This Apocalypse Sucks

I think a lot of people were like me in middle school social studies, learning about world-changing events and wondering if we’d ever live through one ourselves, fantasizing about what heroic deeds we’d do during such a crisis, forever etching our names into our great-grandchildren’s history books. I was one of those kids. Somewhere in the index of some textbook in 2092:

Salisbury, Jessica (b. 1993), p. 139: heroically sacrificed herself during the Second Alien Wars of 2037, posthumously canonized as saint and awarded Nobel Peace Prize

Now, it’s 2020. That world-changing event is now, and I’m sitting on my couch, watching YouTube videos, full from the shitty gas station pizza I decided to treat myself with. I’m talking one step above Kraft cheese on top of ketchup on top of cardboard, made only marginally more edible with the sprinkling of parmesan I added at home. This is quarantine cuisine, and when gas stations are just about the only thing still open, you work with what you’ve got.

My near-debilitating depression is the parmesan sprinkle on top of the looming fear of the apocalypse. My mental health has already been in a seriously dark place for a while, and all of this social isolation isn’t helping. I don’t have any motivation to do the things I’m passionate about anymore. I feel like my chances of ever making it in music have been dashed by this virus. My biological clock, for lack of a better word, has been ticking for a while. I already feel like an old maid in the music business, and who knows how long the world will be on hold. On top of that, in an industry that thrives on image, I’m not as young and cute as I used to be. I’m 80 pounds heavier than I was in high school and I have scars all over from picking at my own skin (thanks, anxiety). By the time this crisis blows over, I’ll undoubtedly be too old and not conventionally attractive enough to make it as a performer.

If anything, this past month has made me realize how unimportant I am in the grand scheme of things. Maybe I’ll never be a Nobel Prize winner or an iconic rock star, but I thought I’d be doing something important in the face of a global crisis like this. Maybe I’d be in Washington, advocating for the working class people who are struggling right now, or I’d be in a laboratory somewhere, slaving away day and night, searching for a cure. In reality? I’ve been depression-napping and tending to a fictional cartoon island (no shade towards Animal Crossing — I’m pretty sure that game is the only thing keeping a lot of people, including myself, sane right now). I feel helpless to stop any of the bad things happening in the world right now. I feel disposable.

I’m tearing up a little writing this, but I feel like this is something that needs to be written and put out there. Check on your friends during this pandemic, especially those who deal with things like depression and anxiety. Believe me, we need it right now.

Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night

Ever notice how sometimes God just completely airdrops the exact thing you need in the exact moment you need it? If you’re anything like me, a lot of the time, it’s a song. There’s something oddly therapeutic about hearing your own feelings echoed in music. I could go on and write an entire blog post about how music is the universal language and all that sentimental crap (which is absolutely true I should add), but it’s weird how you can rehear a song from years ago and have it take on a completely new meaning.

For me, that song was “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night.”

“Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night” isn’t one of Bon Jovi’s most iconic songs, but it’s still somewhat of a fan favorite. Despite the fact that I was almost obsessively fascinated with all things Bon Jovi when I was little, the song didn’t really resonate with me. Growing up, it was one of the songs on my beloved Crush tour concert videotape I didn’t mind letting play through while I ran to the bathroom.

That changed on the way home from work today. There were a few songs I desperately wanted to listen to that were stuck in my head, and sifting through the small mountain of CDs in my passenger and back seats didn’t unearth any of the albums they were on. So I chose the first mildly interesting one I found, which was a Bon Jovi greatest hits release I rage-bought when I couldn’t locate any of their albums I had as a kid (and yes, I had every single one).

The song came on and this weird, overwhelming sense of peace came over me. I couldn’t explain it. Something in the lyrics pierced my soul like a needle right in the spot I needed. The verses are from the point of view three characters in the throes of hardship. The first, from what I can comprehend, is an unemployed homeless man, while the second is a teenage girl whose living situation forced her to turn to prostitution. It was the third narrator whose story especially resonated with me:

Now I can’t say my name or tell you where I am

Wanna blow myself away, don’t know if I can

I wish that I could be in some other time and place

With someone else’s soul, someone else’s face

Do you know how strangely comforting it is to know that you’re not alone in your struggles, to know that at one point, a rock star — your childhood hero — felt down enough to write those words? I guess it hit me hard that even Jon Bon Jovi has been there — and made it through. After this thought bounced around in my brain for a second, the bridge hit:

Someday I’ll be Saturday night

I’ll be back on my feet, I’ll be doing alright

It may not be tomorrow, baby, that’s okay

I ain’t going down, I’m gonna find a way

With those lines, what used to be just a feel-good anthemic Bon Jovi song (which is pretty much their schtick, come to think of it) became my own personal battle cry. My depression and anxiety will not take me down without a fight, and if — or rather, when — I make it through, I know God will use me to help others through as well.

