Can we just talk about how much of adolescence is devoted to the heart? Adolescence is so hard because we’re trying to do all these grown-up things while working madly to fall in love and get our hearts broken. Our entire lives revolve around trying to have first kisses and find loves like the movies and then trying to have the greatest orgasms while finding the person who makes us the happiest all the while attempting to apply to college, and study for finals, and get a good job, and find the perfect apartment in a great location with rent that includes utilities and has laundry on the premise. Fuck, dude. No one should make this time any harder for us by turning our friends against each other and making us sleepless at night by encouraging people to ruin our reputations and making us think we have to be “good kids” when we already are good kids. Good kids who like to get fucked and fucked up. We still turn out okay. We turn out great.

I heard recently that researchers and professionals who determine this sort of thing have decided that adolescence has changed and now lasts until a person is into their 30s. I heard that and felt a sense of relief. As if it was giving me permission to not have it all figured out yet. An expert, somewhere, has decreed that it’s okay for me to still be fucking and fucking up, which I appreciate. I just hope that by the time I turn 30, some other expert has moved that age of acceptable adolescence up to, I don’t know, 63? I’ll still be good: a good woman who fucks up and is madly devoted to the heart.