Editors’ Letter: Dispatches from the Middle

Over the years, we’ve noticed the circumstances of our lives continue to align with a formidable, gravitational force. Accustomed to blaming our shared sun sign, we greet many mornings with a swap of screenshots from popular horoscope websites and Twitter pages, highlighting whichever ones resonate our shared struggle to survive whatever we are burning through at the moment.  Our own love lives, family dramas, professional challenges, sexual tribulations, and existential yearnings so often seem to mirror the other’s, that it’s easy to forget that we are two separate people, 1,000 miles apart, clinging to different notions of what makes an ideal life. 

We’ve both struggled recently, in different ways, to push past appearances, dig deep into the gooey centers of our own messy lives, and worm our fingers through the heap until something untangles. We don’t always know what tethers us or where the pressure comes from, but in some way, all of us are tied down by the expectations we place on ourselves and the pressure to perform our own unique, perfect, selfhoods. We seek inspiration, looking at those who are more successful than us, sexier than us, calmer than us, those who “have it together,” who can hold back, show up, self-discipline, persevere, who never had to ask permission, and we ache to be this way: more like the ever-happy, talented, glorious them. These are the standards we hold ourselves to and the reasons we feel so ashamed when we let ourselves down. This, in itself, is universal. 

As for the two of us, we began 2020 both in doctoral programs, as writers, neck deep in our first forays into loving good men, both struggling with body image, self-worth, and the spiritual angst of determining what matters and what doesn’t. It can be easy to dismiss our own experiences and feelings, in their routine similarity, as less than worthy subject matters to focus on. But then, the universal question persists: what else would we talk about? 

When for years we begged every fuck, every touch, every unreciprocated orgasm, to reveal itself as a validation of worth, a reason for our perpetual aliveness; when for eons we warred with our bodies and hearts to keep from expanding, growing bigger, taking up space, resisted getting stronger, uglier, louder; and still all our bloody humanity leaked through in period stains, ruined marriages, and the trembling fear of getting older; when desperation was the only sign we were still breathing, and when for so long our biggest turn-ons included counting rope burns on our own wrists; when recently we asked ourselves what it means to be writers, or women, or feminists, if we can’t quit our whole lives, settle in the ruins of a never-taken path, raise goats, live happy, and die just because we want to; when in the end, we realized it takes a lifetime to learn that no one will ever tell us what to do inside all the healing we’ve clawed our way to—or perhaps more importantly, that no one will tell us when the healing is over; when all that is left to trust is the certainty that there is no end, no beginning, just the silly, imperfect middle; this is when we stop asking how many ugly parts of ourselves we have to show before someone else can see us. This is when we stop asking permission to be heard. 

In writing, with our aim so often focused on making the smallness of our own personal experiences ring universal (which is to say important, as if the only value of living a life at all is the shape it takes in words), it is easier to speak without asking permission first. When you know your reader and believe they will rally behind you, withhold judgment, offer loving nods of understanding in moments of struggle, and reveal their own dark dirty secrets in response, writing begins to move beyond the page—it begins to feel like being known, like speaking to someone for the first time in a native language that you’ve built in secret. It is much harder to package our grubby darlings and send them into the wild to fend for themselves under the scrutiny of peers, editors, workshop-goers, family members, and anyone else with an internet connection and pulse in the small community we count ourselves a part of. 

So as we put this issue together, we became increasingly aware of how many of you have come to trust us with your words, work, art, and selves, hoping for open mouths, loving nods, and howling reactions to all you’ve shared with us. We read your work with time and attention, in bedrooms, hotel rooms, cabins, airports, and weather patterns all over the country. Chicago, Arkansas, Memphis, Ohio, Florida, North Dakota, Minnesota, Pennsylvania—these are the places we traveled to, collectively, reading, loving, gasping at so many of the universal—and yet strikingly personal—pieces of writing and art that appear in this issue. Your work reminds us that there is nothing more grounding than the fragments of living we find in creative work produced by hungry writers and artists. 

While none of these pieces can tell us what to do when someone finally loves us back, or whether we should quit our jobs to homestead in Vermont, they do remind us how it feels to grow away from ourselves; how hope can shred us the same as violence, or forgiveness; that escape is the last choice of the underloved; why being human is never comfortable; that the greatest act of rebellion may be to simply cling to the love you have, hide it away, murder it’s adversaries, and perform for yourself a life worth living. These are the lessons this issue taught us. We hope you will join us in learning, and in continuing to claim the power you intrinsically hold—as an individual, and as a part of our community—in this blinding new decade.

Erin & Lena
Editors & Co-Founders