Nobody Likes You When You're 23

I was exploring a new dating app the other day, new to me at least since it was my first time using it. I deleted it about ten minutes after logging on because it's a location-based one (not Tinder, side note: does Tinder have an e in it? I feel like it's hip in app-naming-lingo to have as little vowels as possible. I could look this up in .4 seconds but I'm committed to running this sentence on. I looked it up. It does have an e. How progressive.) Anyway, I don't like location-based apps of any genre for the very practical reason that they drain my phone battery, and this one required that little arrow in the top right corner of my screen to stay on at all times so you can see when potential matches pass you on the street. Talk about being always on, amirite? I deleted it because I want to find love but I want to preserve my iPhone battery more. And also I was scared of the awkwardness that would ensue should I have seen the guy who sits in the cubicle adjacent to me in my feed.

Okay, so the point of explaining the dating app was that in the ten minutes I was using it, I saw a guy's profile in which his tagline was "nobody likes you when you're 23." I immediately thought of two things. One: That Laguna Beach episode when the gang goes to the Blink 182 concert and Trey almost has a fight with a little person. Two: Wow, that is so true. I didn't like the kid because he had the potato thing going for him and I'm more committed to the radish cause, but I wanted to send him a message to say a simple "word" or something, but I don't think that's the way to go about things on dating apps. So I kept to myself, thought about it as I maximized the life of my phone battery, and came here to say more or less, word.

Not only does nobody like you when you're 23, but you don't even like yourself when you're 23. I'm out of the 23 zone but close enough to give it some thoughtful, retrospective analysis. It was pretty awful. I didn't even have fun on my 23rd birthday. I did have a good outfit though, so that's nice to remember.

Twenty-two starts out fun because, hello! you're a senior in college and if you thought being a senior in high school was the bee's knees, then wait until you're a senior in college. It's the best thing ever. You basically rule the world. Then you graduate and you simultaneously get slammed in the face by a door and a club. I cried a lot of times in the immediate months after I graduated college, started working and lived at home. I cried eating ice cream in my car, on the subway, on the crosstown bus, at work: at my desk, in the office bathroom, in the elevator, in the bathroom of the coffee place next door because there was a cockroach in the bathroom at my office, on my couch, on my kitchen floor, on my dining floor, while hyperventilating in a paper bag, while running in Central Park. I don't even know why I was crying half the time, but what can I say, I'm an emotional person and it's a really confusing time.

Delia Ephron says that in your twenties, everything awful that happens is awful in a romantic way. If I had heard that when I was 23, I wouldn't have cried half as many times as I did. I would've laughed at the situations in which I found myself, the mindnumbing work I did, the guys I wasted my thoughts on, the stupid nights I spent valuable shoe money on. I've been thinking about that quote a lot lately, and it makes the annoying stuff a lot less earth-shattering. The good thing about being in your twenties is that you don't have to take it all so seriously, I think. I hope.

That's all I've got to say. I'm going to get a Diet Coke.

Buh-bye.