Ashe Vernon's Blog, page 101

i'm from a family of agegaps- parnts 12 yrs apart, siblings all 3-7 with their S/Os. but thyre all over 18. im 16, but i take college courses and work 2 jobs, so my friends are mostly older. i've started seeing my 21 y/o coworker and i'm p conflicted. i li

This isn’t going to be the answer you want to hear, but I agree with them. That’s not to say that the boy you’re seeing is intentionally being predatory [although he very well could be] but even in “healthy” versions of relationships like this, there’s still an unbalanced power dynamic. That power-shift can be abused even unintentionally.

I know that you feel like you’re mature for your age. I’m sure you are. I was too, when I was sixteen. But there is SO MUCH growth that happens between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. Even if you’re ahead of the curb, you’re still going to see a world of difference in your life and yourself as you graduate high school and college.

Personally, I don’t think age gaps matter once you’re both proper adults. There’s not all that much difference between 25 and 30. But there’s an ENORMOUS difference between even 17 and 20. 16 and 21? That’s too much.

I know you like him, but you’re playing with fire and I don’t want you to wind up hurt.

i'm from a family of agegaps- parnts 12 yrs apart, siblings all 3-7 with their S/Os. but thyre all over 18. im 16, but i take college courses and work 2 jobs, so my friends are mostly older. i've started seeing my 21 y/o coworker and i'm p conflicted. i li

This isn’t going to be the answer you want to hear, but I agree with them. That’s not to say that the boy you’re seeing is intentionally being predatory [although he very well could be] but even in “healthy” versions of relationships like this, there’s still an unbalanced power dynamic. That power-shift can be abused even unintentionally.

I know that you feel like you’re mature for your age. I’m sure you are. I was too, when I was sixteen. But there is SO MUCH growth that happens between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. Even if you’re ahead of the curb, you’re still going to see a world of difference in your life and yourself as you graduate high school and college.

Personally, I don’t think age gaps matter once you’re both proper adults. There’s not all that much difference between 25 and 30. But there’s an ENORMOUS difference between even 17 and 20. 16 and 21? That’s too much.

I know you like him, but you’re playing with fire and I don’t want you to wind up hurt.

Mama Ashe (is it cool if I call you that?) anyways, I think I'm falling in love with my boyfriend, way too fast and it scares me. And idk he's just great, we have so much in common and he's so great I'm just scared to love someone because the last time I l

The best advice I can give you is that cheating yourself out of love hurts so much more than taking a chance on it does. It’s okay to love fast, to love hard, to love recklessly. It’s okay to get your heartbroken. A broken heart means that you loved someone, and that’s the bravest thing a person can do.

Mama Ashe (is it cool if I call you that?) anyways, I think I'm falling in love with my boyfriend, way too fast and it scares me. And idk he's just great, we have so much in common and he's so great I'm just scared to love someone because the last time I l

The best advice I can give you is that cheating yourself out of love hurts so much more than taking a chance on it does. It’s okay to love fast, to love hard, to love recklessly. It’s okay to get your heartbroken. A broken heart means that you loved someone, and that’s the bravest thing a person can do.

Mama Ashe (is it cool if I call you that?) anyways, I think I'm falling in love with my boyfriend, way too fast and it scares me. And idk he's just great, we have so much in common and he's so great I'm just scared to love someone because the last time I l

The best advice I can give you is that cheating yourself out of love hurts so much more than taking a chance on it does. It’s okay to love fast, to love hard, to love recklessly. It’s okay to get your heartbroken. A broken heart means that you loved someone, and that’s the bravest thing a person can do.

Mama Ashe (is it cool if I call you that?) anyways, I think I'm falling in love with my boyfriend, way too fast and it scares me. And idk he's just great, we have so much in common and he's so great I'm just scared to love someone because the last time I l

The best advice I can give you is that cheating yourself out of love hurts so much more than taking a chance on it does. It’s okay to love fast, to love hard, to love recklessly. It’s okay to get your heartbroken. A broken heart means that you loved someone, and that’s the bravest thing a person can do.

"I love a semi-stanger" guy here. I'll just put -SS so you know who I am. I wish I didn't have to be anonymous. But I also wish I could have this anonymous conversation with you privately so I wouldn't have to keep blowing up your ask box. -SS

I mean technically you don’t HAVE to be anonymous, but you do what’s best for you.

I think I want to leave school

That’s perfectly okay, sunshine. You decide what’s best for you. Sometimes, school isn’t the right option. You can always go back, later. Take care of yourself and do what you need to.

Should I buy belly of the beast or wrong side of the fist fight, first?

Essentially it doesn’t matter, because they aren’t technically related to each other. But, I think they’re best read in the order they were written (BotB, then WSoFF), because they tackle a lot of the same things in completely opposite ways. I wrote them less than a year apart, but I was in such vastly different places in my life.

Belly of the Beast ( order here! ) was about weaponizing girlhood and softness. It was about recovering from trauma in stubborn, violent ways. It was necessary for me and the state I was in at the time. 

But in a way, Wrong Side of a Fistfight ( order here! ) is almost a complete undoing of that: it’s about reclaiming your own gentle and healing.

"You and me,the bed at the center of it all–the way you never felt like a stranger,insteadlike..."

“You and me,

the bed at the center of it all–

the way you never felt like a stranger,

instead

like someone I had forgotten, like

a part of myself I had dropped in some

distant city, delivered

back to my door.

 

Our story,

a pipe-dream in three parts–

my bedroom the place where everything

came together and the place where everything

fell apart. There are still echoes of us

in the bed-frame, and the closet, and the drywall.

I keep your dignity on the bookshelf;

I figure you’ll come looking for it, eventually.

 

It always comes back

to here.

The only sanctuary I have ever known

still smells like you, sometimes.

Just when I think I’ve gotten you

out of the pillowcases,

I find your cologne on the walls.

I remember when you came apart in pieces

on the carpet, and I will never be able

to wash the heartbreak out of the floors.

 

Someday,

I will leave our story behind, in this city.

This apartment will be barren and then

it will be full of other people.

None of them will know our names;

they will track over our history like

rerecording over old video tapes.

I won’t miss you.

 

Or I will miss you,

but I’ll have bought a new mattress:

one that doesn’t know how you twitch in your sleep.

I will have a new bedroom, and the floor boards

won’t know how to moan your name

like I do.

And we’ll fall asleep

in different beds,

in different cities.

 

And if I wake up from dreams

that still taste like you,

I can take comfort in the fact

that even though you have kissed me,

you have never kissed me

here.”

- ALL MY LOVE POEMS SOUND LIKE BREAK-UP POEMS by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)