Grace Culture: Why Cancel Culture Needs to Go

Everyone sucks. It’s a pretty well-established fact of life. I suck. You suck. Your mom sucks. Hilary Clinton sucks. Donald Trump sucks. The Queen of England sucked. Name your favourite or least favourite person alive, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that they definitely suck. The very first thing we learn to do upon exiting the womb is suck (in a literal sense, but also in a figurative sense). It’s in our human nature.

There’s an entire tirade in the Bible about this, actually. It’s particularly referring to the Jewish and Greek folks who would have engaged with this writing at the time, but you could swap in any ol’ demographic and get the same idea. Black or white, cis or trans, Christian or atheist, and anyone and everyone else. We. All. Suck.

“None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
Romans 3:11-12

Recently, I’ve learned a lot of my favourite creators suck, too. And I’m not talking incredibly famous people, but people who are just like me, people who create and share things. These people are musicians and bloggers and writers who just so happened to reach the right amount of people to “make it,” whatever that even looks like. But the point is, I could be any one of them.

It’s exciting. It’s humbling. It’s scary.

One of my favourite YouTubers is apparently a nightmare to work with. Another took a picture with all her friends — who just so happened to be skinny, white-passing, and attractive by our narrow Euro-centric beauty conventions — and spun the post as body positivity. One of my favourite podcasts of all time got derailed because…I’m still not entirely sure. Stevie Nicks’ landmark song has a title that’s quite literally a racial slur. And I could list every infraction ever committed by my favourite guitarists, from John Mayer’s general fuckery to how Richie Sambora drove drunk with his daughter in the car. Even my beloved Chili Peppers aren’t innocent, sexually assaulting a fan in the early 90s and citing a porn star who was literally underage at the time she was active in the industry as a muse.

I’ve always wanted to be famous, ever since I was little and ran onstage at some show because I was mad the actresses were getting attention instead of me. I used to daydream at great length about becoming a rock star, crafting entire scenarios in my head about what my life and career would be like. I imagined the inevitable biopic that would be made about me, my internal dialogue becoming a narration of the story of my life from the perspective of someone who thought I was cool enough to make a movie about.

But at the same time, I don’t know if I can handle being famous. And that’s simply because I suck. Certainly not as much as some of the creators I mentioned above, but I still suck. I’ve said and done things I regret a lot, and I’m just lucky that I wasn’t in the spotlight at the time. Because I honestly don’t know if I could handle the criticism, even if it was justified. Especially if it was justified. I hate the feeling of being wrong, almost as much as I hate the idea of ever hurting anyone.

As a creator of any type, there’s so much pressure to be perfect, not just looks-wise but as a person as well. We need to be a role model. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think creators should strive to be positive influences for their fans, and I think creators should be held accountable when they inevitably fuck up. Some of those things might be unforgivable. Should the allegations against Michael Jackson be true, for example, we definitely need to stop holding him up as an idol. Should we stop listening to his music? I think that’s an even more complicated issue that I’ll probably address in a future post. But for relatively benign “maybe I didn’t realise this was racist at the time but now I know better” kinds of problematic behaviour, I think we need more space for grace. Because God knows I’ll need it.

I want so badly to make waves as a musician or writer, but sometimes I find myself paralysed by the pressure to be above reproach in all things. What if something I posted ten years ago on Facebook resurfaces and shows me as a total asshole now? You have to put yourself out there to get any ounce of fame, but in the process, you open yourself up to so much scrutiny. And sometimes I wonder if I could handle that. I cry if someone looks at me funny (I describe myself as “the stereotypical Pisces” for good reason). I think I could handle the press or some anonymous Twitter denizen calling me ugly or untalented. But if someone attacked my character, something I take more seriously than my looks or even my art, I’d probably lose it.

I hate the term “cancel culture” because of its association with the anti-“woke” (read: anti-any media that’s not cishet white male) rhetoric, but I think it’s time we cancel cancel culture to an extent. Rather, we need a grace culture, one where people are free to fuck up and be able to redeem themselves. We need to have open conversations with each other about why we suck and how we can suck less in a way that’s not defensive or vilifying. We need to be open to learning from one another.

