Live at your own pace

"There will come a time when you want to cut off all your hair. Do it. Realize that the thing you want rid of doesn't lie in the long curls that frame your face so perfectly. Live with short hair for awhile. It'll grow.

You won't always want to talk to people. That's okay. When it's late and you hear your friends talking in the next room, you don't have to join them. You're allowed your solitude. It makes company sweeter and it teaches you how to survive alone. You will need that skill.

In the winter, you'll believe that nothing will ever grow again. You're wrong. Every year, London looks like it's on its last legs, wheezing through those last cold days in March. Every year, spring comes like an explosion and the city shakes off its sleep.

Mundane problems will get the better of you sometimes. Don't worry. Try as you might, life cannot be endless, beautiful, intense moment. Find comfort in money worries and late trains; they're a welcome rest in between heartbreaks and breakdowns.

People will call you a cynic, a wry smile on their faces. Pay them no mind. You alone know that you are capable of a love greater than anything they can comprehend. You alone know that you are not willing to sell you identity and respect to the first smirking halfwit to pass by. It is not cynicism. It is reverence for your own vast and fathomless heart, and it makes sense only to love someone who understands that and is awed by it.

You will not always get what you want when you want it. Accept it. Your goals are not set in stone and you are not on a fixed trajectory. Sometimes, life will take its time and you will have to play the long, interminable game. Play it well and with as much grace as you can muster. Live at your own pace.

At night, you will occasionally wake up afraid, wanting to die. Don't give in. Night plays its tricks, but you are not so easily fooled. Your mind will pay its tricks, too. It will make you believe that you're not who you are, but you must not give in. You take a breath and you tell yourself that you are here. That you always were."

-Practical Advice for Difficult Women (#20)