Giving Yourself Space to Grieve

I wish I had good news to report.

The internship didn’t work out. I’d be lying if I said I’m okay. A lot was riding on me getting that internship. If everything had gone according to plan, I would have finished that internship by the end of next year, moved to Kalamazoo to start my career and family, and everything would be peachy.

But life has its way of throwing wrenches into the best-woven plans.

It was a technicality that I even got passed over for the internship — the supervisor said she just picked the first person who applied. I would have almost rather she just told me I sucked. And because of that little technicality, I’m either going to have to leave the state (along with my wife, who will have to leave her sick mother behind), or get a local internship in hospice, which I really, really, really did not want to do. You know, with that whole “unshakeable fear of death” thing I have going on.

I know things are going to turn out for the best, that God works everything together for the good of those who love Him and all that, but right now, I just need to grieve. I need space to have emotions about all of this. I need to scream and throw things and write whiny blog posts and eat chocolate tarts about it. There’s no fault in that, right?

When I first went up to the university to sign up for my classes, I originally signed up for premed, with every intention of going to med school and becoming a doctor. It was my parents who convinced me to go to school for music therapy instead. I want to make them proud. I need to finish this degree even if it damn well kills me, and it honestly might at this point.

Maybe I should have been a cardiologist, I don’t know. All I know is that music therapy has been chasing me down my entire adult life and even if I don’t get the internship of my dreams, something else will come along. It has to. In the words of Eminem, success is my only motherfuckin’ option, failure’s not. I know I was put on this planet to heal people with my music, and I’m going to do it, one way or another. I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll fight until I physically can’t anymore.

But for now, I’m going to allow myself to be upset.

The Downfall of Dreaming

I love, love, love making vision boards. Probably too much. I wasn’t allowed to tear up my mom’s magazines, and I didn’t want to ruin mine, so I never made collages as a kid. Now that I have a digital journal and all of the internet for inspiration, with a simple copy and paste, I can make all the collages I want out of anything I want. If I can dream it, I can slap it on my vision board. I’ve even talked about the merits of making a vision board in a past post.

I think my love for vision boards stems from my love of dreaming. As an ADHD-haver, daydreaming about the future comes naturally to me. But lately, my daydreams have become day-nightmares. All I can think about is how things are probably going to go wrong eventually, no matter how hard I try to avert disaster. These anxieties range from small in the grand scheme of things (like me not getting my internship) to really fucking enormous (like “The Handmaid’s Tale” coming true and me and all my queer friends get lynched).

It’s hard for me to see a light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t a racing freight train. I want so badly to control the future, but I know it’s simply not possible. I just wish I could fast-forward and know that everything turns out the way I want it to. That I will have my successful music therapy career and happy life with my two soulmates and our child, and we will be safe from all the evils of the world.

Maybe the trick isn’t to stop dreaming altogether, but to dream a little more loosely. Instead of planning everything out meticulously, as I tend to do, maybe leave a little wiggle room for when things don’t go my way. I might not get the internship I want, but I can always apply for different ones. Perhaps I’ll have to move out of state temporarily, but I’m blessed with a wife who’s willing to travel with me and the means to do so. And even if the very worst does happen—

—well, I haven’t thought that far ahead. I guess I have to come to terms with the fact that when it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go. It’s a reality everyone has to face at some point. I don’t want to live all my life afraid what comes next, but I don’t think I’ll ever be free of the nagging fear of death until it finally comes to take me.

But as much as I want to quit ruminating on the future, I don’t ever want to quit dreaming. Because when you quit dreaming, that’s when you really start dying. I always want to strive for something more, even when I’m at a place of contentment. I never want to settle. There’s always a new mountain to climb or a new sea to sail, and I think that’s what makes the future exciting.

Dear Cadence, Part Eleven: You Will Get Hurt, and You Will Hurt Others

This is the latest installment in my memoir project, written as a series of letters to my future daughter. Here are the previous entries: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, and Part Ten

Ever since I was little, I wanted to be in a band.

It wasn’t enough to play music. I wanted a band.

