HURRYUPNICOLE

Do you ever realize how badly you’re going to miss a moment while you’re living it? Like wow, these are the good days. I am here and I am happy and I feel alive.

1. The friends you have at the beginning of the year can completely change by the end of it. People change, and if they aren’t improving your life in some way, it’s okay to drop them. 2. Take many pictures. Don’t let it take over your life, though. You don’t want to look back and see that you only captured your memories with your camera lens and not within your mind and heart. 3. Find your safe place. Whether it be in the arms of a certain person or on the balcony of Barnes and Nobles with a cup of soup, find it and don’t let it go. You can have more than one safe place. 4. Be nice to everyone. You honestly don’t know what skeletons people are hiding in their closets. Everyone has their skeleton. Every person on this earth has something in their life or past worth collapsing on the ground in uncontrollable sobs over. 5. Reading is so important. Highlight the things that you read that you find intriguing. Read a lot, it can only do good things for you. 6. Writing always helps. 7. The girl with anxiety has the deepest thoughts. The autistic boy has the kindest heart, and the schizophrenic has the ability to put a smile on your face in seconds. Do not judge character based on a mental illness. 8. Music has an indescribable ability to connect and heal. Let it do its thing. 9. Her prettiness doesn’t make your prettiness any less pretty. 10. Getting close and letting someone in is scary as hell. You know what else it is? Worth it. 11. The minute you feel your happiness being dictated by someone else, take a break from them. 12. Adventuring is a must. Sunsets always help the soul, showing that endings can be as beautiful as beginnings. 13. Spend more time with your parents doing things they enjoy. Later in life, you’ll be wishing you’d spent more time with them than on your Netflix account. 14. Home is not always a place, but whatever you love with your whole heart. I have many homes, and it’s okay if one home doesn’t feel like home anymore. 15. Making someone smile and feel genuinely happy has the ability to warm your heart from the inside out. No matter how much pain someone is going through, you made them forget about it for a few seconds. Isn’t that something? 16. Feel everything and let it hurt, but don’t go back to what broke you. 17. Don’t let fear hold you back from what you want. The view from the other side is spectacular. 18. Tell people how you feel. Even if you’re scared it’ll burn your life to the ground. You say it loud. 19. You find the most extraordinary things in the most ordinary places. 20. Swollen lips and sweaty “I want you’s” can make you feel again, but I don’t want to feel anything if it means having to sit there feeling like the wind is constantly being knocked out of me when he stops calling back. 21. Sometimes the way you think of someone isn’t the way they actually are. 22. Never underestimate the amount of joy the holiday season can bring you. Try and find ways to feel that way all year long. 23. Timing is never going to be perfect; if you care about something enough, you’ll make the time. It’s all about priorities. 24. If women used their words to build each other up instead of tearing each other down, our world would change drastically. 25. Recovery can take 2 weeks or 5 years. You aren’t any less of a person if it takes you longer to find a way to let go of what’s hurting your heart. 26. You only need yourself, but having people by your side trying to understand means a lot more than you might think. 27. You find your truest friends in your darkest hours. 28. You can feel the whole world in a month and nothing after 2 years. Time does not define love. 29. Always say yes to dessert. 30. Concerts make life worth living. So does yelling your favorite song along with your best friend in the car with your best friend with hands intertwined. These are things that show you that you don’t need to be on drugs to feel invincible. 31. So does kissing.

i was at a grocery store really late one night and some old guy kind of eyed me as i walked out of the store next to this other lady. She and I made eye contact and i knew she was scared too. we loaded up our groceries into our cars as fast as possible and I had way more bags than her so she got done faster than me. I panicked because i was sure she was going to leave so i just hurried faster, shaking a little, and then i noticed she sat in her car, watching me and making sure nobody came near. She waited not until all my groceries were loaded, or until my cart was put away, or until I got into my car. No, she didn’t drive away until I drove away. 

my last year in new york city, i got off the subway around 9 or 10p.m. i only lived about 5 blocks from the f train, but i hadn’t gotten more than two before a woman’s hand suddenly touched my arm. 

I was at a club once and my friend left with her boyfriend so I finished my drink and was heading out to the parking lot when three girls came up to me and basically surrounded me.