Trapped in the Mitten: A Tale of Wanderlust

Yesterday at Thanksgiving, I was helping my niece put together a puzzle of an outer space scene. We pieces together each of the planets one by one until a cohesive picture began to emerge. I was putting together Saturn I think when my niece shows me her completed Earth.

“Look!” she said. “This is Michigan!”

I mean, Michigan is on Earth, so she’s not wrong.

I never thought about it before, but when you’re little, the world seems simultaneously huge yet tiny. To her, Michigan is the world. And if I’m honest, Michigan is my world too.

I was born and raised in south Detroit, just like a certain city boy who took the midnight train to anywhere. Technically, “south Detroit” is Downriver, a collection of blue-collar suburbs just south of the big D. It’s admittedly a bit of an industrial wasteland in some areas, and a little more “Kid Rock” than I’d like. Like, confederate flags aren’t an uncommon sight, despite being in the frickin’ north. But it has its charm, and I don’t have any regrets about growing up there. It made me who I am.

Still, I never left the safety of the Mitten. I chose a university that was within the same area code as my hometown. After graduation, I briefly moved to Florida, decided it sucked (it does), and came back to Michigan within two months. And after marrying my wife, we settled in the posh northern suburbs of Detroit where she grew up.

Michigan is my world.

So why do I have this wanderlust?

I’m not well-traveled by any stretch of the imagination. The furthest I’ve been from home is Denver, Colorado, and that was a relatively recent development. I’ve been out of the country once — to Canada, which doesn’t count if you’re from Michigan. Michigan is Canada Lite, with the Tim Hortonses to prove it. (Is that the plural of Tim Hortons? Because there’s definitely more than one.)

I’m pretty sure there’s more of these in Michigan than McDonalds.

I guess I feel like I’m missing out on a grand wide world by being stuck here, within 100 miles of where I grew up. That’ll be changing soon, as I’m moving to Fort Wayne, Indiana for my internship. But still, it’s Indiana. I’m not even moving out of the Midwest. I’m arguably moving to a worse state. Like, what reason does anyone have to visit Indiana? Aside from my girlfriend and my internship, there’s not really anything there for me. Corn? A racetrack?

Okay, that’s kind of cool. You win this one, Indiana.

I hope I get to see all the wonders of the world someday. I hope I get to try the sushi in Tokyo, which I’m told is out of this world. I hope I get to see Britain, where my family came over from all those years ago. I hope I get to go on a safari in Africa, or take a train through Europe. I wish I had the money, means, and free time for all of this stuff. I envy those trust fund kids who get to jetset around the world and blog about their adventures, while I live vicariously through other people’s Instagram feeds.

I’m lucky in some ways, though. There’s a joke that there’s three classes in the US: those who go to Disney World once a year, those who’ve gone once, and those who have never gone. I’ve gone a few times, certainly not every year, but more than the average American has, probably. I should count my blessings instead of longing for a life that’s out of my reach.

That, or hope I get that one song that blows up so I can go on a world tour with my band in our private jet.

I can dream, right?

NASCAR and Cheeseballs: Nostalgia for a Family Lost

Welp, it’s that time of year again, the time where we ~~conveniently forget about how our ancestors killed a bunch of people~~ give thanks for what we have. I never used to care about Thanksgiving. I only liked getting to dress up as a Native American in grade school, which at the time felt like I was honoring my people. Then, as an adult, I took a DNA test and realized I’m genetically much more pilgrim. Of course every white family from Kentucky is convinced they have indigenous ancestry, which is why we thought costumes like this were a good idea.

Sketchy history of the holiday aside, Thanksgiving wasn’t really a thing I cared about as a child, aside from my retrospectively racist costume choices. I never liked turkey unless it’s drowned in ketchup. I never liked stuffing or cranberry sauce or any of the other traditional fixings. I still don’t like football, despite the Lions and Taylor Swift trying their damnedest to make me care about it this year. And to be honest, going to see family wasn’t really all that to me. I didn’t have any kid relatives save for a few cousins, but they were younger than me and kind of tight-knit with each other. What I’m saying is I would have rather been at home playing Pokémon or something.

