Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's “Learned”

. I am hot. I am hungry for a snack. But mostly, I am alone.

Because the people may not be polite, but when it counts they’re something better than polite: they’re kind.

“I want to be enlightened, but it also sounds boring,” I tell him. “So much of what I love—gossip and furniture and food and the Internet—are really here, on earth.”

how you too can be blessed with “love, success, sex, money, even if you’re starting with nothing.”

My mother says that’s normal, that men are proud of every one of their conquests, and women wish they could forget it all.

We laugh a lot, at things that shouldn’t rightfully be funny—breakups, overdoses, parents explaining their impending divorce to a little kid with chicken pox.

Other things you can try: Saying you’re sick. Saying you fell down in the street because of impractical shoes. Saying work ran late. Writing your head off. Saying you’re sick again. Saying you’re a person who gets sick a lot. Going radio silent, then saying you lost your cell phone somewhere in your bed. Going to work and staying there all day long. Listening to a Taylor Swift song about dancing in the rain. Not jogging. Never jogging.

didn’t drink in the essence of the classroom. I didn’t take legible notes or dance all night. I thought I would marry my boyfriend and grow old and sick of him. I thought I would keep my friends, and we’d make different, new memories. None of that happened. Better things happened. Then why am I so sad?

15. Family first. Work second. Revenge third.

13. Why spend $200 once a week on therapy when you can spend $150 once a year on a psychic?