you’re the nearest to my heart

Dear Crystal,

Today is five years since we started dating. Five years. That’s crazy, right? Genuinely unbelievable? Five years since we realized we wanted to hold hands and kiss and stuff and said, “Hey, let’s try this relationship thing” and then you kissed me real aggressively and got a bloody nose all over my chest. Good, memorable, wonderful times.

You’re the best person I know and not just because you not only tolerate, but love and enable me. You are smart and funny and kind and generous and I have never had someone love and support me the way that you do. You believe that I can do anything, even when I am sure than I cannot do anything at all.

You feel so much. It’s one of the best thing about you. You just feel. You feel love and hate and joy and sadness and you feel them all with a depth I cannot begin to imagine being capable of. It’s honestly magical to watch you experience the world because you see things that other people not just don’t, but can’t. You are moved by the world, frightened and delighted by it, and I am so grateful that I get to see that. Through you I see and learn things that I never could on my own.

You are infinitely kind and patient. Mostly. You care immensely about so much. You believe that people can be better and you push them toward it, even when it hurts. The world is lucky to have you.

There is an inherently narcissistic weight to being in a good relationship, but I have never been one to shy away from narcissism. You make me better. You make me smarter and more creative. You give me ideas and tell me to make them stories. You inspire words in me just by being who you are and moving through your life.

You have not taken every moment of our relationship in stride — you are too anxiety-ridden for that — but you have taken every moment anyway. You have rolled with terrifying and miserable changes and you have done so with hope and good humor. You have stood by me at my very, very worst and you have picked me up and cleaned my wounds when I was sure I would never stand again. I am so, so lucky to have you. The luckiest.

heartbeats
You know I don’t like promises and that I always cross my fingers even when I make them, but I’ll make you a few anyway. I promise to pull your eyelashes when they look loose. I promise to yell at you when you let water bottles accumulate on your side of the bed. I promise to think you are weird and wonderful every single day that I am lucky enough to have you in my life. I promise to probably walk out of Target again when you fight with me.

I promise to love you every single day until I can’t anymore.

Thanks for five incredibly lucky years and for the year and a half before that where everyone thought we were already dating anyway.

– Ash

make a toast, make a wish


the weepies, “not your year”

Dear 2012,

Every new year I think, “This year will be better!” and every year end I think, “Wow, this year was awful, wasn’t it?” and, honestly, after so many of those years I have no idea what constitutes a good year or a bad year. Years are made up of good and bad and stuff, always, and maybe this time I’ll retain that knowledge and stop holding out hope for a year that sucks less? Is this growing up? Am I an adult now?

2012 wasn’t any different. You were okay, I guess? You got me engaged early on and a sweet freelance gig at the end, but you also moved me to North Dakota in the middle, so I still kind of want to scream “Fuck you” loudly and at length into your face. Were you a person, I would strike you with a heavy hand and then probably feel really bad about it and cry while clinging to your lower legs and begging forgiveness. I’d probably be drunk at the time, if that makes you feel any better about it.

Anyway, thanks for the good times! And burn in hell for the bad ones. And thanks to my bad memory for making both kinds and all the ones in the middle pretty hazy. It’s hard to have a bad year when you can’t remember jack shit.

Peace out, 2k12. Keep it real.

– Ash

Dear 2013,

What am I supposed to say here? You haven’t even met me yet and I’m sure you’re already planning some fucked up shit to throw at me. You new guys are such dicks that way.

But whatever, I guess I’m ready for whatever you got, so bring it on, 2k13! I’d prefer if you were bringing me, like, a relocation to Los Angeles, San Diego, Kansas City, Nashville, or Seattle and a full-time, well-paying job that I am naturally very good at and have little anxiety or stress about. And all that for my girlfriend too, please. We’d even settle for Portland! But since I imagine none of that is on the schedule for the coming year, I’ll just take a whole bunch of decent days, a few good ones, and as few bad ones as possible. Please?

Thanks a bunch, dude. I’m sure you’re an okay guy, really. Being the new guy blows, especially when most of your predecessors have been disappointments. Before you get too down, though, remember that what that really means is that the bar is super low. Just aim for mediocrity, man, and you’ll have people all up your ass about how you were the best year ever.