My family doesn’t meet for Thanksgiving like we used to, and it’s kind of a shame, because now I’m finally at an age where I would actually appreciate it. My coworkers are all Arab-American, and I often listen with envy as they discuss their families. In their culture, family comes before everything else, and siblings and even cousins stay close well into adulthood. Our family used to be like that, but ever since my grandmother passed away several years ago, we kind of…fractured. I’m very close with my parents, probably closer than most adults are with their parents, but it all falls apart if you go out any further than that. I call my sister maybe twice a year, I haven’t talked to my brother in ages, and my cousins and I will “like” each other’s statuses once in a while. That’s about it, though.

On holidays like Thanksgiving, I feel like I’m missing something. I visit my wife’s family, and I love them to death, but part of me misses the loud, rowdy Southern charm my biological family had. I remember everyone sitting in Grandma’s living room cracking jokes and talking shit, back when I was too young to fully embrace what was happening. I regret taking those days for granted, but I was just a child then. I didn’t know that kind of thing didn’t last forever. I thought we’d be celebrating holidays in Grandma’s house with all my aunts and uncles and cousins until the day I died. It’s all over now — my cousin watching NASCAR in the middle bedroom, my grandma cooking lard-drenched but delicious homecooked meals, my uncle eating the nasty cheeseball he brought for Christmas every year. It’s nothing more than memories.

I know chosen family is a huge deal, especially in the queer circles I’m a part of, but I feel like I’ll always be missing out on something by not being close to my blood family. It’s not too late; things can change. Maybe I just need to be the one to initiate it. Maybe I need to call my sister more. Maybe I need to make amends with my brother. Maybe I should meet with my cousins IRL someday. I can’t make things the way they were when I was a kid, but I can start something new.

If you happen to be close to your blood relatives, never take that for granted. It’s such a gift to have a close relationship with the family you were born into. And if you’re like me and not as close to your family, I hope you find your chosen family to spend days like these with. Be thankful for the people you have in your life and the time you spend together, because someday, it may be little more than a distant memory.

“Perfection is the Enemy of Completion”: My NaNoWriMo Experience So Far

I realize I haven’t been very active on here as of late. That’s for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’ve been busy packing and preparing for the move to Fort Wayne this January, which is rapidly approaching. To be honest, clearing out our apartment and getting together all the things we’ll need for the sixth months of the internship is kind of a full time job. Especially when you’re me and have an ungodly amount of clothes. Like, dragon hoard levels of clothing.

Most importantly, I’ve been working on NaNoWriMo this year. Will I actually finish a novel? Probably not, if I’m being realistic. I restarted my story like five times already and decided to ditch it altogether for an idea I had like a year ago, so there’s that.

I haven’t actually finished a story since elementary school. When I was a kid, I’d come up with stories all the time, and while the teacher was rattling off about long division, I was busy penning the first great children’s book written by an actual child. I was kind of legendary among the staff at my school for my precocious writing abilities. It was one of the few things I was good at, because God knows “obeying social norms” and “paying attention in class” was not among those things.

I still remember the series I sunk my heart and soul into: The Great Adventure. Creative name, I know. And the plot was equally creative — three pets get lost and have to find their way home. No, I definitely didn’t steal the idea from Homeward Bound.

As I got older, the stories I came up with got more complex, and the middle school teachers I had weren’t as keen on me writing during class, so I just kind of…stopped. For a while at least. When I finally picked up the pen again, or rather, booted up the word processor on my family’s shiny new computer for the first time, I found myself unable to get past the first chapter of, well, anything. All of my amazing story ideas were dead on arrival.