I wanted the family, the ups and downs, the VH1 Behind the Music where we all talk about how much we love each other even after struggling through five overdoses and the guitarist cheating on his wife with the drummer’s wife. I wanted the full experience.

And what I got was Dethklok.

Dethklok was not the real name of this band, but to protect the identities of the innocent (and the guilty), I’ve changed all the names to the members of the protagonists of the show Metalocalypse. In fact, for this chapter and this chapter only, I am Toki Wartooth. You can imagine me with a mustache if it helps.

I met the band when I opened for them at their album release party. It was the biggest show I’d played to date, and even with just me and my acoustic guitar. I got the crowd going, rather impressing the Dethklok guys (I say guys, but there were female members. But for the sake of consistency, we were all guys.)

I played for them a second time at another venue, this one with a private green room. After my performance, they cornered me in the green room bathroom.

“We want you to join Dethklok as our second guitarist and go on tour with us,” they said — no, demanded. And who was I to refuse such an offer!

It was all rainbows and roses at the start. I befriended the other members of the band pretty quickly. There was Nathan Explosion and Skisgaar Skwigelf, the lead vocalist and guitarist, respectively, who were dating. William Murderface was the bassist, a certifiable weirdo, but a charming one. And Pickles the Drummer was just kind of…there. He had red hair.

Learning the songs was easy for me, so much so that the rest of the band was beyond impressed. To be fair, they were basic four chord pop-punk songs for the most part, save for one relatively heavy post-hardcore number where Nathan Explosion would scream and Skwisgaar and I would “chug chugga chug” on the guitar. One of these days I’ll show you one of our old songs. They were definitely songs.

The band was becoming something of a family to me. We’d eat together, play games together, and just generally do life together. And what’s more, people liked us! We had a ton of fans, something I wasn’t used to. There were fanfictions written about us, even. It was surreal.

The fall tour would be the true test of our bonds, though. And as we got ready for the first of our two regional tours, I found myself daydreaming about Murderface more and more. We were the two carnivores of the group — the rest of the band was vegan — and we both dealt with a lot of mental health issues (that we actually acknowledged, since the entire band was incredibly mentally ill and incredibly unmedicated). Was I falling for him? Fans were already shipping Toki and Murderface. Were we a match made in pop-punk heaven? We spent several nights together just hanging out and listening to John Frusciante’s solo material, and after some time, he gave me his grandmother’s ruby ring and asked if someday, I’d marry him. Lost in the fantasy, the rock and roll fairytale I was living in, I accepted.

But that first tour was an absolute whirlwind. We traveled much of the East Coast and Midwest playing tiny clubs and bars. Most of the shows weren’t that big — just a couple of local bands and us — but it was exhilarating to be able to play to new faces every night. I felt like a true rock star, even if we were sleeping in our drummer’s mom van and random people’s houses and not a luxurious tour bus. Even if we all smelled horrible by the end of the tour and we had to mask our natural musks with copious amounts of perfume and cologne. It was an adventure unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

There were arguments now and then, mostly between Nathan Explosion and Skwisgaar. A few times, I was dragged into a conflict, such as the time Skwisgaar and Pickles made me and Murderface cry for not being vegans. (They were all like “What if someone ate your dog?” And I cried, being the damn Pisces I am.) We were a tight knit group, but the threads began to unravel as the fights became more and more frequent. Suddenly, I was seeing how mentally unstable we all were, myself included. Still, these people were becoming my best friends, even more so than your mom and Aunt Mel. I trusted them with my life. It was a toxic, codependent five-way relationship.

By the time our winter tour rolled around, things came to a head. The arguments were so frequent, we were bickering more than we were talking music, or anything else for that matter. Nathan Explosion and Skwisgaar broke up, and Murderface and I were on the rocks too, as I’d recently reconnected with Jacob from earlier and I wanted things to finally go somewhere with him (spoiler alert: it went nowhere). So I was far away from home surrounded by people who all hated each other, and at our homecoming show, Skwisgaar slammed his guitar on the ground in a fit of rage. The next day, we unanimously decided to split up. It was an ugly breakup, uglier than all of my romantic breakups combined. Harsh words were spoken. Threats were made. I finally made the decision to cut them all out of my life, once and for all. And I’m so glad I did.

