Authors: Jay Crownover
Nash
NASH
Jay Crownover
You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and
affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as
anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
—Buddha
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a
certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I
have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the
beginning.
—Mahatma Gandhi
The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.
—Virginia Woolf
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
—Oscar Wilde
I celebrate myself, and I sing myself.
—Walt Whitman
Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything
done in this world.
—Lucille Ball
Dedicated to any of you who might just
need a little reminder that you are awesome
just the way you are!!!
Table of Contents
I grew up in a pretty small town here in the mountains in Colorado. It was a pretty place, but I stuck out
like a sore thumb, which wasn’t always the easiest thing to handle. I have always had my own style,
marched to the beat of my own drum, wrote my own rule book, and pretty much forged my own path. I
developed a thick skin and pretty rock-solid sense of who I was and what I was about early on. I had to, or
I would’ve fallen victim to thinking what others said about me or thought about me held any water. That
was years and years ago and still, that time, those feelings, stick with me.
I know this isn’t the case for everyone, that some people have never been judged unfairly. But many
have and they know that mean words and hateful actions are so much more far-reaching now with the
world all being connected by a keyboard and a computer monitor. It gets tougher and tougher to brush off
negativity and pessimism.
Trying to love yourself, to know your own value and worth, is something I think a lot of young girls
struggle with and that can definitely flow into adulthood. We all have things that set us apart, make us
special, make us who we are, and I would love to see those things celebrated and enjoyed across the board.
Let that freak flag fly! (Or whatever equivalent you have.)
I think on the journey to finding the love we crave, the love we truly deserve, the first stop has to be the
love we have for ourselves. That’s a love that can never be lost and can only grow and get stronger the
more it is fostered and developed. Appreciate who you are. Love what makes you different. Tell your story
your way. Embrace the things that make you beautiful inside and out, and know that once you do, no one
else can ignore those traits. Revel in the quirks that simply make you
you,
and do it with pride.
High school … Not the best years of my life
There’s a moment in every person’s life, a point in time that will alter the course they are on, the path
they are traveling, forever. The night of Ashley Maxwell’s birthday party my senior year in high school was
mine.
I wasn’t the type of teenager that went to wild parties. I didn’t drink and didn’t mess around with drugs
and boys, so really there was no point in me going. I was also painfully shy, overweight, and awkward in
my own skin, skin that tended toward ugly breakouts and flushed bright red whenever anyone tried to
engage me in conversation. The halls of high school were torture for a girl like me, but I suffered through it
mostly unscathed because I knew when to keep my head down and not to set my sights on friends or boys
that were out of my league. At least I did until senior year, when my locker ended up right next to Nash
Donovan’s.
For the first few weeks of school, I kept to myself and ignored him, just like I did with all the popular
kids and beautiful people. If I didn’t engage, then he couldn’t make fun of me or, even worse, look at me
with pity shining out of the spectacular purple eyes that glowed out of his handsome face. It worked until
the day I dropped a calculus book on his foot and he picked it up to hand it to me. I’ll never forget the way
I actually felt the way my heart stopped and then started thundering in the next second when those
spectacular eyes gleamed at me. I’d never experienced anything quite like it.
Nash smiled at me, quipped something sarcastic and offhand, making my poor, lonely heart turn over.
He walked away with a wink … and I had a crush. A consuming, engulfing crush that built day after day,
because after that embarrassing incident Nash went out of his way to say hello when we were by our
lockers, and he always walked away with a smile or a nod. Each day I became more entranced, fell a little
harder, and built the fantasy that we were meant to be something more than passing acquaintances into
something grandiose and romantic.
I was a smart girl, so I knew my affection was one-sided, but he seemed nice, charming, and it made me
warm on the inside that he never teased me, or made me feel bad about my weight or looks like so many of
my peers did on a regular basis. Our simple interaction was good for my self-esteem, good for making me
feel more like the rest of the teenage girls prowling the halls that swooned over him and his group of
troublemaking friends. I had even worked up enough courage after a month or so to return his hellos
without my fair skin bursting into flames. I didn’t stammer or clam up when he spoke to me anymore and
occasionally I even managed to eke out a return smile. I was pretty proud of myself, so when he asked me
one Friday if I was planning on going to Ashley Maxwell’s party, I had been equal parts stunned and
thrilled. A shiver of anticipation shook me to the core and I couldn’t stop myself from tumbling headfirst
into a daydream where this was the start of something more than just an exchange of pleasantries in the
hallway. It was all I could do to keep from twirling around in a circle of delight and clapping my hands like
an overeager fanatic.
It was more than he typically said to me, and he was just so engaging and likable that I replied that I
would try to be there. I didn’t want to sound overeager. When he smiled at me and said that was awesome
and we could hang out, I couldn’t stop the feeling that attending a sloppy, unsupervised high school party
seemed like the most important thing I had ever done in my short life.
My older sister, Faith, pretty and popular, fit in seamlessly to shark-infested waters that made up a
teenage social circle. She questioned me endlessly about my sudden desire to mingle with my peer group,
cautioned me that kids who were mean and unfriendly on a normal basis could be cruel and hateful when
social status and alcohol were involved—but I decided not to listen. I figured the worst thing that could
happen was that I would show up, not see Nash, or he wouldn’t see me and I could just turn around and
come back home and curl up with a book like I did most weekends. I was turning a blind eye to what I
knew was the truth, but my desire for this particular boy to see me as something more than he did was all-
consuming. It was making me ignore common sense and my own honed sense of self-protection.
I let Faith fuss over me for hours. She played with my fire-engine-red hair until it was curly and styled
pretty and feminine. I let her pick an outfit that would never make me look like a size-four cheerleader but
was fashionable and cute, and I even allowed her to slime a bunch of junk on my face that I knew would
ultimately make my skin break out even worse. The end results were actually pretty nice. I looked more put
together than I normally did. I thought I could just blend into the crowd, and really that was fine as long as
those pretty purple eyes found me. I felt more confident and secure than I could ever remember feeling
before.
Faith told me not to arrive to the party until after eleven, so I waited anxiously, fiddled with my hair,
and played through every scenario my overeager imagination could think of. Maybe he would ask me to
dance. Maybe he would lead me outside and give me my first kiss. Maybe he would tell me he could see all
the wonderful things that lurked beneath the surface and he wanted me to be his girlfriend. In hindsight, of
course, none of that was going to happen and I really didn’t
know
the kind of guy Nash really was, but still
a crush is a crush and it can run away from you pretty fast.
And so I showed up at Ashley Maxwell’s blowout party, appropriately late, armed with Faith’s mini-
makeover and a racing heart filled with anticipation.
As I walked into the house I was hit with a blast of music, and the optimism I’d felt started to waver. A