cadybryn

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.

20 THINGS YOU SHOULD DO EVERYDAY

1. Wake up earlier. Not only does this improve productivity but it also gives you more time to make a good, hearty breakfast.

2. Make your bed. Let’s be real, being welcomed to a tidy bed after a long day at work/school (or a long day in general) is probably the best feeling anyone will ever experience.

3. If you want, spend a little more time on your appearance. Take some time choosing an outfit, applying make up or whatever. Do what helps you boost your confidence and self-esteem.

4. Stay hydrated, folks. Keep a bottle of water with you wherever you go.

5. Stretch everyday or start yoga (or do both, why not?)

6. Create a playlist consisting of songs that make you happy and listen to it. Listen to songs for the mood you want to be in, instead of the mood you are in.

7. Compliment at least one person per day. This could be an acquaintance, co-worker, class mate, stranger, whoever!

8. Use your manners. If someone holds the door for you, lets you go first etc, they did it voluntarily and didn’t have to do it, so a “thank you” wouldn’t hurt.

9. Eat your fruit and vegetables and always choose the healthy version over the junk food.

10. Have a good laugh. Catch up with friends, watch some ‘Parks and Recreation’, go see some stand-up comedy, reminisce about funny moments that have happened to you. You don’t need to be a doctor to know that humour has many benefits.

11. Be optimistic. Always look at the positives. There’s no point on focusing on the negatives because that isn’t going to help anyones mood at all.

12. Exercise. It doesn’t have to be anything to intense. A run around the block, a walk with your dog or even a ‘Just Dance’ session will do the job. 

13.Bring a book/magazine or collect the daily newspaper with you. Spend you spare time reading.

14. Try and learn something new everyday. This can either be an interesting fact you saw online or a new skill someone taught you.

15. Help others when you are able to. Help your classmates with school work or offer to help you struggling neighbour lift those heavy objects.

16. Stop procrastinating. No matter how unmotivated you are to, push yourself and complete what you need to complete. Do what you gotta do. You know you’ll love yourself for doing it.

17. Drink some tea, because that stuff is goooooood (and also beneficial).

18.Make time to do things that help you relax, whether that’s painting, having baths, doing you nails or going for a run.

19. Don’t dwell on your mistakes, but instead grow and learn from them.

A FAT LITTLE GIRL
is eight years old, she’s got pink cheeks that her grandmother calls chubby. She wants a second cookie but her aunt says “you’ll get huge if you keep eating.” She wants a dress and the woman in the changing room says “she’ll probably need a large in that.” She wants to have dessert and her waiter says “After all that dinner you just had? You must be really hungry!” and her parents laugh.

A FAT LITTLE GIRL
is eleven and she is picked second-to-last in gym class. She watches a cartoon and sees that everyone who is annoying is drawn with a big wide body, all sweaty and panting. At night she dreams she is swelling like the ocean over seabeds. When she wakes up, she skips school.

A FAT LITTLE GIRL
is thirteen and her friends are stick-thin ballerinas with valleys between their hipbones. She is instead developing the wide curves of her mother. She says she is thick but her friends argue that she’s “muscular” and for some reason this hurts worse than just admitting that she jiggles when she walks and she’ll never be a dancer. Eating seconds of anything feels like she’s breaking some unspoken rule. The word “indulgent” starts to go along with “food.”

A FAT LITTLE GIRL
is fourteen and she has stopped drinking soda and juice because they bloat you. She always takes the stairs. She fidgets when she has to sit still. Whenever she goes out for ice cream, she leaves half at the bottom - but someone else always leaves more and she feels like she’s falling. She pretends to like salad more than she does. She feels eyes burrowing through her body while she eats lunch. Kate Moss tells her nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, but she just feels like she is wilting.

A FAT LITTLE GIRL
is fifteen the first time her father says “you’re getting gaunt.” She rolls her eyes. She eats one meal a day but thinks she stays the same size. Every time she picks up a brownie she thinks of the people she sees on t.v. and every time she has cake, she thinks of the one million magazine articles on restricting calories. She used to have no idea a flat stomach was supposed to be beautiful until she saw advice on how to achieve it. She cuts back on everything. She controls. They tell her she’s getting too thin but she doesn’t believe it.

A FAT LITTLE GIRL
is sixteen and tearing herself into shreds in order for a thigh gap big enough to hush the screams in her head. She doesn’t “indulge,” ever. She can’t go out with friends, they expect her to eat. She damns her sweet tooth directly to hell. It’s coffee for breakfast and tea for lunch and if there’s dance that evening, two cups of water and then maybe an apple. She lies all the time until she thinks the words will rot her teeth. She dreams about food when she sleeps. Her aunt begs her to eat anything, even just a small cookie. They say, “One bite won’t make you fat, will it, darling?”

A FAT LITTLE GIRL
is seventeen and too sick to go to prom because she can’t stand up for very long. She thinks she wouldn’t look good in a dress anyway. Her nails are blue and not because they are painted. Her hair is too thin to do anything with. She’s tired all the time and always distracted. She once absently mentions the caloric value of grapes to the boy she is with and he looks at her like she’s gone insane and in that moment she realizes most people don’t have numbers constantly scrolling in their heads. She swallows hard and tries to figure out where it all went wrong, why more than a granola bar for a meal makes her feel sick, why she tastes disease and courts with death. She misses sleep. She misses being able to dream. She misses being herself instead of just being empty.

A FAT LITTLE GIRL
is twenty and writes poetry and is a healthy weight and still fights down the voices every single day. She puts food in her mouth and sometimes cries about it but more and more often feels good, feels balanced. Her cheeks are pink and they are chubby and soft and no longer growing slight fur. Her hair is long and it is beautiful. She still picks herself apart in the mirror, but she’s starting to get better about it. She wears the dress she likes even if it only fits her in a large and she doesn’t feel like a failure for it. She is falling in love with the fat on her hips.

She is eating out with friends and not worrying about finding the lowest calorie item on the menu when she hears a mother tell her four year old daughter “You can’t have ice cream, we just had dinner.
You don’t want to end up as a fat little girl.”

1. Wash your sheets every two weeks, I promise you’ll sleep better.

2. If a boy breaks your heart, it’s okay to cry.

3. If a girl breaks your heart, it’s okay to cry.

4. School is important, but there are many things you can’t learn in a classroom. Pursue them.

5. Find your passion, and run with it.

6. No, you don’t need to lose weight.

7. You are beautiful without make up.

8. You are beautiful with make up.

9. Being a good person will never go out of style

10. Buy yourself flowers if you’re feeling sad.

11. Getting enough sleep is very important.

12. Drinking water has so many benefits

13. Believe in fairytales, believe in love, and allow no one to steal your magic.

14. Reading is good for the soul.

15. I am not here to judge you, but I will always support what I think is best for you.

16. I appreciate you.

17. I am proud of you.

18. Even on your worst days, you will never disappoint me.

19. I love you no matter what.