I think as I got older, I lost that sense of fun I had when it came to writing. Now that I was in my teens, and eventually twenties and thirties, I held myself to higher standards than I did as a child. Everything had to be perfect. I couldn’t half-ass anything, lest the entire project turn to dog crap. I couldn’t even write a few pages without having to revise everything and eventually rewrite what I had altogether.

For NaNoWriMo this year, I decided to try something different. I have this character from the project I’ve been working on (that I’ll probably never finish) named Tessa, and she’s canonically thirteen years old at the start of the story. I thought to myself, what if I write the story from her perspective? Perhaps writing from the point of view of a literal child will allow me to get into that headspace I had when I was a kid, when I could write anything. There was room for errors because hey, I was a kid. I don’t have to hold myself up to these ridiculous standards because realistically, a thirteen year old’s diary would be a trainwreck of ideas and stream of conscious blathering.

And so far, it’s been working. I’m kind of excited to follow this character through seven years and watch her grow. I plan to adjust my writing as she gets older, which will be a fun experiment in style. I don’t think I’ll finish this project by the end of November, but I’m off to a great start finally creating something, anything.

My girlfriend often tells me perfection is the enemy of completion, and it’s better for something to be published and imperfect than flawless but unpublished. What use are stories if no one ever gets to hear them? For once, I want to finish something I’ve started, and I’m feeling good about this one.

Without further ado, here’s a little snippet of what I’ve been working on:

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Dr. Roberta told me to start keeping a journal to track how I’m feeling every day. She also told me to stop selling my Adderall to the high schoolers. Welp.

My mom bought me this college-ruled notebook from Meijer. It’s got enough pages to last until I’m like, twenty. The front has a bunch of flowers and crap. (Wait, am I allowed to say that?! Crap crap crap CRAP!) I don’t really know what I’m doing as far as writing goes. Do I just write down whatever pops into my big dumb head? Do I address this to anyone? Like, “Dear Diary, this is Tessa Mae Harlow reporting on my boring life.” I don’t even know what to write about. I’m thirteen, I’m not interesting yet.

I’m writing this from the stoop of the old brick house down the street. I usually come here after school to get away from my parents and brother and listen to the cassette tapes my mom passed down to me. That is, if I’m not hanging out with Kit or going to youth group for the evening. The house itself was built in the 20s I think. It’s “has a radiator in the living room” old. Sometimes I sneak through the window when I’m feeling brave and take pictures of the interior. It was probably a pretty place in its prime, but now it’s what you’d call dilapidated. “Dilapidated,” incidentally, was one of the words I had to spell for the spelling bee last year, and the definition is “decayed, deteriorated, or fallen into partial ruin especially through neglect or misuse.” I could spell that, but not “below.” I’m still salty about that.

Yeah, I’m having a lot of fun with this. I’ll keep y’all posted.

Another Shot of Depresso

Hi! I’m sure you’re wondering where I’ve been. After all, it’s been an unusually long time since I’ve posted anything on this blog. I typically try to post something a few times a week, but it’s been crickets here lately. I wish I had a good reason for my silence, and I guess I do, in a way.

Depression. It’s weighing on me, hard.

This week has already been terrible. I’ve been beaten around like a piñata at the universe’s birthday party, mostly due to work issues. I’m working thirteen hours a day between my two jobs, and it has not been a walk in the park. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong this week, and I’m scrambling to keep it together at both places of employment. This, on top of preparing for our annual Halloween party this weekend and playing piano for my dear friend’s show and getting ready to literally uproot my life in January for my internship. It would be a lot for anyone, but tack on a heap of depression, and it’s a wonder I’m still breathing. I should have been suffocated by the weight of it all a long time ago.

