How to fall in love with your best friends.

There comes a time when you realize that your life is the weirdest thing that will ever happen to you. The moment you think this thought, you must do three things: find a mason jar; fill it with lights; and admit to yourself that you have no idea what you're doing. Trust me, it's better that way.

I think that everyone should spend a day writing the names of the people they love on the sand, and watching as every single letter washes away with the tide. After all, it's only an echo of the way those people will someday leave you. This is the truth: no one can every really stay.

A boy once gave me a dog collar. It was the sweetest gift I ever got. I sometimes wonder if he gives his girlfriend roses, and if she liked them quite as much.

One night in mid-October, I slept with my boss's boyfriend. Don't worry, my boss was there, too. No one ever teaches you about post-threesome McDonald's runs—you have to learn them on your own. It's also your job to reconcile yourself to the fact that chocolate and condoms will never be the weirdest things you put down together at a Walmart checkout. The six feet of rope, PVC pipe, rubber bands, and clothes pins with condoms will be weirder.

There comes a time in your life when you're forced to realize that you are nothing your ten-year-old self could even have imagined. It's not your fault—no one ever teaches you how to deal with falling in love. Even worse, they never talk about what happens if you don't. Or if you suddenly find yourself head-over-heels for no less than four people at once.

When I was young, I once asked my father what to do if I liked two boys equally as much. He said, “Choose the one who treats you most like I do.” He never mentioned what to do if I discovered I liked the boy who hit me in the bedroom, or if the person in question was actually a girl. He never taught me how to be good to a woman. He never said what to do if I found myself as a welcome third wheel amidst a couple so in love, it sometimes made me sick, in the best possible way. I guess these are all the things life gives you to test if you're going to go crazy.

These are the moments I hold on to: the time we lay by the lake for hours, doing nothing but running our fingers of each others' skin.

The way the scar on the back of your hand felt when I held it.

Kissing you as you sat on the curb, hoping I could do it again.

The way your hand once found mine on the console of your car, driving one-handed through the dark.

The curve of your back under my hand as the streetlights shone through the living room curtains.

The rough fabric of your gloves, tracing hard lines along my jaw.

The time you carried me down the hallway, legs around your waist, and I wasn't once afraid you'd drop me.

Your profile in the half-light, freckles shining like constellations.

Your hands on my tattoo, the only one to understand why it was really so important.

Bird-like kisses melting into something that felt closer to home.

Your hands on my skin in the firelight, losing time after midnight when we should have been sleeping.

Your body under mine as I saved from the cold night air of late August

The way you said my name, half-laughing and half-begging me to follow you.

Your hands on mine, mirroring movements, as if maybe you already knew I would never remember you if I couldn't feel you in my head.

These are the things they never teach you, the things that you find behind your eyelids in the dark. They never teach you how to fall in love.

And they never teach you that it's when you love the most, with all you have, that you realize how alone you really are.