small immunities

isabelthespy:

going off this - definitely not meant to be standard or even close to widely applicable! but here are some lessons i would maybe try to teach relatively wee isabel, if i could (relatively grown isabel meanwhile is, um, still working on these)…

what would you tell your relatively wee selves, tumblr?

(cut for space, go read all of Isabel’s fantastic post)

The thing I’d like to say that most, that you’ll never listen to, is just: lighten up. Stop caring so much about what other people might think earlier. Stop obsessing so much about finding a girlfriend. Maybe spend more time talking to women and less time listening to albums and thinking about women instead.

Do make sure you have plenty of female friends, but maybe don’t be so terrified by the possibility that one or more of them might think, even for a minute, that you might want to make out with them. Don’t, please god don’t, fall into assuming that any hint of interest on your part is going to be automatically loathsome from their perspective. Rather than seeing how easy it is to be a creep and letting that scare you off of ever expressing interest, figure out how not to be a creep about it. It’s not hard. You’re at least part of the way there, really. If you like someone, or, for god’s sake, if you love someone, do something about it. It’s entirely possible that they won’t feel the same way. It’s even possible they’ll laugh in your face. It’s preferable to the alternative.

Don’t be such a goddamn perfectionist. About work, about people, about your body. Start exercising earlier, rather than assuming that the cause is lost; not because then you’ll be skinny, but because it makes you feel good and it’s fun. I won’t say write more, because that would be impossible, but make a bigger effort to let other people see what you write. Try to break those emotional eating habits now, not later. Try things that you will almost certainly fail at. Some of them you won’t; all of them are worth the time they take.

Delete Freecell off of your computer. Go to bed earlier (not, like, before midnight; just earlier). Try to travel a bit more. Realize, I mean really internalize, that the best way to stop being single is to go and do the things you love, the things that will improve your life, not to go stand in bars.

When you do stop being single, don’t treat conflicts like they are contests. You can’t win an argument, and trying to do so makes you act like an ass. You can’t argue someone into understanding how you feel, or into feeling differently themselves. Don’t try. Allow yourself to be tender; stop fearing that it will earn mockery (sometimes it will; that’s a sign that you need to leave, not that you’re an idiot).

Just be fucking nice to people, and when you value them, tell them. They already know, but there are few feelings as great as hearing it said out loud.

Like Hefner says in “Dark Hearted Discos,” “it’s only love, don’t break your heart/it’s only faith, don’t push too hard/’cause you’ve got time, and you can start again.” Like Pynchon says in V., “keep cool. But care.” And fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.