Healing was rough, but I managed. Your mom and Aunt Mel were the rocks I needed to lean on, and they gave me all the support I needed as I found my way again. I learned my lesson not to trust just anyone, and not to get swept off my feet by whatever shiny opportunity presents itself, because the truth is, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. People will hurt you, but the right people will own up to it. And you will hurt people too, and it’s your responsibility to own up to it as well. I got stabbed in the back by folks I considered friends, but I wasn’t innocent either. In the end, we were all very mentally ill and very unmedicated.

I’m sure you’re wondering whatever happened to Dethklok. I wondered myself, after several years had passed. So I reached out to my old bandmates to apologize for how things ended and make peace with the pas. Murderface and I became friends again through the local art scene, and Pickles went off on his own and never really spoke to me again. Nathan Explosion didn’t want anything to do with me, and in fact blocked me on all social media. I guess I don’t blame him. The funniest thing happened when I cold-messaged Skwisgaar, though.

“I wanted to apologize if I ever did anything to hurt you,” I wrote. “You were like a big brother to me.”

“You mean sister — I’m trans. And there’s no hard feelings. I know I was an ass too.”

And that, my child, is how I became friends with your Aunt Tegan. Funny how life works itself out.

Sunday Morning Coffee: Love and Fear

It’s been three days since my last argument with a Facebook asshole about LGBTQ stuff, and I’m still simmering from it. I think I let things like that affect me way more than I should. Maybe I really am a bleeding heart hippie.

Can’t we all just sing “Kum-Ba-Yah” together?

It’s not easy for me to sit back and just take it when randos are slinging homophobic/transphobic slurs, suicide jokes, and even pedophilia accusations against you and your favorite people. Why are some folks so eager to say disgusting, slanderous things about entire groups of people they don’t even know? It literally baffles me — I can’t wrap my mind around it. I wouldn’t say things remotely as heinous against strangers I simply don’t agree with. My momma raised me better than that.

I’m tempted to call these people evil, but I won’t. I will call it as I see it — their actions are evil —-but to borrow a phrase so often weaponized against the queer community, “love the sinner, hate the sin.” You see, the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s fear. And these people are lashing out like scared dogs at things they don’t understand.

The Bible itself says “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). When you don’t understand something, the human tendency is to fear it. And often, that fear becomes hate. When I was a kid, I was afraid of the dark because I didn’t know what was hiding in it. I hated being in the dark for that reason. But the dark was never bad — I just didn’t understand it.

I think these people who blindly hate those who are unlike them simply don’t know love. I understand that many people didn’t have a lot of love growing up — maybe their families were abusive, or perhaps they were bullied. That will lead to a life of fear, and a life of fear is a life of hate. The antidote is love.

Whenever I see transphobic memes online, I think of my girlfriend Olivia. I can’t wrap my mind around how anyone could possibly hate her. But they don’t know her like I know her, because to know her is to love her. I wish everyone had an Olivia to show them what love means.

So instead of letting fear win, let love in. Show love wildly, recklessly, with no remorse. Love your enemies. Love the people who persecute you. Love the people who call you names or make nasty accusations or tell you to kill yourself.

Love like Jesus did.

Confessions of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl

I was scrolling through a certain accursed social media app when once again, I saw some bullshit. Which is how most of my posts on here begin, in all fairness. I’m starting to think I just love self-sabotage.

Anyways, the incel BS of the day is this meme:

My first instinct was the kneejerk “Oh, this is some ‘girls just wanna be independent blue-haired sluts nowadays instead of perfect blonde housewives and babymakers’ trad nonsense.” That community tends to have a low opinion of blue-haired girls in particular for some reason. Probably because they’re all gay and want nothing to do with you. Kind of like a certain formerly blue-haired blogger I know.