Good luck, dude! I believe in you. I guess.

– Ash

Dear Any-and-Every-One Who Reads This,

Hey there! How are you? Are you feeling okay? The end of the year is a super stressful time for people because there are like a fuckton of holidays and lots of people around who say things that are kind of mean sometimes and you’re not supposed to get angry or weird about it because they’re usually people you love a lot and who wants to rock the boat like that? It’s all kind of awful stuff wrapped up in pretty ribbons and glitter and it sucks. It can ruin all the fun stuff! And who wants that? Nobody. Nobody wants their cool end of the year holidays ruined.

I can’t control your holiday or how you feel. Hell, I can’t control how I feel most days. But I can hope that your holidays weren’t too bad and that your year was made up of a lot more good than bad or that the good at least made up for some of the bad. I can tell you that you’re awesome and you can believe me because it’s true. You’re reading this, aren’t you? Well then that means we probably kind of know each other and I don’t waste my time on people that aren’t awesome. End of story. You’re also beautiful and special and important and you deserve a 2013 as special and beautiful and awesome as you are. I can’t promise it’ll happen, but you better believe me when I say you deserve it.

Can you promise me something though? Can you promise to take care of yourself in 2013? Like, just a little bit whenever you can. Like, have a Starbucks if it makes you happy or buy a DVD and then veg on your couch with it. Read an entire book in one sitting! Marathon a tv show! Take baths or fart when you’re alone in an elevator. Smile when you feel it and let yourself feel mad or sad or frustrated. Cry when you need to. You deserve to be happy, but when you can’t be, you have the right to feel all those things, whatever they are. Do what makes you feel good and stop being mean to yourself because you’re not living up to someone else’s bullshit expectations. Set your own bar low, reach above it whenever you can, be yourself — whoever you want that to be — and be kind to yourself. You’re wonderful.

I love you. No, really. It’s true. I do. I’m a big person, I have room for you in here, right next to my heart. It’s okay, you can all squeeze in. Promise.

– Ash

Hey! Don’t forget to enter the giveaway, okay?

back to school with judy blume: tiger eyes

Dear Judy,

I didn’t expect to like Tiger Eyes. I’m not sure why, honestly, and after the disappointment of Blubber earlier this week I was really, really dreading sitting down with it. But, like the dedicated person I am trying very hard to be, I sucked it up and I sat down with it and I devoured it. When I was reading Blubber, I had to bargain with myself to read it. I read five chapters and then got to watch fifteen minutes of an episode of Doctor Who. I set myself up for a similar bargain with Tiger Eyes, but it left the good Doctor utterly forsaken.

Tiger Eyes is really beautiful and painful and honest. It’s a lot more detached and literary than the last seven of yours I’ve read and I worried that it would start to feel like it was trying to hard, but it never did. I really loved Davey. I loved watching her struggle through her grief, but also her pushing back against the rigidity of her newfound household. The tension between a family that loves her and wants to keep her safe, to the point of overbearing protectiveness, and the overwhelming energy in Davey that desperately wants to run free.

I didn’t love Wolf or her interactions with him, but I loved her time with Mr. Ortiz and how gently she learns her lessons there, not only with grief but with the pressure of living up to expectations and wanting to please people who want the best for you, even if their idea of best is misguided.

I loved the little things in the story, the details of the landscape and the town, the meals and the people. I loved Davey asking to see the bathtub in Jane’s house and them sitting in the stranger’s Subaru in the parking lot of the movie theater. I really appreciated Davey’s acknowledgement of the racial tension in Los Alamos and Santa Fe and particularly her struggling with it because Atlantic City was so different. It’s not up to 2012 code of Not Being Racist, but it’s trying and I imagine it was up to 1981’s standards.

I don’t have a lot to say, Judy, I’m sorry. It’s easier to rant about something or rehash the nostalgia of something you know than it is to talk about things you just plain liked. I’m glad I got to spend the time with Davey and feel her pain and see her emerge from the dark cocoon of it. I’m glad I got to see her verbally, loudly, actively reject the values being laid on her by Bitsy and Walter. I’m glad I got to see her struggle with her mother and her mother’s pain. I’m really glad I got to see her seek help from Miriam and find the voice to talk about her loss. What a wonderful model that is for young readers who are often scared to ask for help when they most need it.