I have bipolar. It’s not a secret. Historically, I’ve tended toward mania, which manifests in me drinking all the alcohol and having all the sex and eating all the food and buying all the worthless shit and basically being an overall bad decision machine. I’ve had bouts of depression, but they’ve never lingered for very long. But this depression has been harsher for some reason. I’m feeling so much existential dread, like I’m just this tiny flea in the grand scheme of the universe and someday I’ll be forgotten and it’ll be like I never existed. I ruminate on these things until my brain goes numb and all I want to do is tend my little make-believe farm because that’s the one damn thing I can control in this life.

I know a lot of people turn to me and my blog for hope. My words reach people, and that alone means so much to me. I sincerely pray I will have the drive to continue this blog soon, because right now I’m feeling burned the fuck out. I want to be an inspiration to others, the person they look to like “Hey, Jessa survived bipolar, and so can I!” Maybe that’s why I’ve been dealt this hand, in the grand scheme of things. But I won’t lie and say it’s an easy cross to bear.

I have faith that I’ll come out the other side of this. I always have. It’s just going to be an uphill battle.

Don’t Be a Dick: A Small Rant

I write this as I sit at the front desk of the gym I work at, a job I picked up because I was already awake at 5 in the morning and already at the gym anyways. Most days, it’s easy work — I just check people in and pass the time with whatever activity doesn’t require me to leave the immediate area. Most of the patrons are very sweet and take the time to greet me as they come in. But every now and then, I have to deal with someone who is so horrifically entitled, I just want to crumple them into a ball and toss them into the sun.

The sun deserves better than your sorry ass.

Such was Man-Karen, who complained that I did not turn on the sauna for him, which is a. not my job and b. not my job (but in cursive). And no, he was not nice about it.

Which leads me to the point of this post — don’t be a dick. It’s literally that easy. Did you know it costs zero dollars to not be a dick? It’s scientifically proven that it feels good to not be a dick. And it’s the main tenet of pretty much every major faith.

Here’s the thing — when you’re a dick to someone, that shit sticks. I’ve had dozens of other people be incredibly kind to me this morning, and yet who am I going to remember later today? The one douche-wad who inspired this post.

It goes back further than that. I’m talking decades. I still remember my childhood bullies. I had some good friends and good times, but you know what else I remember? Other Jessica S. faking that I hit her so I’d get in trouble and not get to go on the ice cream trip with the other kids. (At least I turned out to be the superior Jessica S.)

Maybe you think being a dick is going to convince people to side with you. I guarantee you, it will not. It will make people resent you. One of my favorite books on dealing with relationships, Dale Carnegie’s famous How to Win Friends and Influence People, teaches that being agreeable and not argumentative is the key to winning respect from others. The more cantankerous you are, the less your side of the story will be taken seriously. I know I personally don’t have any increased desire to turn on the sauna after Man-Karen’s meltdown.

Like, bro. You have opposable thumbs. Turn it on yourself.

Life is already hard. Don’t make it harder for other people by being a dick for no good reason. Sure, they’ll remember you, but not in a pleasant way. You’re the gum stuck to the bottom of one’s shoe. Shit ain’t cute. Be nice, y’all.

Creating, For the Love of It

What is your favorite hobby or pastime?

Art.

It’s something that comes so naturally to us as kids, but for some reason, the urge to draw and color and make cool stuff gets kicked out of us by society.

I remember briefly working as a paraprofessional in a special education classroom at an elementary school. There was a kid with a severe disability but a huge imagination, one of my favorite students I’d had the pleasure of working with. During coloring time, when he went to color the snowman picture he’d been given, he made it pink! I loved the creativity, but the teacher…not so much. He got in trouble for coloring the snowman pink, and I got in trouble for letting him.

This song is a true story.

I think stories like that are a huge part of why adults don’t indulge themselves in creative endeavors. If strict teachers don’t kill that spark, the crushing weight of capitalism will. We’re constantly bombarded with messages that we need to monetize whatever it is we’re passionate about doing, or else there’s no sense in doing it. If you love playing video games, better stream it and get followers. If you love baking, gotta sell all those pastries. And if you’re an artist, if you’re not getting paid to make art, what’s the point?