Think of the Children! (An Easter Manifesto)

I originally posted this on my Facebook and Instagram pages (@thejessajoyce, if you’re curious), but I wanted to share this brief little write-up here as well. It’s so important to get this message out there since more often than not, the theoretical future of society and the fight to better it is co-opted by straight, cis, white, non-disabled people in an effort to tear down people who are not like them. I want to present a counter-argument. If all lives truly matter, as many on the political right say, and we must “think of the children,” my future children should be considered as well. There is room for everyone at the table of life, and we need to remember that this Easter.

Reading this book (Feminist Queer Crip by Alison Kafer) at the suggestion of one of my favorite professors for my capstone project on autism, and it feels especially poignant in the days of #blacklivesmatter and #SaveTheChildren and #autismawarenessmonth and the recent fight against drag and transgender rights. The first chapter talks a lot about the Child — the personification of the future of society — who is often politicized and weaponized. Think of the children, people say. The image of the Child is more often than not a white cishet non-disabled child born to white cishet non-disabled parents. This Child absolutely matters. But I’m not interested in fighting for him, not because I don’t care about him, but because he already has enough people fighting for his right to exist in peace. Instead, I want to fight for my children.

In a few short years, I’ll likely have a child of my own. That child will likely have a disability of some sort, or rather, a difference that makes it harder to exist in a world that isn’t built for her. Considering my family history, she’ll likely be autistic or ADHD. Depending on our donor, she will likely be at least part black, and she’ll have queer parents who will support her should she eventually come to terms with her own queerness. And guess what? Her life will matter too. She should have a right to exist in peace alongside the theoretical Child described above. I want her to have a future too.

That’s why it’s so important to keep fighting for equality. I feel like it’s important to note that it’s Easter Sunday as I post this. I am a Christian through and through, despite the fact that I don’t “fit” the American Evangelical mold, and I firmly believe that Christ died for EVERYONE. Not just white Americans or straight people or cisgender people or able-bodied and able-minded people. We are all wonderfully made and we all should have a right to inhabit this beautiful planet. This post is a call to prayer and more importantly, a call to action. We need to be a light to this sometimes dark and scary world. We need to keep fighting the good fight.

To a Much Older Me

Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.

Dear Jess,

You’re 100. At least, hopefully you live that long. Or rather, we live that long. I’m you, only 30! Remember those days? When we were living in Clawson with Krubby, who is now probably a faded tattoo on your saggy thigh skin. When our parents were alive and you had Crass and Livvy and so many friends who are probably all gone now. God, I’m making myself cry just writing this. But I’m slowly learning that nothing lasts forever except love, and it’s better to have loved someone and lost them than to have never loved at all. It’s a hard truth to swallow, but I’m coming to terms with it.

I don’t know exactly what to say to a 100-year-old me, except that I hope we accomplished everything we set out to do. I hope we got to start that family and get those degrees and write the songs that changed the world. I hope when we’re gone, our legacy lingers long afterward. I hope you never lost your childlike wonder and big dreams, even after shouldering the weight of a century of life. I hope you still have imaginary friends who live in the universes you created in your head. I hope you finally got that “Dr.” in front of your name, which is definitely still Salisbury (we’re not making that mistake again). I hope you dyed your white hair pink and wear all the tattoos of memories we made with pride.

I hope you can look back and be proud of me.

It hasn’t been an easy journey, making it to 30 years, and I’m sure it hasn’t been easy making it to 100. I know so much has changed — change is the only certainty in life. But we’re strong enough and brave enough to weather whatever storm we may face. We made it through mental illness, betrayal, loss, regret, and more hurt than one should have to bear, and yet, we’re still here. We made it. Hell, at the time of writing this, I’m staring down the music therapy degree we’ve been working toward for twelve years. I did that. You did that. And who knows what else you’ve accomplished in the time since I wrote this little post!

Maybe you’re reading this from a nursing home, where you’re definitely the little old lady everyone wants to befriend. Or maybe you have that lake house you’ve always wished for, and you spend long evenings looking out on the water reminiscing with Cadence about all our adventures when she was little. Maybe global warming made the planet uninhabitable and we’re like, on the moon or dead or something. There’s no way to know for sure, and that’s both the scary and exciting part. I don’t know how the story ends, but as long as you lived your life to the fullest, I know it will be a happy ending.

There will only ever be one Jessica Joyce Salisbury, and as her story comes to an end, rest easy knowing that she’s content with the way it was written. Relish that feeling of completion.

May the rest of your days be filled with joy and happiness.

