I tried to write this like a regular post, like I was talking to my mythical invisible audience, and I tried it like nine different ways and they were all terrible, so I decided to write to you instead. You’ve been my best audience from the very beginning anyway.
It’s been six years since we first decided to try the whole dating thing! Can you believe it? Isn’t that crazy? Six years that you’ve stuck by me and continued to make this thing work even when it’s insanely hard. Six years of dumb fights interspersed with the rare important ones. Six years of laughing at each other, with each other, at everything and everyone. Six years of loving each other.
I feel like this is one of those times where I should say, “It’s not always easy, but nothing that’s worth it ever is” or one of those things, but it’d be a lie because loving you is the easiest thing I have ever done — hands down, no contest — and the most rewarding.
You are so smart and so funny and so beautiful. It’s kind of horrifying how much I like you, honestly.
I have been so, so lucky to know you for the last seven-ish years, so lucky to have gotten to be your friend and to love you intensely and romantically and grossly for most of it. Everyone that knows you is better for it. We’re all lucky to have you in our lives, someone so unbelievably loyal and generous and kind. No one who knows you really deserves to and most of us know it.
You take incredible care of me and everyone you love. You care so much and so deeply that it astonishes me. You make me laugh every single day, even on the worst days I’ve ever had. You laugh at my stupid jokes and you encourage me to be the best writer/friend/daughter/sister/girlfriend/person I can possibly be.
I love spending my days with you, even when they’re filled with dumb adult decisions and errands, even when I’m being medically probed and prodded, even when everything else is terrible — you never are. You are the best part of every day.
The last six years have been the most important of my life, I think, for a lot of different reasons, but mostly because of you. I will never stop being grateful for you, for your love, for your remarkable and indescribable presence in my life. I will never stop being thankful that I get to share that life with you, that we have a life together. Loving you is the greatest thing I’ve ever done and I’ll never stop being grateful that you let me do it.
There are maybe three phone calls that you’d really describe as the worst in your life: the person you love most in the world has been killed or severely injured, your beloved pet has been killed or severely injured, your doctor has test results and they’re not good.
I got the third — for which I’m grateful, to be honest, the other two are worse — and it was the worst phone call of my life after the worst, most anxiety-riddled three weeks of my life.
My girlfriend took the call for me — the saint she is, appeasing my anxiety at the cost of her own, always — so I can’t recount it in perfect detail but the gist was, “You have cancer. We thought it might be a worse, more rare cancer, so we had to send all your bits and pieces away to be double-checked which is why it’s been three weeks, but no, you’ve just got the regular ol’ garden variety of endometrial cancer.”
Cancer is not a fun word, it’s not a kind word. It sounds ugly and feels wet and clunky and hiss-filled in the mouth. It effortlessly terrifies everyone who speaks English, makes them simultaneously recoil and lurch toward you in apology and pity.
I am 28 years old and I have endometrial cancer.
I have cancer. This is what I say to myself every morning upon waking and every night as I try to fall asleep. It’s a constant, gently barbing hum at the back of my throat any time my mind quiets. Sometimes, like the evening that followed the worst phone call of my life, it isn’t quiet. I say it aloud because if I don’t remind myself that it is real, I cannot cope. I fear I will forget and my life will return to normal without me realizing and it will come again and strip it away from me again, fresh and brutal.
I have cancer.
Sometimes it comes out like a cough, sudden and jarring, scratching at my throat. My eyes water and sting, but it passes quickly — a swallow of water down the wrong pipe — and everything’s okay again.
The night I learned he results of my labs, I looked in the bathroom mirror and fluffed my hair and stroked the skin under my eyes because I still haven’t found an eye cream I want to buy. (I’m almost 30 and I live in a place where the temperature is regularly 20 below, hydration is a priority.) I looked into a face that has cleared up tremendously in the last few weeks because of a drastic change in diet and exercise, my color finally returning to me after months of severe blood loss that necessitated two separate blood transfusions and a total of nine pints of strange blood commingling with my own. I looked in the mirror and I smiled and I said, “I have cancer and I have never looked more beautiful.”
My narcissism truly knows no bounds.
“I am reading Gone Girl on my Kindle and I have cancer.”
