kissing the new year in


Dear 2015,

Usually when I write these letters, they’re about how shitty my year was and how next year will be better, but you got me, 2015, you were pretty damn good. My biopsies were cancer-free all year. I made pretty good money at a job I only hate about 30% of the time. I found aquacise aka exercise that doesn’t bring rage from my soul like lava from the crust of the earth. I bought/watched/read/listened to a bunch of good shit. I went on a bunch of pretty good trips. Oh, and I married my favorite person in the entire world. To be honest, 2015 will probably be hard to beat.

Thanks for cooperating!

<3 Ash


Dear 2016,

2015 set a high-ass bar. I dare you to beat it.

<3, Ash

can’t count the years on one hand

Dear Crystal,

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.

– Ash

could this be the one / our new year


tori amos, “our new year”

Dear 2013,

Thanks for trying. You could’ve done worse.

– Ash

Dear 2014,

Please, please don’t fuck it up.

– Ash

Dear Reader,

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.

– Ash

happy holidays!

all hallows