Love always,

Jess

Even If It Kills Me

TW: sexual assault

I write this from my hotel room at GLR, the annual music therapy conference for the Midwest-based students, practitioners, and academics. It’s hard to believe the last time I was at GLR, I was still legally married to my ex and COVID hadn’t yet happened.

So much has changed.

The last GLR I attended was in Cincinnati. I remember all too well. You might remember too, if you remember this post (HUGE FUCKING TRIGGER WARNING ON THAT ONE). That was the year my dream of becoming a music therapist was stolen from me, when the aftermath of the rape I experienced on that trip tainted the very field I longed to be part of. Suddenly, everything related to music therapy reminded me of the person who violated me. My mental health got worse. I started drinking heavily. Soon, I wasn’t able to keep up with the coursework, and I dropped all my classes.

I’d already left the music therapy program once, due to my mental health, but this seemed insurmountable. And reentering the program after that felt like pushing a boulder up a mountain with a toothpick. I’d already given up twice. Surely I was too damaged to ever be a real music therapist.

But I’m here. I’m still here.

As of writing this, I’m not only at the conference, but I’m gearing up for the prestigious Undergraduate Symposium, where I’ll be giving a presentation on music therapy and autism. All of my current grades are, by some miracle of God, in the A range. I’m meeting with my professor to discuss internships in a week, and I won a research fellowship that paid for my entire senior year, and then some.

It doesn’t seem real. I shouldn’t be here, but I am. And I owe it all to the people who have helped me through recovery — my wife, my family, my professors. And to myself. I fought like hell to get to a place where I’m staring down graduation at last, where I’m finally on the cusp of claiming the title of MT-BC for myself.

This GLR feels almost poetic. I’m back at a hotel not unlike the one I was assaulted at, but I feel safe. I feel whole. Everything has come full circle, and my dream of becoming a music therapist feels not only within reach, but no longer tainted by the hands that hurt me. I’m not going to let trauma steal the very reason I was put on this planet — to heal through music. I am not too damaged.

On my 30th birthday a few weeks back, dad said something that made me tear up a little. When he briefly died on the operating table after a massive heart attack, he said my then-very-young niece appeared to him and said he couldn’t die yet. But he finally told me the rest of the story.

She said he couldn’t die because he had to see me graduate.

I’m not turning back because this time, it’s personal. I love my dad — and myself — more than I hate my rapist. I’m going to get this degree and this certification in spite of everything. In the words of Motion City Soundtrack, I so wanna get back on track. I’ll do whatever it takes.

Even if it kills me.

This Shit is Not Okay

I don’t even have a witty title for this. I’m so fucking beyond done with the alt-right, conservative Christendom, and their stranglehold on American politics. I don’t like getting political on here — I’d rather write about music and life hacks and inspiring things — but I can’t be silent about this shit.

There are calls to eradicate trans people. I wish I was exaggerating, but let’s hear the actual words of Michael Knowles, who spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday.

“For the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.”

Oh, he can’t literally mean that, right? He just wants to ban drag shows. Never mind that the child beauty pageant world is a helluva lot more exploitative (and full of…dare I say…groomers). Or that more priests have molested children than drag queens. Masculine bodies in dresses are so scary, though.

That’s not what this fuckwad is talking about, though. Let him clarify.

“I called to ban transgenderism entirely … They said that I was calling for the extermination of transgender people. They said I was calling for a genocide … One, I don’t know how you could have a genocide of transgender people because genocide refers to genes, it refers to genetics, it refers to biology.”

So it’s not a genocide…because you’re not trying to eliminate a particular gene? But you’re cool with literally erasing an entire group of people? That’s not the part you want to backtrack on? Let’s hear more from this wadded up Subway napkin of a human being.

“Nobody is calling to exterminate anybody, because the other problem with that statement is that transgender people is not a real ontological category — it’s not a legitimate category of being. There are people who think that they are the wrong sex, but they are mistaken. They’re laboring under a delusion. And so we need to correct that delusion.”

And so we need to correct that delusion. Do tell, how do you plan on correcting that delusion? Surely it’s not through conversion therapy, which is proven to be ineffective and harmful. What’s the other option, die? Because it’s starting to seem like that’s what you want. I’m not even going to link to the nasty transphobic shit I’ve seen on the internet. I’d rather not dignify the shitstains who comment “41 percent” on pictures of trans folks just living their lives. But it’s obvious. If they can’t shut the fuck up and live their lives as their assigned gender, you want them dead.