Pictured: gay and wants nothing to do with you

But what if that’s not the intention of this meme? What if there is some valid criticism to the Ramona Flowers archetype?

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a character that appears in film and other media to shake up the life of a (usually awkward and dweeby) everyman protagonist. She’s energetic, bubbly, kind of awkward but in a more charming way than the everyman protagonist, and her entire purpose in the narrative is to get said protagonist out of his shell. You know the type. I could put a picture of Zooey Deschanel here…

…and you’d know exactly who I’m talking about.

A gajillion think pieces have been written on why the MPDG archetype is problematic. Some people say the trope is misogynistic, implying the MPDG is intended to be “not like other girls.” Others take issue with the idea that these quirky women need to “save” men in these narratives. Even the creator of the term feels the character type is shallow and cliche. But my criticism of the MPDG comes from a unique place.

Because for a long time, I was the MPDG.

I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to come of age right when the archetype was gaining steam in the cultural zeitgeist. Somehow, almost overnight, all the quirks that made me annoying or weird started coming off as oddly charming, and I had a long list of suitors all throughout college. But none of them lasted, because the very quirks that made me attractive became grating as time wore on.

It’s not my place to diagnose, but many of the MPDGs of pop culture show signs of being ADHD or autistic, like me. And while being neurodivergent is freaking awesome most of the time, it does come with its downsides, and one of those downsides is difficulty in relationships. For example, I find subtle social cues hard to decipher, and makes communication difficult sometimes. Or impulsivity, which is a huge problem for me. It’s cute when you want to go to Taco Bell in the middle of the night, but it’s way less cute when you buy a boat you can’t afford. Which is something I have done.

There’s nothing wrong with portraying neurodiverse folks as love interests in film and TV— in fact, I love to see that kind of representation!The problem occurs when you only show the rainbows and butterflies. Relationships are hard, and doubly so for those of us who are neurodivergent. We’re not cute little one-dimensional characters who exist to spice up your life. We’re real humans, with human emotions and flaws.

I know it’s a cliche to say you don’t deserve me at my best if you can’t handle me at my worst, but it’s your reality when you date a neurodivergent person. We can be great friends and even better lovers, but you have to accept all of us — not just the idealized versions you see in media.

Sunday Morning Coffee: Sometimes You Gotta Flip a Table

Welcome to my inaugural Sunday morning coffee, where I take a spiritual lesson I’m learning and share it for everyone. I’m not going to pretend I’m this enlightened guru or pastor — I’m just a random weirdo with a blog who likes to write about this kind of stuff. But I feel like I can bring an interesting perspective to the metaphorical table when it comes to scripture, spirituality, and the like, being a queer eclectic Christian married to a mostly agnostic Jewish woman.

So I was doomscrolling through my Facebook updates when I noticed a friend posted this:

I don’t even have a witty caption for this.

To say I was livid would be an understatement. My blood is still boiling as I type this, and anyone who knows me will tell you I don’t anger easily. To compare my right and my loved ones’ rights to simply exist as ourselves to the most heinous crime against humanity is fucking disgusting and nearly irredeemable in my eyes. And then I clicked on this so-called friend’s profile. He was a Christian?! This man is claiming the name of Christ while posting shit like this? Nothing short of sickening.

What does the heart of God say about anger? It’s easy to fall back on the “seven deadly sins” as a measure of what’s right and what’s wrong, and wrath is right there in that list. But anger isn’t necessarily wrath. When our rage is directed toward something totally justified, we call it righteous anger. In Matthew 21, Jesus Himself demonstrates this.

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.
Matthew 21: 12-13

Maybe we need to start flipping some tables. Maybe we need to start using this anger at how our supposed brothers and sisters in Christ are treating people and cheating people. Maybe we should be calling out posts like the one above when we see them pop up on our timelines. Silence never changed anything. Righteous anger makes us want to speak out for the oppressed and the downtrodden, the “least of these.”

