consider yourself warned.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Sadly, she didn’t make it to the year 2013—the year of the douchebag, according to the Chinese calendar I just made up—but if she had, I think her quote would go a little something like this:

“No one can make you feel like an ass hole without your consent.”

This is my new mantra. I’m very much into writing my own inspirational quotes lately, which feels healthy. That one, though, came to me recently when I had to stare right into the eyes of the demon snake who very dramatically made me feel like an ass hole one night. Despite that moment being, if it were a rap song, shit on shit on shit on shit, it did teach me a valuable, two-pronged lesson: no girl should ever be made to feel stupid for her feelings, but she should also know when to pump the fucking brakes (or, better yet, when to jump out of a speeding, brake-less vehicle as it flies toward the edge of a cliff that stretches over a valley full of lava).

Don’t let some moronic 20-something make you feel stupid for feelings. It seems as though men our age are not ready to peel back the thick cocoon of douche that they’ve seemingly all grown together. But that doesn’t mean we should minimize ourselves while they find the butterfly (or creepy-ass moth) inside. Most of the girls I know are simply too wonderful to wait around for this metamorphosis. So, here’s what we’re doing from now on: we’re going to stop it. We’re going to walk away. And we’re going to watch with a smile as boys confusedly experience the sensation of humility.

Walk on, bitches. Make Eleanor proud.

First, it happened to my little sister.

Driving to work recently, my sister witnessed something horrific: a hit-and-run car accident. The guy who was hit—helmet-less and riding a moped—was knocked to the ground. My sister did the thing most people wouldn’t do: she got out of her car and rushed to help him. Despite the blood and fear and pressure of helping someone who had fallen out of consciousness, she helped. He might’ve been dead. She didn’t care.

Fast-forward to a few days later. She found out that the man she helped get safely to the hospital survived. And he was on her college’s swim team. And he was European. And he was fly as fuck. ANDandandandAND — he wanted to thank her. In his precious broken English, spouted from the chiseled body of a Mediterranean god, he thanked her for his life. He called her his angel. He hoped she’d meet him for coffee so he could properly deliver his thanks.

Did I mention he was f-i-n-e?

Next, it happened to me. It happened today. I rode the bus home from work and, because it was rush hour, I ended up standing right by the door. Another passenger behind me made their way to the front of the bus to depart, but before they made it to the pole, the bus lurched forward. And so did the passenger. Falling backwards, they fell on me. And, grabbing out for anything to stabilize them, they grabbed me. They grabbed my ass. A big, mighty handful of tush.

The common string between both of these situations is that they are clearly the start of some in-real-life rom-coms. We are primed to think in situations like this—“Oh my umbrella flipped inside-out and Matthew McCoughnahey walked up with a new one and he’s dumb but he’s playing a doctor so it’s perfect, back off—that we’ve found our soulmates. The problem with that is that they never really are.

Case in point: the European boy won’t stop texting my sister and she’s over it. No amount of hot body can make up for overzealous texting. And my ass-grabber? A middle-aged woman so flustered with what she had done that she said something as awkward as, “I didn’t mean to touch you like that,” and ran off of the bus. I didn’t see a Josh Duhamel or James Marsden or even Kate Hudson anywhere. Just my lonely, confused ass. As usual.

Roll credits.

Do you want to know what true friendship is?

True friendship is texting the following to someone…

It’s going to be really hard for me to accept that I’ll never have sex with John Mayer in my lifetime.

…and receiving this response:

I know. I feel like he has a HUGE d*ck.

I am sitting here, minding my own business [actually minding other peoples’ business (Facebooking)], and all of the sudden, I had this thought: “I want to kiss you on the mouth but also punch you in the face.”

Relationship limbo is the absolute pits, you guys, especially when you’re not flexible and typically just walk right into the bar on purpose so that you don’t have to play anymore (sorry, elementary school gym classes). The biggest problem is that you’re constantly over-analyzing every clause of every sentence that your potential significant other texts or chats or actually speaks with his mouth. This over-analyzing can lead us to experience an array of feelings: confidence, insecurity, previously unattainable levels of happiness, or depression. If you’re anything like me, you typically experience B and D. If you experience A and/or C, you’re a bitch and I want to be you.

Once we’ve completely recast a “hey, what’s up” as “hey girl, i want to be on you tonight,” we reach the pinnacle of our confusion. This is especially the case when we think things are going a certain way—“Hey, he really wants to be on me tonight”—and, BAM, it’s 2 a.m., you’re at home alone clawing shredded cheese out of the bag and falling asleep in full eyeliner. It’s one thing to read between the lines, but it’s dangerous to make something bigger in our heads than it is in real life. I know I’m guilty of this, and I know I’m not the only one.