You might say I don’t have a horse in this race. I’m not trans. I’m a cisgender woman. And yet somehow, the majority of the people I associate with are trans. My girlfriend is a trans woman. My three closest friends are trans women. My spiritual mentor is a trans woman. And when you talk shit about hurting them, you hurt me. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you. I’m just some chick with a blog, whatever. But you don’t know which of your loved ones could still be in the closet. You don’t know if your kid or parent or sibling or best friend has been struggling with their gender identity, and why would they let you in on that information if they were? You’re an asshole.

I wish I could humanize trans people in a way that would make their lives matter to you. I wish you could hear Tegan’s obnoxious laugh, or experience Pippa’s warm hugs. I wish you could feel the way Livvy makes me feel when her hand is in mine. I wish you would realize that these people are just like you. They have dreams and unique talents and personalities. They’re not some boogeyman trying to sneak into your daughter’s locker room or beat her swimming record. (And God knows no one would intentionally be in women’s sports, which are notoriously underpublicized and underfunded.)

I don’t even know how to end this. I’m just tired. I’m tired of folks not caring that literal genocidal rhetoric is being spewed by the people in power. I’m tired of worrying about my loved ones becoming victims of hate crimes. I’m tired of this shit being normalized. I’m so, so fucking tired.

What I’m Leaving Behind in My Twenties

Well, today’s the day. I made it to thirty, an age I never imagined being as a kid. Mind you, I imagined being twenty-something and hot, and seventy-something and adorable, but thirty is such a weird in-between age. Too old to be cute in a childlike way, yet too young to be cute in a little old lady way. Thirty isn’t exactly an age you fantasize about being. When you think thirty, you think adult responsibilities and bills and oh God my biological clock is ticking and I still don’t have kids yet and holy shit is that a gray hair?!

…I say as if I’m not going to do something like *this* when I go gray.

But I’m kind of excited to turn thirty, to be honest. I’ve made my peace with getting older (mostly) and realized there are a lot of aspects of being young I’m ready to leave behind. Like I’ve said before, your twenties are kind of your free trial run of adulthood, your first playthrough on easy mode, where people still give you plenty of grace if you eff it up at first. But at thirty, the training wheels come off. You become a full-fledged person, and while that can be scary, it comes with some perks.

Here’s what I’m ready to leave in my twenties.

1. Irresponsibility

My twenties were marked by frivolous spending. Like, I impulse-bought a boat (which my first boyfriend hilariously predicted I would do someday). And I had to impulse-leave that boat by a dumpster with a “free – take me!” sign taped to it when we moved away from the lake. I rode that boat one magical time with my girlfriend when she came to visit—and never, ever again. That one boat ride basically costed me $500.

There were plenty of other things I impulse bought because it looked so cool in the Instagram advertisement. Like the two exercise machines I barely touched before realizing I can’t work out unless I’m at a gym with no distractions. If there is a couch available to nap on, lizard brain always picks couch. And don’t even get me started on clothes and makeup.

Cody, my financial advisor, gave me a stern talking to earlier. See, when we first starting working with him, he asked me and my wife our “whys” — why do we want to get out of debt and build our savings? My reason was simple. I wanted to start a family someday.

Of course, Cody took one look at my spending habits recently and said something that shook me.

“Do you actually want to start a family? Because you’re spending like your don’t actually want to.”

And it hit me. I haven’t been spending with the future in mind. Every time I buy some bullshit, I’m taking away from my future daughter’s college fund. Every Tim Horton’s donut I buy could have gone toward a new dance uniform for her instead. Or I could have used the money to help start my private music therapy practice, or buy a cute home on a big plot of land. I’m not a huge fan of my old pastor’s theology, but I will admit he had some good adages I still abide by to this day. One thing he’d always say was “What you spend your money on shows what you really care about.” And I think there’s a lot of truth to that. I don’t spend like I love my future daughter. I spend like I love material things more than her.

So I think this kind of frivolous spending is best left in my twenties.

2. Sloppiness

I have to admit, I never saw the point of making my bed. Like, you’re just going to get it all messed up again the next time you sleep, right? And still, nothing feels better than pulling down the sheets of a freshly made bed in preparation for a long night of slumber.

