1. Sometimes it’s going to hurt. You’re going to sit on the floor screaming at the ceiling and pulling your hair and trying to tear your skin off your bones. You’re going to fall asleep with tears burning holes in your cheeks and praying that you won’t wake up. But you will. You will always wake up. Be glad. It’s going to stop hurting. 2. Do things you love. Kiss the boy from down the street because he told your best friend that he thinks you have pretty eyes. Sleep on the floor because your bed doesn’t fit right. Cry because you miss him. Smile because you’re gonna be okay but he’s always gonna be a mess. Laugh until your stomach hurts and you can’t breathe. Fall apart and put yourself back together again. 3. When the boy you love gets drunk and kisses another girl and his words hit you right in the heart and knock the wind out of your chest, try to remember that the world isn’t caving in on you even though it feels like it is. 4. Nothing really matters as much as you think it does. 5. The sky is blue because it’s sad, but the clouds are white because there are still little wisps of hope flying around in the air and sometimes they fill the whole damn sky and that’s how you know it’s all going to be alright. 6. When you were born, I put a barbed wire fence around your heart for protection. Any boy who gets in there is gonna have scraped up knees and blood pouring from his hands. If he sticks around, help him clean up the cuts. 7. When you’re convinced that there’s nothing left inside you, remember that you’ve got the entire galaxy under your tongue and the world in your bones. There are flowers growing from your cheeks, sometimes you just need to water them a little, crying helps. 8. When someone says they love you, believe it, chances are they mean it. 9. Don’t waste your time crying over people who hurt you. You’re giving in. You’re letting them win. And baby if they don’t have you then they’ve already lost, so don’t let them have the satisfaction of breaking you. 10. Try not to grow up too fast.

Love teaches you how to kiss How to hold him and wrap your legs around him and kiss him until your cheeks are as pink as your old bedroom bed sheets love taught me to fight, to yell and scream and bleed and hate and love and love and love and love again. And love taught me how to mend, how to stitch things back together with a sharp needle and messy stitches that are bound to unravel in my needle-pricked fingers. When I fell in love I learned to sleep with the lights on, on the left side of the bed and his arms across my chest and somethings, you can’t unlearn. Loving you was learning to ride a bike, once you learn, you can never forget, and I wish I could forget, I’d rather have bleeding knees and scraped up hands and elbows that ache from falling off and hitting the pavement when your mom promises not to let go and then let’s go anyway, but I know how to ride a bike the way I know how you take your coffee and what to say to make you stop crying even if I don’t really mean it. love taught me terror. I’ve always hated scary movies, I never realized I was living in one, constantly haunted by your silence on the other side of the phone and how pretty your ex-girlfriend’s mouth looks when she says your name. I’m accustomed to shaking, and I’ve memorized that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and the burning lump in my throat, I can feel it, while I’m driving down the street, in the middle of the supermarket, in my fucking sleep. Love is permanent and only lasts 5 minutes.