Some stirrings on "Forever" by Judy Blume

I had never read Judy Blume until this year for this class I'm taking this fall semester, Craft of the Young Adult Novel. We have reached the conclusion of our unit on the genre of teen/young adult Romance, although we're beginning "Love and Longing." My god, it's enough to suffocate me. I don't know how I'll manage. I read "Forever" and it was weird. I mean, I imagine it was very informative for a young people oblivious to love, longing, yearning and sexual experience, I also imagine it was quite a rather scandalous read for anybody at the time it was written and now. Classmates were recalling having read Judy Blume and hiding it, out of embarrassment or mortification from their parents. My parents had no such worries, because I said before, I had never laid hands on a Judy Blume before.

So it was "weird" reading it now, now that I've entered that "twenty something" age. Although I was only but a few months ago or so, a teen. I'm not really a "twenty something", because I haven't a "something" attached to my age yet, but whatever. It makes very little difference how old I am. I have always felt rather old and never really felt my age. I feel old, not in experience, but just lacking understand and comprehension of people my own age. It was so weird to identify with the characters experience in this book, but realize that they are under the age of 18 or "just there." I mean I was their age, but a few years ago, but I had no urge and no interest in what they were doing. None at all. I mean vague curiousity at times, but I was so very uncomfortable with sex. I mean if you don't believe me read this blog. The contents is overflowing about my anxieties and my anger directed at relationships and sex. It was sort of an abstract "anger" if you will. I wasn't angry at being single or being "alone", I was just upset at people not accepting it, because I had. I had accepted that I would be solitary and I was happy.

And now. Well I'm not really alone-alone. There is something I am with, although he is physically far away. And as far as my happiness goes? It's the strangest thing to be happy and yet be so sad at the same time. To feel so bewildered and worried, but it's all part of the happiness.

I had to stop several times to cry when reading "Forever." It got too personal. It got to familiar. I turned away and buried myself in my sheets even though it's over 80 degrees outside. Thank goodness this old building is well insulated and so cool, but then I later opened my window and the room became sweltering warm.

It was too intimate, that book. But I recommend it for my friends who don't know much or are curious. I think this is just what is needed for some people. It is a "dirty" book and although it may seem "scandalous," reading it now with what I experienced, it was OK. I mean it is not perfect or truly explicit, it's not porn or something like that. It is the story of two people who fall in love and who make love, but it's not necessarily about the two people and their love, as much as the young woman discovering that love is a process and a cycle and that it comes and goes. But it doesn't really end. It is not a unhappy book.

But it was too close to me. I at one point just couldn't stop the tears, I just burst into tears and shoved the book aside and curled away. I felt like the book was telling me something and I'm afraid it was telling me something, something that I've realized in these days and something that I believe but haven't truly made peace with.

I sent a ridiculously long and awful email to my chica. One that probably merits a sincere apology although I haven't attacked her or anything, I feel like I just dumped emotional crap on her and that's not right. It was a selfish necessity in a moment when I felt like I lost my mind. But that's what is so crazy about love. I am young, but not that young at the same time. Two decades is a long time and for people to tell you, "You're young. You don't know what you want. You're whole life is ahead of you." Well, when I was at the Andrea Gibson poetry reading, she reminded us how you can't necessarily "measure life." She told the story of a young woman she is corresponding with, a young fan of hers. The girl is about my age, almost twenty or might have been or would have been or could have been. I do not know her name and I do not know where or who she is. But Andrea Gibson told us that this girl is blogging about what it is like to die. She is dying of cancer, she is terminal.

I remember how Andrea Gibson said she has never met anyone with the perspective that this young woman had. People mourn the loss of lost youth and how they were "too young" and this young woman told her, "Hey! I lived a long time. Some died at birth. I had 18-20 years! That is a long time!"

So yes, I am only 20. But I have never been in love before, not until now. I know it is love, but it was something that had troubled me for a chunk of the summer when I realized how deeply serious my attachment to him was. I was afraid, because well, I had only been in love once before and had crushes that well...crushed me. I didn't want to hear something from someone I so wanted to hear these things from and have it not be real or have it taken away. That is something I just couldn't take. I still can't.

This book "Forever" should be helpful to me. I think it is. Sometimes, you just can't keep someone "forever." As much as you want to. It is inevitable. You must enjoy what you have and what you had. Keep it close, don't let it fall to hate or accusations or tell bad stories. Just remember what you had and how beautiful it was while it went on.

I have no regrets. There are things I wish I had done more or said more. But I would not change anything. Saying goodbye is something I will never master and thankfully, right now, I do not have to say goodbye and thinking of an expiration date is terrible. But it was interesting that in "Forever" there was an article the characters discussed and the question was something like: Have you imagined or considered how our relationship will end? Something like that.

Yes. Imagined. My relationship is something I hope that will persevere through time and space. My imaginings are imaginings like a dream is a dream. It is has been weeks, and on Thursday, it will have been exactly a month since we left the same occupied same at the same time. And we'll still be together. That is something momentous I think.

I cannot control the future. But nobody can change the past. I live in the present.

There is no such thing as perfect and I don't want there to be. I am not perfect. He is not perfect. We are extraordinary. Not supernatural or anything crazy like that. We made something together. I do not feel like I lost anything. I feel like I gained. And I feel like he feels the same way.

And that I will have "Forever."