Imagine if we had the attitude I had about making my bed about everything. What if I never brushed my teeth because they’re just going to get gross again next time I eat something? My teeth would end up rotting out of my face! Brushing your teeth is an act of self-care, and so is keeping house.

A book I read recently, How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis, invited the reader to reframe daily chores as self-care tasks, rather than a duty that needs to be fulfilled for the sake of being fulfilled. We do these things because we deserve to have a clean, inviting home. We owe it to ourselves.

I recently got into the habit of putting away clothes after I launder them. It sounds like such a little thing to be proud of, but I am. I love walking into my bedroom and being able to make it to my bed without tripping over a pile of leggings. I love how it looks, being able to see the floor again. I feel at home in my home. What a freakin’ concept.

Sometimes, the change is as easy as making sure you have the right tools to clean with. I stocked up on some all-natural cleaners that smell nice and come in pretty bottles, and weirdly enough, that makes me want to do more around the house. It’s all about tricking lizard brain into doing what I want it to do, and turns out lizard brain likes shiny things that smell good.

This guy has an unsettling amount of influence over me.

In your twenties, everyone sucks, so you don’t go to other people’s houses expecting things to be perfectly in place and meticulously cleaned. But once you turn thirty, there’s this expectation that you’ll stop being a goblin and start keeping your home like a person. When I was younger, I’d probably say “Well, expectations are stupid anyways” and go back to living in squalor. But cleaning really is an act of self-care. It’s deciding you’re worthy of having a clean, habitable environment that reflects who you are, and gifting that to yourself.

3. Unhealthy Habits

I wish I remembered most of my twenties, but I spent a good deal of it drunk. Of course.

I didn’t have a drink until I was twenty, and I barely drank until I was legal, but after my 21st birthday, all hell broke loose. With the exception of the time I was briefly married to a very conservative, very Christian guy who’d never touched alcohol in his life, I spent the majority of my twenties with a drink in hand. Life was just hopping from one excuse to get trashed to the next.

I wasted a lot of time being wasted. I thought being intoxicated helped me be more creative, but it actually stifled me. I wasn’t writing or doing much of anything productive while drinking. I’d go to shows my own band was playing and get blackout drunk, looking like a fool at a time when I should have maintained a sense of professionalism.

As of writing, I’ve been sober about a year. Wild, I know. See, I’ve found healthier alternatives to alcohol to fill the hole in my heart. Like, did you know there are companies that make nonalcoholic beer? It tastes exactly the same! And I can be a snob about it — “Oh, just give me the Heineken 0.0”

“I try not to poison my body with that alcoholic shit, thanks.”

Snobbery is a kind of underrated motivator, and one of the reasons behind another life change I want to take into the next phase of my existence. I’ve started working out every weekday morning, no exceptions. This is partially because I have to take my wife to her gym job at the buttcrack of dawn, but it’s a good excuse to get moving. I love being one of those motivational assholes who are like “Ah yes, I get up at 5 am every day to do 45 minutes of cardio before work. It keeps me grounded.”

I’ll admit there are some areas of my life I have yet to earn bragging rights for. Like, my eating habits are still abysmal. But that’s the thing about progress. If you don’t have something you’re constantly working toward, you might as well be on your deathbed. Constantly aiming toward new highs is what keeps you young. And as hard as it is to say goodbye to young adulthood, I know it’s not the end of the journey. I have a good 30 more years at least — and that’s a conservative estimate. If I have my way, I’ll be around twice as long as that.

But even if I do make it to 90, as long as I still have dreams and ambitions and goals, I’ll never truly be “grown up.”

Cyrus vs. Shapiro (and Why I Actually Find Myself Siding With Benny This Time)

Ah, Ben Shapiro. Enemy of wet pussies everywhere. Surely you’ve heard of him. When he’s not busy clearly not getting his wife off, he’s writing some astute observation on popular culture and denouncing how “woke” we’ve become as a society. And by woke, he means committing the heinous crime of, uh, acknowledging queer people exist. As if we have some kind of big gay agenda.

The real gay agenda is just a planner with every day labelled “nap cutely with girlfriend” in purple sparkly gel pen.

While I typically do not ascribe to his politics, they say a stopped clock is right twice a day. Here’s one such example:

Although “calling out literal Nazism” is such a low bar, it might as well be a honky tonk in hell.