Maybe I feel more like a Monday today, but someday I’ll be Saturday night, too.

90s Jon with a dog

Here, have a picture of ’90s-era Jon with a doggo. You’re welcome.

PANDAS VS. MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE

I recently saw this meme while scrolling through my Facebook feed:

Serotonin, ~~like whatever drug they put in the mystery meat in Lunchables,~~ is a substance that, in layman’s terms, makes one happy. It’s a naturally produced neurotransmitter (fancy schmancy brain chemical thing) that’s responsible for regulating mood.

And if you don’t have enough of it, it will frick you the frick up.

I’m talking clinical depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, all that fun stuff.

It recently hit me that I don’t think I’ve ever not been mentally ill. I wish I could remember those halcyon days of running wild and carefree with my biggest worries being missing Dragonball Z at 6:30 or whether or not my Charizard was strong enough to beat the Elite Four. But even my fondest childhood memories have a shadow of constant sadness and anxiousness looming over them.

And it’s all because of PANDAS.

(No, not that guy.)

PANDAS is a misleadingly adorable term for a really sucky problem. It’s the abbreviation for a scientific term I’m not going to bother writing out, mostly because it would take like five hours to type it. (If you’re curious, you can read more about it here.)

When I initially described my symptoms to my current psychiatrist, including how long I’ve dealt with them, the first thing she asked was the seemingly irrelevant question of if I’d ever had strep throat as a kid. I didn’t have strep throat; I freaking was strep throat. I have more memories of being sick with it than not, to the point that I couldn’t eat like a regular human and spent a solid portion of my childhood looking like the lost daughter of Skeletor.

Little did I know that my near-constant bout of strep was an underlying factor in the specific type of crazy I’ve wrestled with my entire life.

I’m not far enough into my psychology degree to be qualified to tell you exactly how it works, but somehow, having a strep infection when you’re very young can jack up some stuff in your brain and cause lovely things like OCD symptoms in children. And yep, it can be permanent.

After hearing about PANDAS from my doctor, everything started to make a lot more sense. Suddenly, my obsessive, intense fears and odd behaviors, which I clearly recall going back as far as age two, had a name. (Speaking of which, one of these days I’ll write about some of those weird early anxieties — there’s a couple of doozies. Like the headless guy I was convinced lived in my grandma’s furnace. That’s a fun one.)

I’m writing this as much for you, whoever is reading this, as I am for me. If you’re like me and can’t remember a time when you weren’t scared or sad, if you have that gray cloud of mental illness hanging over what should have been happy childhood memories, you’re not alone.

Moving Forward

I’ve been spending a little time thinking about the direction of this blog. In the long run, I’d love to make a living out of writing, but it’s going to take a lot more time and effort than just vomiting my feelings about my (decidedly uninteresting) life into a journal every few days. So I’m thinking about starting some weekly columns for writing on topics I’m passionate about. Here are a few ideas — feel free to add anything you’d want to read about on here. I want to know your ideas too, person who is reading this!

Music: When I asked my Facebook friends what I should start blogging about, almost everyone suggested music, which makes sense, because it’s one of like three things I give a crap about. One of my college friends actually is a music critic (shout-out to Melody Esme, one of the best writers I know personally), so I’ve seen a little of what goes into being one. That being said, I doubt I have the greatest taste in music (whatever that even means), but I wouldn’t mind writing a weekly piece on whatever I’m listening to in my car currently ~~no matter how embarrassing it is.~~

Life Hacks: I’ve been working on a series for a while about how to manage having ADHD and still be a person. But I wouldn’t mind making this a regular thing. Judging by the feedback I’ve received on these posts, people really like this kind of content. What kinds of tasks do you want to see “hacked” for ADHD-havers?

Fashion & Beauty: Fun fact! I used to write a fashion column for my university’s newspaper. Another fun fact! I know next to nothing about fashion. But I like clothes, and I like wearing clothes. (Well, polite society requires clothing, so if I have to wear things, I want to wear something I like.) On the other hand, makeup and skincare are things I know quite a bit about and like talking about, so I could write about that as well.

