you need to be earnest. you need to tell people that you love them. you need to speak on how you’re feeling honestly. you need to be sentimental. you need to stop letting the fear of other people laughing at you have so much control over how you express yourself. you need to get over yourself. you need to be embarrassing but true.

“It's taboo to admit that you're lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you haven't left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you're not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are. A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldn't transition well to adult life, that you'd fall right through the cracks. And look at you now, it's happening.”

lonely girls my beloved. i see you staying in your room, i see you standing in grocery store aisles feeling the sudden wave of isolation wash over you. i understand how badly you want and how bad that makes you feel. i get it. we're not alone. but we are.

if you have no hope for humanity that sucks for you i guess. but i was buying melatonin at the corner store and the stranger behind me in line said everyone they knew had been having trouble sleeping recently and maybe it was the cold weather. and the cashier swore he was a chronic insomniac before he met his wife but he hadn’t tossed and turned in 10 years. and when i left we told each other to sleep well tonight. and that’s enough hope to sustain me for at least a few months.