And here’s the other:

If you didn’t catch the reference, he’s critiquing “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus, which is a veritable bop. Now typically, in a Cyrus vs. Shapiro battle, I’d be firmly on the side of Miley. I love Miley. And why wouldn’t I? She’s a raspy-voiced pansexual icon who can write a decent song. She’s basically me if I were way cooler.

And I would 100 percent wear this outfit.

But I think there’s some truth to what Shapiro is saying, as much as typing that makes me want to rip off my head with my bare hands and hurl it from the nearest window. I think there’s a serious toxic independence problem among young left-wing folks like me. Let me explain.

For a long time, people like me who were assigned female at birth had a single expectation in life — get married and start a family. We were essentially forced into being wives and mothers throughout most of history. Thankfully, the tide has turned and women are allowed to follow their passions outside of the home. We’re no longer limited by societal expectations.

But in freeing ourselves from the historical pressure to marry and reproduce, we’ve lost sight of the importance of love and family. Now I’m not talking about the traditional nuclear family of one man, one woman, two and a half kids, and maybe a dog. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and maybe blood isn’t what ties you to your loved ones. But in our effort to eschew these norms, I feel like we’ve swung too far to the other side, where we feel like we don’t need anyone anymore. And that’s such a lonely life to live.

Personally, I love being married. I love the idea of having children someday. I love the idea of raising them alongside the people I care about most, my chosen family (cue Rina Sawayama — again). And yet, a lot of folks my age will never get to experience that kind of unconditional love. They’ll mindlessly bounce from one shallow friendship or fling to another. I don’t think it’s healthy to live like that.

Maybe “family” is a dirty word to a lot of young queer and progressive-minded people. Our blood families may have disowned us for our beliefs or identities. But we’re adults now, and this is our chance to take back what should have been our birthright — a family who loves us relentlessly and unconditionally. The concept of family isn’t a liberal vs. conservative thing. It’s a human right.

I’m not saying I don’t get Miley’s side of the story either. Breakups suck, and one of the most cathartic things you can do is write a song about it (something I obviously know nothing about). But after your tears have dried, dust yourself off, get back out there, and love again. Go meet your future spouse(s), best friends, chosen family. Don’t let getting hurt keep you from the beauty that is having meaningful relationships. Let me say that again, in fancy letters:

Don’t let getting hurt keep you from the beauty that is having meaningful relationships.

As human beings, we were made to love. We’re not lone hunters. We are like lions, and we need the support of our pride to live the most fulfilling lives. Sure, Shapiro went on a bit of a tangent that’s not entirely related to Miley’s song (which is mostly just a fluffy heartbreak song, to be honest), but I think he has a valid point, as much as it pains me to admit it.

(The bass in “Flowers” still slaps, though.)

Pieces of Myself: Learning to Love Past-Jess

Full disclosure: I started using the good ol’ Mary Joanna to help me sleep at night. Yeah yeah, I know that technically means I’m not sober by the broadest definition of the term, despite being alcohol-free for about a year new (hell yeah). But I use it medicinally to help with my constant waking up in the middle of the night, and honestly, it does help me get a more restful sleep

Sometimes after I smoke, I don’t immediately fall asleep, and when that happens, I either get horny, paranoid, or philosophical. It’s kind of a crapshoot every time which of my high personalities shows up. It’s usually the one I don’t want at the time, which means using it as an aphrodisiac is a gamble.

“Jess, this is *not* the time to ramble about how we’re living in a simulation.”

Last night, though, I had a strange experience. My wife was giving me a pep talk regarding my mental health, which has been pretty bad as of late. Nothing concerning, just the usual “What if life is meaningless and everything I do will eventually be forgotten?” Which is pretty heavy stuff to think about literally every second of the day, and I’ve been in this mindset for most of my life. Yay, anxiety!

But, in my high, pseudo-intellectual stupor, something my wife said really itched a part of me I didn’t know I needed to reach — the past Jesses (is that the proper plural of Jess?).

I haven’t been nice to past me. Not any of them. I tend to think of my past selves as different people, instead of a cohesive part of who I became. I look at Child Jess through my adult eyes and judge her unfairly for being, well, an outcast. A pariah. The weird autistic little girl who stims by spinning around in the back of the classroom and making bird sounds. I get mad at my younger self for having the nerve to not fit in and be popular. And as my wife said, that little girl is a part of me still, and every time I resent my childhood eccentricities, I bully her the same way I was bullied by other people.