I made the mistake of deleting the person who made that post, because I knew I was going to tear them a new one if I didn’t. But what I should have done was use my anger to call them out, gently but firmly. Anger when unchecked turns into wrath, and things can be said that legitimately hurt others (and hurt our own case in the process). On the other hand, righteous anger, when channeled by a spiritually mature person, can be used for good. Open discussions, engage in debates, and let people see the light of Christ through you. If you have to flip some tables, flip those tables, but remember the person behind them. They’re broken too.

The Hanged Man and The Fool

I’ve been trying to get into meditation. That’s no easy feat for me, considering my own psychiatrist admitted I had one of the worst cases of ADHD she’d even seen. But I’ve found certain tools get me into “the zone,” like breathing exercises, yoga, and my personal favorite, tarot.

Tarot is widely used for divination, which is a fancy word for telling the future. I don’t really use it for that purpose much, considering my belief that we create our own futures for the most part. Instead, I use it to gain new perspectives on problems I’m facing and focus in on what I need to work on at the time. It’s a bit like shuffling between 78 tiny therapists, each with their own wisdom, and somehow, the right ones always get pulled whenever I need them.

Usually, I only draw two or three cards, typically a “something to embrace, something to let go of.” But every now and then, I like to use a more intricate spread to really take inventory on how I’m feeling. So yesterday, I got out my gold-plated Art Nouveau cards and tried my first Celtic cross spread. The results were, well, really eerie.

What immediately struck me was the fact that there were only two major arcana cards pulled — the first and the last. The current situation, and the likely outcome. The hanged man, and the fool.

The hanged man is said to appear when you’re at a standstill. He’s literally suspended, and at the moment, I feel like my life has been suspended. As of writing, I’m still waiting to hear back about whether or not I got the internship I really wanted. Should I get it, I will be starting in February, which feels like an impossibly long time from now. Should I not get it, I’ll be back at square one with a different internship, one that will start even later into the next year. Meanwhile, all my friends are already finishing their internships and getting their degrees.

I feel like the hanged man. I feel stuck.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever make it through this program. It feels like nothing is progressing, nothing is changing. Funnily enough, the “hopes and fears” card I drew was the ten of swords, a card that symbolizes death more so than the actual death card. Which is the overarching fear, I believe. I’m gonna die before I accomplish everything I want to do, and every second that passes that I don’t have an internship is another second my eventual masters and doctoral degree.

I’d like to think there’s a silver lining, that the fool symbolizes something greater to come. The fool is said to represent new adventures, so maybe once all is said and done, I’ll get to start anew with a career in music therapy. Or maybe my new adventure is something completely different, as much as I loathe the idea that all of this was for naught.

Another one of the lessons of the hanged man is surrender, letting go and trusting that everything will work out for the best. I’ve talked a little about this recently. Well, a lot about this recently. It’s kind of the biggest thing on my mind right now. And it will be until this stupid internship is finally over.

I’m ready for the fool’s journey, whatever it may be. I’m over feeling stuck.

When Will My Life Begin?

I was a senior in high school when Tangled burst into theatres, ushering in a new generation of princesses with uncannily large eyes. Out of all the Disney royals old and new, though, Rapunzel stuck with me as the most “me” of the bunch. We were the same age, and I was significantly blonder and more optimistic at the time, to be fair.

I couldn’t recreate this photo if I tried.

Almost every Disney movie has its “I want” song, and Tangled is no exception. In “When Will My Life Begin,” Rapunzel sings of wanting more from life while performing a variety of mundane tasks. (Which is incidentally how I spend my Saturdays as well.)

How she doesn’t get paint in her hair is the real miracle.

Despite no longer being an eighteen-year-old blonde ingenue like Rapunzel, a lot of days, I still feel like her in this scene. I feel like I’m always in a hurry to reach whatever is next, like I’m never content with where I am in life. Like I’m always waiting for my life to truly begin.

