24. Some arguments are worth having. Most are not. Just walk away. You aren’t going to listen to me at 13, and you still have trouble with it at 36. But it’s true.

23. You’re not going to be a mom. You struggle with that a lot. I can’t give you any good advice about that, because it just fucking sucks, is the thing. But maybe you wouldn’t have been any good at it anyway. Yeah, honestly you probably would’ve been really good at it, but that’s part of the whole “life’s not fair” thing.

22. Pay attention on the way down those stairs. It’s gonna hurt like hell when you fall down them and sprain your ankle and then have to figure out how to get back upstairs to your 3rd floor walkup apartment.

21. Don’t put the Pyrex baking dish on the burner to melt the butter. It will explode into nine billion pieces.

20. You’re not going to have a huge group of girlfriends to hang around and do girl things with. Sometimes that will make you feel sad, but mostly you like being left alone. You never stop loving your alone time.

19. You’re a very emotional person now, you’re heart-on-your-sleeve, and you haven’t learned to hide it yet. You will. You’ll get so good at it, people will think you don’t even have a heart. That’s when you’ll realize that you need to find a better balance between protecting yourself and building a stone wall. At 36, you will not have perfected ( Read more... )

18. When you are 35, you’re going to be distracted in the rain on the way home from work one night. Pay attention. Because if you don’t, a big-ass Ford Expedition is going to break your arm and total your car. And you love that car.

17. You’re never going to be thin and petite and little. You are what you are. You’re going to grow into it though, and learn to embrace what you have, because even though you will have moments that you feel ugly, you’re not.

16. Let the perm grow out. Don’t get another one. Untuck your shirt, especially with those awful high-waisted pants.

15. You are going to have a period of depression in a few years and you will want to die. But you won’t die, for a lot of reasons, and you will eventually feel better. I won’t lie and say you never feel that way again. You will. But you’ll get through that too.