“I am shopping for a desk lamp at Target while having cancer.”
“I have cancer and I am moisturizing my face.” “I have cancer and I’m deep conditioning my hair.” “I’m cleaning the bathroom and I have cancer.”
It’s a refrain to center my reality. For now, this thing inside of me, this vicious brutality of mutation is part of me and I must learn it, acknowledge it, accept it.
Cancer will — hopefully, prayerfully, “Please, oh please”-fully — not always be my reality, the center of my every breath, but for now it is.
I have cancer.
I have cancer and with luck, it’ll all be fine.
I am Ash, I have cancer, and I’m doing okay, really.
Now that the last of 2K13’s Totally Top Fives have been posted, it’s time to give something away to you fine, kind souls. You know, the ones who voluntarily read all this garbage! Bless you all.
This year’s prizes — that’s right, that s is not a mistake! — are three Amazon.com gift cards! Partly because I don’t want to foist my taste on you — although at this point, you really ought to just accept it — and partly because I want to get you started on your own Totally Top Five 2K14! It’s never too early in the year to love something.
So, if you look down there ↓ you’ll see a handly little Rafflecopter giveaway widget where you can enter to win one of the three gift cards in just a couple super simple steps! Most of which aren’t even mandatory! How exciting for all of us!
The giveaway closes at midnight January 8th, 2014. I will contact the winner within 12 hours and if they do not respond within 24 hours of my email, I’ll select a new winner. Easy peasy!
Good luck! Thanks for reading and commenting and being awesome. I know there’s not a whole lot of you but you all sure do mean the world to me. ♥
ETA: Winners have been emailed, announced, and awarded! Congrats and thanks again for entering and reading and continuing to be awesome!
Whether your 2013 was magical or terrible, I hope 2014 is better. I hope you’re healthier, smarter, richer, happier, safer, and more fulfilled. I hope you get to do new things that excite you and I hope you get to do things you already love. I hope that life is kinder, the world brighter, and love deeper and more available to you than ever before. I hope that you get to really and truly love something with your whole heart this year, especially if it’s something dumb and joyful. I hope you do you, be you, and love you to your absolute capacity.
You’re the best and I am so lucky to know you. No, really.
So, I recently got kind of hooked on watching YouTube videos of, like, make-up how-to people and I guess, like, lifestyle vloggers? And by hooked I mean I watched like four or five which is an outstanding number for someone who normally won’t watch a video longer than thirty seconds, especially when you take into account that a lot of these clock in the 12-15 minutes range. My tv has a built in YouTube app that recommends things to me, I’m powerless against its inscrutable algorithm.
Anyway, these color-coordinated, put-together, spotless-apartment-living, spend-more-on-make-up-in-a-month-than-I-have-in-five-years ladies kept mentioning Bath and Body Works candles. And I guess it sort of stuck in my head and then Crystal and I had to go to an almost-city so she could see her dentist and there’s a Bath and Body Works in the mall there and then the next thing I know I was coming home with eight candles? I think I was drunk. Or maybe lightheaded from sniffing every single candle in the store. Repeatedly.
I like candles! They’re great. I don’t buy a ton, but we do have a mix of real and battery candles scattered around our place. They look pretty cool and all and Crystal is really into this thing where we have a little row of them in mason jars in a windowsill. And we buy the occasional scented candle — I just sent Crystal on a mission to buy one while she was at Walmart the other day in fact — but I’m not, like, crazy about candles. So, you know, I didn’t expect to come home with eight of them.
In our vegetable wax and lead-free wick induced haze, we bought:
Lemon Mint Leaf — Freshly cut lemon balm and spearmint leaves give a refreshing lift to a blend of vetiver and citrus — My girlfriend chose this one because it is eerily close to the basil-lime dish soap we use and love. Haven’t burned it yet, but has a good cold (what I learned on the internet is called) throw. The sales associate said it’s one of the most popular candles in their store. It’s too spring-y to burn now, but come March I think it’s going to be our go-to.