But when I create art, I don’t do it with the intention to sell. I don’t take commissions (unless someone asks really nicely). I don’t even care if the stuff I make looks good, really. Because I don’t care about making money with my art.

Yeah, not making any money with this masterpiece.

So why do I do it?

Because I really like it!

I’ve always loved doodling pictures of various characters I created, or making little comics. It’s just how I relax. Some nights, after a long day of work, I like to grab my iPad and just draw whatever comes to mind. It’s so freeing to not have to answer to anyone artistically.

When I create music, I do so with the intention of performing or recording it to share at some point. I consider myself a professional musician, so I treat it like a job. But because of that, music is not as relaxing as it could be, because I’m constantly thinking about such things. Will people like this song? Will it get streams? Will playing it live make for a great show, or is it a complete snoozefest?

“This one’s really gonna knock the socks off ‘em.”

With art, I do it for me and me only, because I love it. I’ve talked about how “amateur” comes from the Latin root for “love.” I consider myself an amateur artist, not because I’m particularly bad (I’m not great either), but because I don’t treat it as a profession. I do it out of sheer love.

I think everyone needs a hobby they don’t monetize, something that’s for them and them only. I hope you find yours, and when you do, may nothing steal that spark of joy it gives you.

Richie Sambora Had a Charizard (And Other Tales From My Childhood)

I’ve been doing a series of healing prompts in my personal journal. The topics are meant to probe into your soul and reveal stuff about you, or something deep like that. Anyways, the first prompt in the journal was “What did you like to do as a child?” And well…

I was a weird kid. I would often read the dictionary and encyclopedia for fun. I remember curling up with my grandma’s Encyclopedia Brittanica collection and reading about whatever interested me at the time (and sex, because of course!). I also liked drawing out ideas for inventions and projects I wanted to do, like a bird circus or a flying couch. At night, I’d put on my favorite Richie Sambora CD or the local classic rock station and play The Sims for hours until I fell asleep. I enjoyed making Sims and killing them off, not because I was a terrible sadist as a child, but because killing them would turn them into ghosts, and I wanted to make haunted houses. I also liked putting on my headphones and pacing around the house listening to my favorite songs. With friends, I enjoyed playing make-believe, usually pretending to be our favorite musicians, pro wrestlers, anime characters, and/or Pokémon. (It was an odd cast of characters.) I liked writing down the ideas for stories I had in my head and often dreamed about becoming the youngest author ever. I didn’t like to read because I was too busy making my own books!

Yeah, I was weird as heck.

I’ve written quite a bit about my childhood on here, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about my elephant-sized imagination as a kid. Anyone who came in contact with me knew about the endless worlds in my head, about my stories and make-believe games. I’d talk about them anyone who’d listen, from my mom to the lady checking us out at Kmart (especially the lady checking us out at Kmart). And all two of my friends naturally had to take part in my shenanigans.

We had this game, right? We called it Pokémon and Friends. The first part is obvious. We’d play as Pokémon. Pretty straightforward. Where it gets interesting is the “and Friends” part. That could mean anyone. Like I said in the prompt, the characters ranged from Bon Jovi to Jennifer Lopez to some pro wrestlers to Goku and even the witches from Charmed, if anyone actually remembers that show.

The Sanderson sisters, but hot and without the whole “eating children” schtick.

We’d play that stupid game from dawn to dusk if we could, pretending to be all these random characters as Pokémon trainers. I can still remember every single Pokémon each character had (Richie Sambora had a Charizard, for one). The game followed us on vacation, and if we watched an interesting movie, we’d adapt the plot to whatever storyline we were working on. There were so many intricacies, I had to start writing them down.

And that’s how I got into writing.

