Written by: Hannah Davis, Peak Associate
Illustrated by: Alice Zhang
So your friends are all getting engaged without you? So you were minding your own damn business and doing the classic “reviewing lecture notes while browsing Instagram” study technique when your eyes were assaulted by a horrible vision of yet another friend who has now embarked on their happy path to marriage? So you’re tearing up but you’re not sure if it’s from panic or joy?
You’re lucky you’ve stumbled across this article, because we have some helpful tips on what not to do in this situation.
Do not compare your life to theirs and wonder how you are still fighting for your Degree in Important Things when they are preparing to make a down payment on a house.
Do not stare longingly at a picture of Danny DeVito and fantasize about a person like that getting down on one knee for you.
Do not become a fiery ball of anxiety and message people on Tinder to see if they would accompany you to a wedding you may or may not be invited to.
Do not be upset that your friends are getting more attention and more Instagram likes than you because they are now fancy, Engaged People.
Do not call your newly Engaged Friends “unrecognizable fools who are greedy for banal marital sex” the next time you get drunk.
Do not buy some new pants and call them your “Sex Lord Pants.”
Do not go to a party and use your Sex Lord Pants to hit on people you have never met before. These people have names like “Sherry” and “Grog,” and should not be trusted, not with your precious and fragile heart.
Do not go home with Grog anyways and only realize in his bedroom that his name is actually “Greg.” Don’t be embarrassed at the mistake, and definitely do not try to correct him and tell him that his name is actually “Grog.”
Do not be alarmed at the amount of condoms Greg has in his wardrobe and do not call him an “unbelievable fool greedy for good sexual health.”
Do not propose to Greg to be like your Engaged Friends.
Do not spontaneously tell your new Engaged Friends, when you run into them at the grocery store, that you are “oh so proud” of their new “life change.”
Instead, cut straight to the point and confront them about why you were not asked to be in the bridal party.
When they tell you, “Well, I just didn’t think we were that close, we haven’t really seen each other for a few years,” refrain from bitterly reminding your Engaged Friend that the new fiancee “isn’t even that hot anyway.”
After this, faint in disbelief and make a scene in Aisle Four. When you awake in the grocery store and discover that your Engaged Friends have left you there, unconscious, on the cold linoleum floor next to the rows of refried beans, do not be alarmed. Once you’re afraid, you’ll start pulling the cans off the shelves and it’ll only be a matter of time before you’ve built a fort with the produce you have simply pulled off the shelves. At this juncture, simply inhabit this fort in the grocery store in order to avoid seeing any more of your friends getting engaged.
Despite all of it, you will be fine.
And alone.
Forever.