Then I think of College Jess. The me who was skinny and outgoing and optimistic and popular and excelled at school despite barely trying. Although she’s a part of me as well, I resent her for being all the things I wish I was now. I’m jealous of a past version of me! It makes no sense when I really think about it — at that time, my mental illnesses were worse than they’d ever been before, and I’d sooner saw off my own pinky toe with a nail file before I’d willingly deal with my OCD at its worst again. But I only see this rose-tinted version of the past, with this girl who is infuriatingly everything I want to be. Everything I was.

The thing is, these aren’t two different people. They’re all me, and they’ve taken me to where I am now. And honestly, where I am now isn’t that bad. I have a wife and a girlfriend I love dearly (that poly life, I’m tellin’ ya). I’m back in school for music therapy, and I’m closer than ever to getting this degree. I even won a scholarship for it! I’m about to be debt-free, and I’m working on getting back in shape. And despite my depression being ever-present, my mental health has never been better. Everything is falling into place for once, and I owe it all to my past selves for bringing me to this place. I started thinking of these past selves as an Inside Out-type of inner council that influences my day to day decisions and emotions.

It’s going to be a process, but I’ve started making peace with my past. I want to continue to honor and integrate these past versions of Jess into myself as a whole. Writing this out was my first step in healing these broken pieces of me. If your brain works at all like mine, I hope this little blog post helps you, too.

Two Girls, One Objective Truth

I want to start this blog post with a song. This is the musical episode.

It’s a beautiful piano piece, and one I happen to really like. It’s a simple, melodic piano composition titled “Lover’s Theme,” penned by a contemporary French composer, Hervé Roy (1943-2009). Take a moment. Close your eyes and let your mind wander. What mental images come to mind when listening to this piece?

I’ve been studying music therapy research methods and philosophies. Or rather, my program is making me study music therapy research methods and philosophies, but I’m a big enough nerd-in-an-unfun-way that I probably would study this topic unprovoked.

In formulating our capstone project, we’ve been asked to self-assess and analyze our ways of thinking when it comes to this stuff. See, there’s several schools of thought in music therapy research, but two stood out to me as polar opposites — positivism and constructivism. Positivism is essentially the belief that there is an absolute truth that can be measured, while constructivism tends to believe that many things can be true at once and often depends on a person’s lived experience. Neither of these ways of thinking are superior, but it helps to know which side of the coin you’re on before embarking in a research activity.

Most of my classmates leaned toward constructivism. Me? I was the weirdo positivist.

Maybe it’s because I come from an evangelical background that always preached that there was the way, the truth, and the life, and that was Jesus, and there was absolutely no other way to God, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m autistic and tend to think more literally than a lot of people. I like facts, and proof, and facts that I can prove in some quantitative way.

Maybe there’s more than one answer to the big questions of the universe, but one thing has to be truer than everything else, right?

I really want to think I could play a song like the one above and everyone would have a universal and measurable experience. Like, the sound of a pretty piano piece increases serotonin in the brain by an average of 45 percent in all subjects of the study.

Unfortunately, serotonin is not the bodily fluid most associated with that piece.

You see, several years ago, a video went viral on ye olde interwebs. An absolutely putrid, disgusting video of two women enjoying each other’s…company. I’m not going to name it here, but if you haven’t gleaned what video it is by now, congratulations! You haven’t been corrupted by the internet!

This bowl of ice cream has no relevance to this post. Carry on.

Unfortunately (and probably to the chagrin of Mr. Roy), the piano piece you just heard was used as background music for the aforementioned shock video. So if you’re like me and had sadistic friends, you were probably tricked into watching this monstrosity. And chances are, you were traumatized.

You see, positivism doesn’t account for people’s unique experiences. If you’ve never heard the song in the context of that video, you’d probably have a very different reaction than someone who has. This is why learning to see things from other perspectives and accepting that there’s no one “correct” perspective is so important in music therapy. Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A song might evoke a positive emotion for you, but to someone else, that song was performed by their abuser’s favorite band. Or perhaps someone in that band was an abuser: I can’t listen to Brand New or All Time Low the same way anymore, which means half of the music I liked in high school is ruined forever. Thankfully I’ve still got Jimmy Eat World.