As we got older, my friends lost interest in Pokémon and Friends, but I still had a million stories going in my head at once. So I changed the names of the characters, filed off the serial numbers, so to speak, and wrote them back to life in my own works. Most of those stories are lost to time or remained unfinished, but some of the character archetypes and plot lines made it into the stories I’m still working on today.

I guess I have to credit Baby Jess for her creativity, and Adult Jess for never letting it die. I hope I never lose that simple joy of creating.

Dear Cadence, Part Seventeen: Write This Down

This is the final 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, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen, Part Fifteen, and Part Sixteen

I’ve been a writer my entire life. It’s almost as entwined with my being as music is. I love stories, and I love telling stories. The story you just read is my story, so far at least. God willing, I’ll have another 70 years on this giant rock we call home. I still want to see you grow up, make a living for yourself, perhaps even have children of your own, should that be in the cards for you.

Nothing lasts forever, which is a hard truth that I’m struggling with as I write these words. Buildings become decrepit, objects get lost, people change and evolve and eventually die, and there’s nothing you can do about it. We are as impermanent as the leaves of an autumn tree. But the things we create outlive us.

I started this project as a way to document my time here. I may be just another woman amongst billions of other people with their own interesting lives, but there will never, ever be another me. And there will never be another you, either.

Isn’t it fascinating to realize that every single person ever has their own story? There are eight billion intersecting storylines happening as I write this, eight billion unique lives that will never happen again. And that’s not counting the billions upon billions of people who have already come and gone. Maybe they left a legacy, or perhaps they were forgotten to time. It’s the latter that fascinates me most, more than the famous folks who went on to become legends. It’s the people whose stories will never be known, whose names were lost to history. It makes me sad to think about too long, if I’m honest.

Cadence, if you do nothing else with your time here, I want you to write. All the time. About everything. It doesn’t have to be grammatically perfect or even presentable. Just write down your life and experiences, the same as I’ve written mine for you. Someday, if you have kids, they’ll want to know who you were and where they came from. And even if you don’t have kids, you’ll come back to your diary or journal someday and remember how beautiful life was. Moments are as fleeting as existence itself. One day, you’ll be old and gray, but the memories you’ve made will be forever preserved through your journals.

I want to leave you with this. Leave a legacy. Don’t be content to be forgotten to time. Live without abandon, and leave something to be remembered by. Do great things, and be exceptional to everyone you meet. And always, always lead with love. We will all die, but love lives on forever. I know I’ve loved you long before you were ever born, and I’ll love you long after I’m gone.

Wherever you go in this life, I’ll be with you always.

Cartwheeling Into the Wild Unknown

I begin this post with good news.

I got my dream internship.

Wait, I didn’t say that loud enough.

I got my dream internship!

I started my journey to find a decent internship despondent and forlorn that my original plan had failed. I bet all I had on the only internship that was a. local and b. not hospice, only to be let down in the end. It was back to the drawing board for me when my professor suggested a private practice in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It’s not in Michigan, she said, but it would be the perfect fit for me. And the more I researched the place, the more I realized she was right! It was almost exactly what I envisioned my own private practice would be like one day, with a diverse range of clientele with many different diagnoses and goals.

Still, it wouldn’t be easy uprooting my entire life. Hesitantly, I applied for the Indiana internship as well as a local hospice, the “safe” option, despite not being what I wanted to pursue in my career. After getting let down by the previous internship site, I figured I shouldn’t put all my eggs into one basket again. I got interviews with both — on the same day, no less — and then the waiting game began. I was beginning to wonder if either of the sites would accept me, or if I’d never get an internship and be doomed to be a pharmacy technician forever.

But then, within a day of each other, both sites got back to me — and this time, with good news! I’d been offered an internship by both the private practice and the hospice. Now I had a choice to make — do I do the hospice and stay in Metro Detroit, or do I take a risk and move to Indiana for six months?