Thanks, Judy. This was an extraordinary way to finish this project.

– Ash

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

back to school with judy blume: blubber

Dear Judy,

Reading Blubber was not a fun experience. That’s usually a sign of a book that has affected me in some way, so that’s not necessarily a harbinger of doom or anything. But, let me tell you, it’s not not either.

I am fat, Judy. Extremely fat! Death fat. The kind of fat that they crop the heads off of on the news while talking about the OBESITY EPIDEMIC that apparently has a death grip on the entire United States. I was a fat kid, a fat adolescent, a fat teenager, a fat adult, a fat undergrad, a fat substitute teacher, a fat grad student, a fat unemployed writer, and I’ll probably someday die while fat. I will likely always be fat. And, Judy, though I know it’s not the dominant opinion, there’s nothing wrong with being fat.

I don’t think you hate fat people, Judy, but you sure do like to have your characters worry over their weight and the weight of those around them. This is a symptom of adolescence. I experienced it too! From both sides. And I wish, just once, your characters would learn that there’s nothing wrong with being fat. I wish Linda hadn’t dieted. I wish she’d stood up to the cruelty of her classmates, instead of joining in on it when it was foisted on someone else. I wish Jill had stood up for her. I wish someone had said, “Who cares that she’s fat! Let’s all stop being assholes!” But they didn’t. And that’s a massive bummer.

I won’t go in to all the things I’ve learned from being part of the fat acceptance movement. I won’t talk about the ways in which we ostracize and other fat people, the way we use their bodies as metaphors for greed and materialism. I won’t talk about the ways in which weight has little to do with health and how people can be healthy at every size. I won’t even talk about how weight and health are not morals and how being healthy doesn’t make you a good person or how people who are fat and unhealthy are just as deserving as respect and humanity as people who are fat and healthy or thin and healthy or thin and unhealthy. I won’t even really talk about how we are all deserving of respect, bodily autonomy, and a life free from body shame. And how all of those things are important lessons, not just for fat people, but for everyone.

Well, I guess I did talk about all those a little.

But what I really want to talk about is how, thus far, your books have offered moments of safety and surety for weirdos, Judy. Your gift as a writer is giving young people lively characters with whom they can find shelter, comfort, and camaraderie. Margaret and Deenie and Sheila and Tony and Karen all suffer the same pains and embarrassments and fears that real live adolescents do and you capture them with care and honesty. Your characters learn lessons from their mistakes and become better people. Because of that, your books act as both tools for learning and comforts, like a childhood blanket or stuffed animal when we’ve gotten too old to cling to them.

What I want to talk about is how Blubber doesn’t comfort anyone. It doesn’t teach anyone. It doesn’t provide an example of a decent human being or show us how not to be like those who do wrong. These children, including Jill in whose perspective we have been mired, are terrible. They’re cruel and hateful and vicious. They tear Linda down until she is literally berating herself unprompted in order to perform the normal functions of her day unabused. I hoped that Jill would stand up for her in the beginning and then I hoped that Jill would learn a lesson from her own foray into bullying and then I was just left to desperately hope that she would at least understand what she had done to Linda because she was suffering it herself. But she doesn’t. She learns a lesson about… not caving to bossiness?

I’m not saying that Blubber isn’t honest. Kids are terrible, horrible, monstrous creatures that go straight for your weakness like a wolf with a vulnerable jugular, but fiction, especially fiction targeted toward young audiences, should be aspirational. It should hope for a better world full of engaged, empathetic humans who don’t want to cause injury to one another.

I was a fat kid who took an enormous amount of abuse from my classmates. I was also a fat kid that fought back, who bullied back, who laughed it off even when it was too much to take. I understand Linda’s decision to join the other side, to seek shelter from the storm deep in the clouds.

What I cannot understand is why Jill learns so little. Children are capable of empathy, often far more than adults are, and yet she remains callously impervious to the plight of her classmate. It’s so hard to watch Jill become Baby Brenner with so little recognition that this is almost exactly what she was just perpetuating alongside her friends. How she can be so outraged at the abuse Tracy receives because of her race and yet be unable to process that to the cruelty she herself commits?