My Dumb Fiction Crap: Did you know I’ve been working on the same story since high school? If you’ve been following this blog closely, you’ll know I’ve posted bits and pieces of it on here ~~and for the most part immediately deleted it because I didn’t think it was good enough~~. But I’m so sick of not finishing the things I start. So I want to share this dumb story with you, once and for all. And once that’s finally out in the world, I have like four other ideas for things to write. My New Years resolution is to actually finish things for once, and I’m starting here.

Devotionals: I’ve dabbled in faith-based stuff before and at one point even started to turn this blog into a spiritual one. I don’t think I want that to be exclusively what I write about, but I think I have a unique perspective on religion, being a queer Christian descended from literal witches and married to an agnostic Jewish woman. I don’t think anyone’s ever had my exact thoughts on God and who He (or She!) is, and maybe the world needs a fresh viewpoint on this stuff.

I wanna hear everyone’s thoughts. What do you want to read about on this blog? Drop a comment and let me know!

Love, Jess

The Walking (Quarter) Dead

I haven’t been very active on here the past few days. Between work and my class and a handful of shows last weekend, writing time has been minimal, and of course my anxiety isn’t helping much. But thanks for sticking around, kind person who is reading this blog post!

Do you ever feel like the number of things you want to accomplish in life far outweigh the number of days you have to achieve them? Because I’ve been slowly realizing that’s one of the driving forces behind my feelings of discontent lately.

(This one’s not going to get too whiny, I promise.)

I recently came to the realization that I’ll probably never reach the level of success in music I used to dream about. In all honesty, I don’t think the Bon Jovi-like brand of jetset-around-the-world-and-be-on-the-cover-of-People-magazine rock stardom I fantasized about as a child exists anymore (barring Taylor Swift-tier artists), and even then, I would not be comfortable with that much attention. I’ve learned that my niche is behind the scenes, writing the songs or playing the instruments or even just mixing the sound.

You see, for the longest time, I felt this race against time to establish myself before I aged out of the “young and attractive” window and was no longer viable as a new artist. I remember when Carly Rae Jepsen came out with “Call Me Maybe” my freshman year of college and how everyone my age was freaking out when they found out how old she actually was — 26. I was only 18 at that time, and I already felt the pressure. It’s a relief, not having to stress about any of that stuff anymore.

But I still feel like the clock is ticking on my music career. And my writing career. And my entire freaking life.

I spent the entire evening binge-watching The Walking Dead. The thing is, usually, I try to avoid binge-watching anything, because of my fear of wasting precious time I could be using to do something productive. Lately, I’ve lost a lot of motivation to do much of anything of value, which in turn drags me down even further. It’s a vicious cycle, an ouroboros of suck.

It’s probably not healthy to push yourself to do “productive” things 24/7, but it’s a compulsion I can’t quite rid myself of. I can’t shake this nagging feeling that I’m careening toward an inevitable death daily and how one day I’m going to be this bitter old lady resentful of how few of the things I set out to do actually got done. The average person lives to be approximately 75-80, maybe 100 at best. When I look at it that way, I’m already a quarter dead.

And in all honesty, this isn’t a bad outlook to have in moderation. Life is a gift and we shouldn’t waste it on frivolous crap. But we also shouldn’t beat ourselves up for taking a breath every now and then and actually enjoying it.

So go ahead, take a break and watch The Walking Dead. Or play Mario Kart. Or just take a walk outside. Life’s too short to waste it all worrying.

Small Victories Are Still Victories

So I’m almost done with the first issue of the comic series I’ve been working on ~~for the last decade.~~

My biggest fault as a writer is probably my lack of follow-through. I get really excited about an idea, get the first few pages done, re-read them, decide they suck, and start from scratch. In the case of this story, which I have literally had floating in my head since freaking high school, I kept bouncing between mediums. Like, it would work best as a graphic novel, except I’m not very good at art, so maybe a novel-novel. Except the story lends itself better to a visual medium. WAIT NO, A TV SHOW! I’ll just write a script and give it to someone who can do that kind of thing. Except I don’t know many people who can, and the ones that do won’t want to work with me. Maybe I’ll write the story and someone else can do art? Except all my art-friends have their own projects, so maybe I’ll draw it myself. Except I’m not very good at art. And the cycle begins again.

For ten. Freaking. Years.

