Friends can matter to you more than family, and that’s ok, but family does a lot more for you than you realize.

I didn’t have a great family, but it was only when I was upset about a birthday party when I was like 12 where my mom made all the cards and buttons and stuff and I was so mad that it wasn’t the cool cards and prizes that you buy that I kind of realized it.

It dawned on me like two weeks later that my parents couldn’t afford any of that, but they took time out of their day, for like two weeks, even though they both worked too much, to hand-make approximations as best they could. Without me knowing, so I would be surprised.

Ever work a double shift and then spend the few minutes you have not working, sleeping, or cooking to hand-make party favors? Yeah, me either.

It still makes me cry thinking about how ungrateful I was and the look of sadness and yearning on my mom’s face when I got mad at her for not buying the “good” stuff.

When I was 20, I sat her down and told her about it and how bad I felt, and how I never knew how to apologize for it. We had a good cry, and she thanked me for seeing it eventually, and how happy it retroactively made her knowing I realized it so soon after.

After my nerve damage: there are some mistakes you can only make once.

Say what you mean; mean what you say.

No idea where I heard or read it, but preteen me internalized it and it’s become part of my creed to this day

I can learn everything I need to know about how to be a decent person from cartoons.

Cartoons have always shown me that being a friendly person, who is honest, do right by their friends and tries to do the right thing will guide me well through life. I needed to weed through the friends a little bit but that has held true thus far

That nobody is a “grown up” and that everyone is faking it.

We’re all just kids having kids.