It is 2012, and I go online to learn how to be. So now I say and write things like "lady friends" and "because ___," omitting the pronoun for trendiness. And when I feel really overwhelmed by my hatred of something, I proclaim that "I just cannot." I learn a whole new language with its own grammar and its own idioms, but pretty much none of my friends and definitely none of my family speaks it.
And I also learn that striped sailor shirts are appropriate in any situation and probably no one can ever have enough. And that matte nail polish is slowly being replaced by shimmer nail polish on the hands of all the cool (but adequately self-effacing) girls.
I fall in love with the babies of strangers and am shocked by the changes in strangers' lives. And I look at rage-enducing things for hours because the anger feels so good. And I look at stuff I hate for hours because it is really stuff I want. And then I open my mouth to tell real people about it, and I learn that this requires that I speak in a weird pidgin, an inelegant mixture of my new language and my old one. But then I realize that it doesn't matter, because real people have no idea what I'm talking about regardless.