I’ve finally decided that I’m never actually going to publish this story if I don’t get something written, and I’m never going to get anything written if I don’t write at all. The last story I wrote (and finished) that wasn’t for school or work was penned four years ago. I’ve started to realize that there’s some truth in that stupid saying “use it or lose it.” I noped out of music for a solid year and a half after my last band broke up. Can I play guitar? Yes. Do I actually play like I have a legitimate, collegiate degree in music? LOL NOPE.

I guess that’s part of the reason I started this blog too. A little article I can type up during my lunch break is better than daydreaming about all the crap I could write, possibly, someday (yet never actually write).

Small victories are still victories.

I Like Me

That was the title of this little book my kindergarten teacher gave each of the kids in my class. They were all personalized with our interests and even the names of our friends (I’m imagining she had to reach a bit when she made my book, considering I could count the number of friends I had on no fingers). They were all about how special and important and awesome we each were in our own ways.

Classic millennial entitlement, amiright?

There was a time when I was convinced I would be the next Taylor Swift and Victoria’s Secret model, all while simultaneously cranking out one New York Times bestseller after another, and then quietly semi-retiring into a fulfilling career as both a brain surgeon and a well-respected professor, all because I was that pretty and talented and smart.

I’m writing this as if I’m in the throes of a midlife crisis. I’m 24. I have practically my entire life still ahead of me. And yet, I still feel like I failed somehow. Like I didn’t try hard enough. Maybe if I studied harder, practiced harder, promoted myself more, wasn’t so afraid of everything — maybe things would be different. Maybe not. Maybe this is exactly where I was meant to be, here in the same town I grew up in, where I’ll probably freaking die one day. Maybe I need to accept that. Or maybe I need to work harder to get out.

Maybe I don’t even know anymore.

I wish I could go back to that youthful optimism. I wish I wasn’t constantly wishing for more. I wish I still liked me.

(I’m sorry this is a really depressing blog post. The next one will be happier I promise!)

I Guess This is a Blog

So, welcome I guess?

I wasn’t going to ever start a blog, despite writing being one of maybe two things I’m actually kind of good at. The idea of putting my thoughts about things on the internet scares the ever-loving crap out of me. The internet scares the crap out of me. People on the internet scare the crap out of me. If I’m honest, everything scares the crap out of me. Yay, anxiety.

My change of heart happened a few days ago. I was recently diagnosed with depression. Like, actual clinical depression. I’m no stranger to mental illness. I’ve battled OCD symptoms my entire life, generalized anxiety disorder and PTSD were mentioned at one point, and even ADHD and Aspergers were thrown out at one point by past therapists to explain why I’m incapable of functioning like a normal human.

But hearing depression as an explanation for a lot of my issues kind of made sense. I distinctly remember being in fourth grade and thinking to myself, “I’m gonna die one day. Everyone I love is going to die one day. Life is meaningless. Nothing matters and I’m sad for absolutely no discernible reason.” That’s not the kind of thoughts you’re supposed to have in freaking fourth grade. My point is, this isn’t something new. I just have a cool little label to slap on it now.

Recently, it’s been attacking my head worse than ever. I had this horrible, nagging thought that maybe, just maybe, my entire existence is a mistake. Like, I’m here because of some fluke accident and I wasn’t supposed to be here. I kept looking back at my past and thinking about how much better off everyone would be if I wasn’t born, how many people I’ve hurt in just 24 short years. I’m an a-hole. I don’t deserve the things I have. Fortunately, it never escalated into “I wish I were dead,” and I hope to God it never does. It’s always more of a nagging, restless “I need to run away from this town and not tell anyone where I’m going and change my name and not exist here anymore” feeling.

Then, something happened that made me reconsider everything.

It was a Saturday night, last Saturday night to be exact. I was playing bass for my church’s evening services, and at one point, I was just killing time trying to forget about how much I hated my life at the moment, despite having no logical reason to hate it. Then, I got a notification from one of my former youth group leaders on Facebook. I’ll never forget how I felt. She told me she was proud of me for using my words to make people think, and then went on to add that I was a role model for her daughters.

Me. The mistake. The one who hurt more people than I’d like to think about.

Is it possible for God to use someone like me to make the world a better place?

And that’s why I’m writing this. Because all I have is my words and I’m not going to let my anxiety and depression keep me from using them. As my mom would say, in the immortal words of Sean Connery in Celebrity Jeopardy, “the pen is mightier,” or something like that.

And if the things I write have the ability to change just one life out of millions, it will all be worth it.