Of course, us ladies aren’t all to blame for this problem. Let us examine the male species for a moment (really, only a quick moment, because I don’t want to drive myself insane this late at night). One problem with men—on a laundry list that might best be transferred to scrolls for easier, more compact storage—is that they don’t realize what the fuck they’re doing. Ever. When they remember something you told them at 4 a.m. over late-night pizza, that means something to us, but what does it mean to them? When they flirt with you outwardly in front of all of your friends and EVERYONE notices, is it harmless fun in their minds? Answer to both questions: WE WILL NEVER KNOW. We will abso-fucking-lutely never know how they feel unless they tell us. You know why? Because the next minute, after remembering a very obscure fact that you brushed over before scarfing down another scoopful of guacamole, he’ll completely blow you off. I know this because it is happening to me right now, and it’s the most frustrating thing on this green earth.

You might be saying to yourself, after reading all of this, “Girl, you seem angry. Why are you trying to kiss this guy? You should just punch him.” The problem is this: MEN ARE CUTE. GODDAMNIT, THEY ARE CUTE. And those moments when they bring up something you said, making it subtly known that they were listening to you for those whole two hours of conversation? THEY’RE EVEN CUTER. So, as much as I want to punch you, I want to kiss you. It’s like a French Bulldog puppy that happens to be a zombie with a murderous vendetta: I should probably just kill it now, but I can’t. I can’t because I saw how cute it can be and, frankly, I’m not willing to mess that up with my iron fist.

P.S. to Self: Three months down the road, you are really going to regret letting this continue. Three-months-ago self says I told you so.

My weekend can be summed up in a single question that a friend asked me as he consoled me in the urinal bay of a men’s bathroom at a bar that I’ve never been to (and probably won’t visit again, because now I’m the girl who cried next to a very disgruntled pee-r):

“Have you ever thought about seeing a therapist?”

He asked this as he wiped tears and an odd swirl of eyeliner off of my face. I’m sure peeing guy and the non-English-speaking bar back who signaled to me that I had to leave were wondering the same.

I want to preface this story by saying that I’m not typically a crier when I drink, at least when I’m out. If I’m going to cry, it’s going to be when I get home and put on an episode of Gossip Girl (xoxo) where Chuck and Blair blow it AGAIN. Or when I get home and blast “1+1” by Beyonce. Or when I get home and eat a regrettable amount of cheese. I am NOT a bar crier. But last night… I was a bar scene in and of myself.

The reason I was upset? Boys. Not in the sexy, Britney Spears way, because I am NEVER in control when it comes to boys. In fact, I am a moron. I guess it comes from lack of experience—what feels like flirtation to me probably comes off as like… rough-housing your brother or recording his conversations with my Girl Talk and playing them back, hysterically laughing at the horror on his face.

I guess this all comes with the territory of me. This territory is kind of like the Native Americans’ America: it was once a looooooot bigger. It keeps on shrinking, but, do they ever really forget? No. And neither do I. I have been at my current, normal-human size for about four years now, but my brain is still perpetually sweaty and shopping at Lane Bryant. She’s still funny, but only when she gets to know people. She still really, really likes Smartfood Popcorn.

When my friend suggested that I see a therapist because of my ill-timed outpouring of emotion and negative supply of self-esteem, I answered honestly: I have thought about it. I’ve wondered if seeing a therapist would really help me shed my insecurities. Perhaps laying on some old man’s couch and telling him all of my issues would make me feel better about myself. Perhaps.

I’ve spent today thinking about this, too, and I’ve come to realize something that may make me sound super shallow, but, whatever: the therapy I need is for someone to fall in love with me. I need someone to take interest in me beyond my sense of humor and weird, superhuman store of pop-culture information. While these are wonderful qualities of mine, there’s more here. There’s a girl. Hi, yes, shock: I’m a girl and I want to feel pretty and I want to snuggle. I have spent the past four years wondering why I don’t feel fully into myself, and I decided today that that’s why. I can have 1,000,000 friends and family members and gay strangers in Boystown tell me that I’m hot. (Okay, fine, that only happened once with one gay, but let me exaggerate. I’m real vulnerable right now.) I know I’m smart and accomplished and funny. But, you know what? I’m so sick of hearing how wonderful I am and ending every day feeling less than that because I’m alone. No girl should ever feel like this, and I don’t think a therapist can talk that away or write a prescription to fix it…unless my therapist happens to be an attractive, cuddly male who falls in love with me, but that’s a different Lifetime story.

I know I can’t force someone to fall in love with me—believe me, I would’ve done that long ago if it were a viable option. But what I can do is to cut out all of the fucking bullshit “flirtationships” that I’m always somehow falling into. I feel like every girl should do this. Stop talking to IDIOTS who only want to talk to you when it’s convenient to them. Stop drunk texting. Stop putting the penis on a pedestal. I’ve always wanted to say that out loud, because I’ve said it A LOT in my own head.

It’s going to take a lot to convince my brain that its body is a little bit different now. I’m almost there, but I know deep down that the missing piece of the puzzle is in the shape of a really nice boy with patience and an affinity for spooning and perhaps even a soft spot for shitty pop music. He’s out there somewhere, so I guess I can’t give up just yet.