When I was living in the dorms at my university, I felt like I’d be a real adult when I had my own apartment. When I didn’t drive, I felt like I’d be a real adult once I got a car. When I was single, I felt like I’d be a real adult once I had a partner I lived with, or better yet, got married. Now I feel like I’d be a real adult if only I could finish this degree and get a “big girl” job. It’s a vicious cycle of needing more and more to feel “adulty” enough. I’m gonna be a grandma and still not feel like I’ve “made it” as an adult.

In the meantime, I feel like I’m in this neverending state of limbo, caught somewhere between being a girl and a grown woman. I’m always waiting for that next step. I’m never content in whatever stage of life I’m in, which isn’t a good thing, considering the last time I was in a hurry to “grow up,” I got myself into a marriage I knew wasn’t right for me.

There’s something to be said about enjoying the life you’re living now instead of longing for the future (or the past, for that matter). Those little mundane moments will be a memory someday, and maybe you’ll miss those trips to the laundromat when you finally get a house with its own washer and dryer. Maybe you’ll miss studying for exams at your favorite coffeeshop after you graduate. With every new step in life comes more responsibilities, and I know I’ll miss the carefree days im enjoying now once I have kids, even though I want them more than anything.

There’s no such thing as “waiting” for your life to begin. It’s already happening all around you. Savor what you have now, and trust that everything will work itself out. You’ve got your entire life to grow up, so put your hands up and enjoy the ride.

In Search of the Promised Land

This weekend, I’m on a pilgrimage to a faraway land with my wife, Crass.

(Well, two hours away. Which isn’t that far away when you live in the Midwest.)

Kalamazoo, which I swear to God is the name of a real place in Michigan, has been kind to us so far. We decided to travel here for one specific reason — to daydream together about our future lives. Should everything go as planned, this will be our home in the next few years. And I mean, it’s a pretty charming place.

Kalamazoo is, among many other things, home to the only music therapy graduate program in the state. It’s also halfway between Detroit and South Bend, IN, where my girlfriend, Olivia, lives. And when we have Cadence down the road, the Kalamazoo Promise will ensure she gets a free ride to college.

I’m squirming with excitement as I write this from our hotel room. As we passed tattoo shop after tattoo shop, Crass imagined applying for an apprenticeship at one. Walking through the nature preserve in the neighboring city of Portage, we talked about how we’d take our future dog on walks there someday. (The dog would be a Shiba Inu named Sprinkles, natch.) We added so many restaurants to our list of places to try once we move out here, and every thirty seconds or so, I would point out a house — “THAT’S THE ONE!”

I think it’s important to have a healthy sense of what’s realistic when planning for the future, but I also think it’s important to leave a little room to dream. When I was in college, I used to ride my bike through the cute little apartment complex near the ugly dorms I lived in at the time. I wondered what it would be like to have a significant other I lived with in an apartment like that, and maybe a cat. I would dream about writing stuff while lounging on my “corner couch” — the word I used for “sectional” growing up, and the true marker of adult success in my developing brain.

I didn’t get to live in those apartments, but I live somewhere even nicer now, with a cat and my wife. I get to write a personal blog that seems to have a small but dedicated following, which absolutely blows my mind. And not only do I have a corner couch, but we’re planning on getting an even nicer corner couch once we move.

Did I manifest this stuff by dreaming about it hard enough? I don’t know. I’ve been reading a lot about the law of attraction and how you can manifest the things you want through positive thinking. Do I necessarily believe it? I don’t know yet. But I do know thinking positively is way better than wallowing in doubt and self-pity. Maybe there is something valuable in the act of allowing yourself to dream a little.

I pray we end up here in the next few years, but if we don’t, for whatever reason, I know God and the universe will work things out for the best. Being here, though, it honestly feels like we’re dipping our toe into the rest of our lives. I’ve got such a good feeling from this little town with a silly name.

Here’s to you, Kalamazoo.

Dear Cadence, Part Eight: Just Because It Doesn’t Last, Doesn’t Mean It’s Not Special

I promise this will be the last lovey dovey chapter for a while. And this one — well, this one was different.