I’ll admit it wasn’t an easy choice. I knew the internship director at the hospice — we’d worked together before. I know the area and all the people here. My wife and I would be able to hang onto our day jobs for extra support. And we wouldn’t have to offload most of our belongings and move into an extended-stay hotel or AirBnb. But something was pulling me toward the Indiana site, crazy as it seemed. It wasn’t the practical option, but perhaps it was a risk worth taking.

I accepted the Indiana internship.

So now we’re contemplating how to execute this move as smoothly as possible, looking into potential lodging and Uhauls and how the hell we’re going to get our medication through it all because God forbid I go through the internship process without my Adderall. It’s going to take hard work and sacrifice, but I’m willing to do everything I can to make this happen. I’ve never felt so strongly about anything. Maybe leaping into the great unknown is what I need to do in order to truly live out my passion and make a difference in people’s lives through music therapy. After all, no one’s ever changed the world by playing it safe.

I’m ready for whatever comes next, and I can’t wait to take you all along for the ride.

Dear Cadence, Part Sixteen: Love is Infinite

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, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen, and Part Fifteen

When your mother and I officially got together, we came to an agreement — we’d be free to date other people as well. Part of it was due to your mother’s asexuality — there were certain things she couldn’t give me that I needed in a relationship, and I didn’t want to ever pressure her or make her feel uncomfortable by making her do physical things with me that she didn’t want to. But I never had any desire to date around or meet anyone else. I was content to be a one-woman woman.

That changed when I met Olivia.

When I first saw her at a Valentine’s Day art show, she was wearing a tight little skirt and a mess of short dark blonde curls. She was playing electronic music behind her then-friend’s poetry. She had this air about her, graceful and effortless, and I knew I had to get to know her. We ended up in the kissing booth that had been set up, trading life stories between smooches, and she told me about her life, how she was struggling with her gender identity and how to tell her parents, and how she’d been very ill until recently, putting a strain on her relationship with her ex. I listened as if she was telling me the secrets of the universe, enthralled at her every word. When we parted, we traded information, promising to meet somewhere between my home in Michigan and hers in Indiana someday.

About a month later, someday happened. I booked a hotel halfway between Ypsilanti and South Bend, in a town called Kalamazoo. It was reckless and unlike anything I’d ever done before, but something felt so right about this perfect stranger. I wanted to know more about her. I wanted to know everything about her. I kept trying to tell myself this was just a fling, just a way for me to blow off steam in a way I couldn’t with your mother, but I knew deep down in my heart that something else was happening.

Another month later, we met for a third time at an indie music festival in East Lansing. At some band’s show in some random person’s backyard, we drifted off together in a hammock, tangled up in each other’s arms. It was in that moment I think we both realized what this was.

It was love.

We continued to meet every month or so, sometimes in Michigan, sometimes in Indiana. I met her friends and family, and she met mine. She even met your mom, and while your mom was slightly overwhelmed by her exuberance, she gave us her blessing.

I still remember the afternoon we took a boat out on the lake together. We held each other close on the tiny inflatable vessel and daydreamed about the future, uncertain as it seemed at the time, and you came up! She mentioned that before she transitioned, she took steps to ensure she’d be able to have kids someday, and she said she wanted them with me. I told her about you, and how badly I wanted to have you one day. We promised each other that when the time was right, we’d bring you into this world together. It wouldn’t be easy, raising a child with this unique arrangement, but we’d be damned if we didn’t try.

I know this love is not conventional, but I’ve never been one for conventional things. I love your mother with all my heart, and I love Olivia with all my heart, and I wouldn’t trade either of them for the world. They’re my soulmates, my true loves. Love is not a finite resource, and I’ve got so much of it to give. Sometimes I fear we’ll receive pushback or discrimination for choosing to love the way we do, but it’s a chance I’m willing to take. The world may never understand, but so long as I’m alive, I’ll fight for this strange, beautiful thing we’ve built together.

I could write an entire book about all the memories I share with Olivia, and I just might eventually. But the story isn’t over yet, and I pray it never ends.