I can’t imagine having been eight or nine or ten or, hell, twelve and reading Blubber and feeling anything other than scorned and hated and miserable. A book like this should be for the Blubbers and the Tracys and the kids who are emotionally brutalized by the world around them. But Blubber isn’t for those kids, it’s for the Jills and the Carolines and the Rochelles. It’s for the ones who refuse to stand up when other people are being hurt. It’s for the ones who say, “There are some people who just make you want to see how far you can go.”

I can’t understand it, Judy. I just can’t.

– Ash

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

back to school with judy blume: deenie

The exact edition from my youth. Bless those crazed vintage buyers.

Dear Judy,

Deenie. Where do I even start?

Deenie was the second of your books to reach me in my youth and after rereading, I find myself with a fondness for Deenie and her story akin to the one I have for Margaret and hers. I see flaws in their characters more clearly than I did as a kid, but they are the ones who knew me when, two of my favorite companions on the torturous path of adolescence.

Okay, Judy, let’s get personal. By sixth grade — Deenie’s very age — I had already worked out the whole masturbating thing. Not just the doing it bit, but that it was normal, that it wouldn’t kill me, and that lots of people my age — people I actually knew even! — did it too. It was not a Big Deal. I can attribute this both to having a much older sister, well-adjusted and open parents, good friends, and the internet. Growing up in the internet age was by far the thing which most contributed to assuring me that I was not in fact a constantly mutating and grotesque monster. What a gift.

But, sadly, not every person I counted among my friends was as knowledgeable and while I can no longer remember most of the details, I somehow ended up in Serious Friendship Trouble with two of my friends — K and S — for “keeping secrets” with another and ended up confessing that we’d been talking about — gasp! — masturbation. I made this confession on what I think must’ve been an AlphaSmart or similar brand mini-laptop processor keyboard, which we all used on typing days to pass notes back and forth to each other. These two friends were totally weird about it, Judy, and for the first time I felt really weird about it! But, regardless of how horrified I might’ve been, I thought that was the end of that entire awkward moment.

Of course it wasn’t the end because adolescence is generally terrible and never-ending. A couple of days later, K presented me with her copy of Deenie. She’d been diagnosed with scoliosis at that year’s annual check and had started wearing her modern Milwaukee Brace — mostly plastic instead of metal and I don’t think she had a neck stabilizer and only wore it for two years, if memory serves — and she said, “You and I both have something in common with her.”

I can’t fully explain why this was a pivotal moment for me as a human being, but it was. I hadn’t ever been that close to K — she was very religious and very conservative and, to be slightly less than kind, totally uptight for a twelve-year-old — and she, of all people, had reached out in this extremely kind and gentle way. Sometimes adolescence was okay! We ended up bonding and she was my friendship rock over the summer because we spent hours on the phone talking about how scared we were to go to junior high. You brought us together, Judy! And that’s so cool. Fiction is remarkable for so many reasons, but its ability to draw people together is one of my very favorites.

As an adult, I also appreciate the frankness with which Mrs. Rappoport discusses masturbation with the girls in Deenie’s gym class. She tells them it’s okay! For everyone, boys and girls alike, and that it won’t kill them or make them crazy or weird! It’s so refreshing! And, after growing up in the weirdly repressed 90s, it seems shocking for its era to me as an adult. We always seem to assume that we’re advancing every year, getting better, but instead, we’re often going bizarrely backwards.

I really loved Deenie all over again. A lot. I love Helen and Deenie’s dad and when Janet and Midge take her to get a nightgown when they think she’s going to need an operation to correct her spine, I actually choked up. Friendship! I love Barbara! I even love the little bit of Helen’s romance with Joe. I love the strife of Deenie’s relationship with her mother and the pain of expectation and disappointment and all those tangled up feelings of what’s “meant” for you and struggling to figure out and be what you want to be. For some of us that struggle lasts well into adulthood and it never gets all that much easier.

Thanks for Deenie, Judy. I’m grateful for her sisterhood.

– Ash

ABOUT THIS PROJECT