I still remember his full name. Jacob Liepshutz. Pronounced “lip-shuts,” not “lip-shits,” but get the giggles out now. He was short, about my height, with a bit of a squeaky voice and tufts of curly dark hair, and with these deep brown eyes that could see your soul. He was the typical nice Jewish boy you’d see in rom coms, the kind you would be happy to take home to your mama, with one important distinction.

He could fucking shred.

The band was called Smiles & Anchors, and their signature song was called “Shark Week.” It was a standard issue metalcore song for the most part, save for the very end, when Jacob would launch into the most captivating, triumphant guitar solo I’d ever heard in my eighteen-or-so years of life. And that’s when he won me over.

It wasn’t a crush I realized I held until the night I stayed with his family in West Bloomfield after a show. We had become decent enough friends for him to have offered to drive me out to see them in a town that was the opposite direction of where I was living. I felt bad for putting him through all the trouble, but he was happy to take me. By the time the bands had all played and he’d finished packing up his gear, it was far too late to make the trek to the other side of the Metro Detroit area. So I crashed with him for the night.

I stayed on the couch in the basement, and about ten minutes into me lying down, Jacob snuck into the room with me.

“Is it okay if I lie down with you?” he asked softly.

I knew what was going to happen if I said yes, but I did anyway. And I never regretted it.

The next morning, he drove me back to my little college town, and I still remember him playing “Shiksa (Girlfriend)” by Say Anything. “I have a girlfriend now, no way, no how,” the song sang as we rolled down the highway, me wrapped in his old varsity jacket. I never felt this kind of…was it love? I couldn’t figure it out. All I know is that entire day, as I went through the motions of my music therapy classes, I still felt his touch on my skin, and every time, I’d get shivers.

For that month, September, we were inseparable. Any chance we both had to be together, we were. I remember the night of Rosh Hashanah, lying on the beanbag chairs in my dorm, studying the freckles in his eyes as if there’d be a test. I remember meeting his parents and his little siblings and how kind they were to me. I remember him taking me to his old high school and showing me around the band room, where he’d spent so much of his time. I told him about how I played in my high school band and how I desperately wanted to make it in music as well.

One night, we sat in a parking lot while listening to the acoustic work of Buckethead, one of his favorite guitarists.

“I have a band too,” I said. “Well, a project. It’s called Wake Up Jamie.”

“Who’s Jamie?”

“Nobody,” I laughed. “It was a misheard lyric from a song I used to like. Where did Smiles & Anchors come from?”

His calloused fingertips interlaced with my own. “I make music because I want to see people smile. I don’t do it for myself. And what you’re doing with music therapy…that’s so admirable to me.”

I breathed a soft “thank you” and leaned into him. Asteroids could have decimated the planet in that very moment and I would have died happy.

Then, one day, it just…stopped. I stopped getting cute texts from him. He didn’t seem to want to hang out. I went to a Halloween show, and he barely acknowledged me. It was like a switch flipped. I was devestated.

It wasn’t until years later that I found out he’d been struggling with depression, much the same as I had been, and just kind of…fell off. He never meant to hurt me. In fact, he didn’t realize I felt so deeply about him. He went on to join another band and sign with a fairly major label, and I went on with my own life. We did eventually reconnect and casually dated again for a week or so, but nothing ever came of it. I was still heartbroken, but by that time, I had a million other things to be heartbroken about as well, like the breakup of my first official band, Dethklok (it’ll make sense later). I had to accept the hard truth that maybe Jacob Liepshutz wasn’t my soulmate after all.

Even still, I have an anchor tattooed on my foot in honor of that time in my life — not symbolizing Jacob himself, but what he taught me about music and about life. Music is great when you make it for yourself, but it becomes beautiful when you release it out into the world and let it affect the people around you. The anchor is a symbol to me to stay humble and remember why I picked up the noble art of music in the first place. Music is how I have always connected with people, and if I can use it to bring a little light into the lives of others, I’ll be happy. Jacob reminded me of that, and for this reason, he’ll always be a part of me.

Sometimes, the relationships you have aren’t meant to last forever, but they existed in that brief glimmer of life to teach you something valuable. And to me, that makes it all worth it.