I never got why music therapy, especially certain listening experiences, were contraindicated for particular patients. Music evokes a lot of emotions, and they’re not always positive. That’s the danger of a strictly positivist philosophy. Emotion is not easy to quantify, and it’s even more difficult to predict.

My perspectives are changing all the time, and the older I get, the more I’m realizing that everyone has a different version of reality. Maybe humans are more complicated than can be described with numbers. Maybe I need to learn to be okay with that. I always sought solace in certainty, in knowing there was an answer. Perhaps no one can know the answers, because there are none. Or conversely, there’s a zillion correct answers.

I may never know for sure, and I need to accept that.

In Search of the “Genesis Week” and the Innately Human Act of Creation

If you didn’t grow up in the church, the idea of a “Genesis week” is probably foreign to you. If you did grow up in the church, you probably heard it told a zillion times in Sunday school, but maybe never heard it phrased that way. Basically, it’s the creation story of the Abrahamic faiths — God spoke, and in seven days, the universe was formed.

These days, in my post-evangelical philosophy, I don’t believe the world was formed in seven 24-hour days, but over several eras, in accordance to what we now know from scientific discoveries. This ideology is known as old-earth creationism, and seeks to reconcile the concepts of evolution and the text of the holy scriptures. In fact, the Hebrew word for “day,” yom, can mean a period of time, not just 24-hours, which implies the creation “week” was actually millions upon billions of years.

This is tangentially related to the topic at hand, kind of (I hope).

I’ve been a little creatively stifled as of late, mostly owing to my own dumb brain. I’ve been meaning to post the entire first part of my story (not just the intro), but I keep chickening out and not doing it. At the same time, my band is in the midst of recording its debut album, and of course, that’s progressing at a snail’s pace too. I want to write and play music and draw and dance and do all of the things that have been on my heart, but I just can’t seem to shake this mental block.

I revisited Psalm 51, the emo poetry King David wrote after being called out by the prophet Nathan for thinking with his dick. (I need to be a biblical scholar with these descriptions, I swear.) I’ve always related to this passage as someone who’s also slutted too close to the sun and ended up hurting people I care about (although I never, you know, had a dude killed in war so I could sleep with his wife). A lot of the time, when reading through this psalm, I’d reflect on the whole “I suck and need God’s grace” aspect of it, but there’s a sneaky little part that I’ve always overlooked. I discovered it when I switched over to The Message version of the Bible, which is basically the translated scripture disguised as John Mayer lyrics.

God, make a fresh start in me,
shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
-Psalm 51 (MSG)

There it is! The Genesis week!

The intention of this verse, I’m assuming, is that we need God to take a Genesis week to work on us, but my first instinct was to apply this to my own life as well. Do I need a Genesis week — a week (or an entire era) of intense creation?

Humans are innately creative, but I feel like sometimes we suppress that part of ourselves. As children, we were always playing make-believe and acting out stories we made up. The fact that we’re born like this is no accident — we were made in the image of God, and so the power and desire to create is rooted in the very depths of the human spirit. It’s the one thing that makes us different from the rest of Animalia. Even if my cat had opposable thumbs, he still wouldn’t be able to paint a picture, or write a story, or dance in a ballet production (as hilarious as that would be). That’s a uniquely human characteristic.

Basically, when God created humans, He gifted us with His own special ability to imagine, to create. Think about it — the power that created the entire universe is inside you! And yet, we take that for granted. Our society tries to beat the imagination out of you before you have the change to do something revolutionary with it, and sadly, it often succeeds. It reduces us to little more than lazy housecats content to eat, sleep, and poop all day. We were built to be like God, but spend most of our time being like Garfield.

I think we all need a Genesis week. Imagine what would happen if we all stepped back for a while and did what made our hearts happy. What would happen if we threw ourselves into our creations and stopped caring what other people think? What if we wrote, sang, danced with abandon? What if instead of being so divided, we united over music and art and storytelling, the way we were intended to be? I think that would spark more than just a revolution. It would create a new Eden, a place of peace and contentment.

There’s a reason I study music therapy, and it’s because I feel there’s nothing closer to God than the act of creation. Nothing heals and changes people quite like creating music — or creating anything for that matter! Throw yourself into your creative endeavours, and if you don’t have one yet, find your passion. Maybe it’s baking. Maybe it’s knitting cat sweaters. It doesn’t matter.

Just create.