don't have feelings. But feelings are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or the next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happen, and if it is a happy picture they smile and if it is a sad picture they cry.

Is anybody satisfied with who they really are? You could be the moon and still be jealous of the stars.

Don't ever take for granted when people look in your eyes; you've no idea how lucky you are. Actually, forget about luck, you've no idea how important it is to be acknowledged.

"All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star stuff."
--Carl Sagan

Life just swallows you up, doesn't it?

All quotes by author Simon Van Booy

“He thinks I suffer from depression. But I’m just quiet. Solitude and depression are like swimming and drowning. In school many years ago, I learned that flowers sometimes unfold inside themselves.”
--'Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories'

“You were unsure which pain is worse -- the shock of what happened or the ache for what never will.”
--'Everything Beautiful Began After'

“I want to do things for people they will never forget. Maybe that’s the best thing I can do in life.”
--'The Secret Lives of People in Love'

“The most significant conversations of our lives occur in silence.”
--'Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories'

“I don’t see the point of truth anymore, it causes just as much heartbreak as lying.”
--'The Secret Lives of People in Love'

“We see in others what we want and what we fear.”
--'Everything Beautiful Began After'

“For some people, life is the process of knocking through walls to get out. For others, it is the building of walls.”
--'The Secret Lives of People in Love'

“Hands have their own language.”

“Coincidences mean you're on the right path.”
--'Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories'

“Actually, years mean nothing. It's what's inside them.”
--'Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories'

“Love requires imagination more than experience.”
--'Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories'

“The love of a man is like a drop of color into something clear.”
--'Everything Beautiful Began After'

“Should you ever feel too lonely...listen for the roar of the sea - for in it are all those who've been and all those who are to come.”
--'The Coming and Going of Strangers'

“It’s true the people we meet shape us. But the people we don’t meet shape us also, often more because we have imagined them so vividly. There are people we yearn for but never seem to meet.”
--'The Secret Lives of People in Love'

“I want to feel it somehow happened like that because things happen for a reason. I want to believe this more than anything because if it were just an accident, then God must have died before he could finish the world.”
--'The Secret Lives of People in Love'

“You can’t put a price on the rituals of love, because you never know what will happen next. I suppose fear is part of the excitement and we can’t have one without the other.”
--'Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories'

“But sometimes, when confronted by something of unfathomable beauty, the bars of the cage around us begin to tremble. So I ran away to protect myself and remained a prisoner.”
--'The Secret Lives of People in Love'

“I suppose the key to a good life is to gently overlook the truth and hope that at any moment we can all be reborn.”
--'The Secret Lives of People in Love'

“Life just swallows you up, doesn't it? Just swallows you up with its everyday things.”
--'The Secret Lives of People in Love'