Sweater Weather — Cuddle up with an aromatic blend of eucalyptus, juniper berry, and fresh sage that celebrates the arrival of sweater weather — This is amazing. I smelled this one pretty much as soon as I set foot in the store and came back to it over and over again. We knew we wanted a big fall candle and it came down between this one and Leaves because despite having very different descriptions, they smell incredibly similar, but Sweater Weather just had something that Leaves was missing. I’ll definitely be buying Leaves eventually though.
Harvest Coffee — Relax with this rich, robust blend of roasted coffee beans topped off by creamy vanilla foam — I don’t like coffee at all unless it’s masked with a bucket of milk, sugar, and whipped cream, but I love the smell of it. This one gives off a great smell when it’s unlit, but once it gets warm it is way, way too sweet and caramel-y. I’m not really a sweet candle person (I learned in the Bath and Body Works yesterday) but if you are and you like coffee, you’ll probably love this one.
Bergamot Woods — An aromatic woodsy blend, highlighted by bright bergamot, fresh lavender, and deep green cypress — I love this one, love love love it. Like, can’t stop opening it and sniffing it and worrying about “wasting” it. It’s what fragrance people probably classify as a masculine scent and those are scents to which I am frequently drawn. I see it pop up alongside reviews of Flannel pretty often, but I did not like Flannel at all, so clearly this scent thing is weird and subjective. This has a good burn smell and a good, lingering throw.
Marshmallow Fireside — A sweet-toasty end to a snowy, fun-filled day — toasted marshmallows and sumptuous vanilla cream blend with the comforting aroma of rich smoldering woods — This was Crystal’s pick and I fought her on it in a lazy and unengaged way because I just thought it was way, way too sweet and was being obstinate about it, but now I can’t stop sniffing it. It’s got a nice sweet note that isn’t too cloying and there is that woodsy undertone that I think I was just missing in the store. Looking forward to burning this post-Halloween.*
Sparkling Icicles — As sparkling as the ice at the local skating pond, this fragrance features a citrus bouquet, bergamot, and a touch of holiday moss — Another one I love love love and another fairly masculine scent. I actually picked this one because it smells like the pine forest/river rafting section of Soarin’ Over California at Disney California Adventure and I plan to burn it and listen to the soundtrack and cry a lot. Just kidding. Kind of. Nice and woodsy.
Fresh Balsam — The invigorating aroma of evergreen woods on a clear, fall morning features crisp eucalyptus, fir needles, and cedarwood musk notes — Forget what the official descriptions says about fall, this is straight up Christmas, balsam is the smell of Christmas, and this one hits it just right. Not too woodsy, not too green, and it doesn’t smell like those little green Christmas tree car air fresheners.
Winter — A season full of fun in the snow is captured in notes of pine needles, clementine and winter woods — This one has some of the same initial scent as Sparkling Icicles, but it’s much less masculinely woodsy and much more cinnamon bark and pine. It’s more foody than floral, but not super sweet or sugary. I initially liked Snow Day better, but the more I smelled it, the sweeter it got, so Winter won out.
The big candles are $20. I still can’t get over that because it just seems absurd to me. I looked them up on the internet beforehand and I was like, “No, no way. $20 for a candle?! Who am I, Howard Hughes? I’m not lighting up the Spruce Goose over here!” And then I walked into the store and smelled them and just sort of stumbled from rack to rack, saying, “No, no, these are ridiculous. Twenty dollars!” until my arms were full and Crystal had to check us out and pull me bodily from the premises. To be fair, the little ones were 3 for $12 (3 for $10 online, but their shipping seems outrageous to me.) and that’s not terrible.
My official review is basically this: these things smell pretty great and there was an awesome variety of scents and even if I can’t get over their price — $20 dollars! — they’re pretty much worth it, especially if you’re not burning them all day, every day. Each is strongly scented but not in that chemical, headachy way and two of the three I’ve burned thus far have had an incredible range, smell great after being extinguished, and linger in a super pleasant, not overwhelming way. (And the third just isn’t my favorite personally, a ton of people probably love the crap out of it.) Plus, the labels peel off so easy, like, window-cling easy and if you care about that, you know exactly what a big deal that is.
Just give in and buy some already so we can, like, high-five about it or something. Jeez.
*: I think you should be aware at this point that I’ve been reading the official descriptions of these in Dana Carvey’s Church Lady voice. Important.
