We Need to Talk About Adderall

Hi! I have ADHD! Did you notice from the everything about me?

ADHD is an example of neurodiversity, or a brain “wiring” that differs from the societal standard. Because of the societal norm being, well, not ADHD, it is also considered a disability. Think of it this way — if humans could fly, but a few couldn’t, those people would be considered disabled by that society’s standards, because that society would be set up for people who flew. Similarly, we as ADHD-havers live in a society that isn’t made for us.

There are quite a few medications out there that up our productivity and attention spans to “normal” by these societal standards, but none are quite as effective as good ol’ Addy. There’s a reason why Adderall near the top of the list of prescribed medications. In 2021, 41.4 million prescriptions were dispensed here in the US alone.

So why is it so freakin’ hard to get?

Maybe I’m biased, but I don’t think there should be so many hoops for disabled folks to jump through to get their meds.

There’s been an ongoing shortage of Adderall, which is highly regulated in the US due to its status as a C-II drug. C-IIs are the big boys, the Norcos and Percocets, the meds ranked just below the scary stuff like heroin and uh, marijuana (unless you live in a cool state like me). Adderall does have a high addiction and dependence rate — but so does alcohol, a drug that’s not medicinal in nature at all, yet is widely available and even promoted in our culture. Due to all this, you’re lucky to get an Adderall script in the first place, and thanks to the shortage, good luck finding it anywhere.

Imagine if we treated things like wheelchairs and service animals like this. Imagine if the very thing that allowed you to function in society was vilified to the extent that Adderall is. I’m not saying we should do away with its prescription only status, but I feel that its C-II status makes it prohibitively hard for people who need it to access it. It’s already hard enough for ADHD folks to make an appointment and go through the long diagnostic process. “But making it easier to get will encourage people to abuse it!” Of course people are going to misuse drugs like Adderall. But people misuse things like Benadryl and cough syrup as well, and those are over-the-counter!

And I’ve heard some downright *terrifying* Benadryl trip reports.

People underestimate how much of a disability ADHD really can be. It’s hard to hold down a job when you’re not able to focus. It’s hard to even acquire a job with our variety of executive dysfunction. Honestly, in severe cases like mine, it can be a safety issue — I’ve nearly swerved off the road looking at a particularly neat billboard. Adderall makes things a little easier for us, and we should be able to obtain it with as few barriers as possible.

Invisible disabilities are already hard. Maybe let’s not make it harder by restricting access to the medicine we need.

The Future of JessaJoyce.com (Is Hopefully a Bright One)

When I started this blog several years ago, I never would have imagined all of the kind words I’ve received from people around the world. I’ve always been a writer for fun, but I never thought the words I write could actually affect people’s lives. I guess in a lot of ways, the pen really is mightier than the sword.

I’m at a bit of a crossroads, though. I really want to expand this little website into a full-blown lifestyle blog, but most lifestyle blogs have some kind of theme. I don’t exactly have a theme, unless you count “mostly coherent ramblings of an aspiring rock star and future music therapist” as a theme. I’m not a mom (yet), so I can’t exactly be a mommy blogger. I don’t have enough money or free time to be a travel blogger. I’m not nearly cool enough to have a fashion blog (or maybe I am?! I did run the fashion column for my college paper!). And I have the culinary expertise of a chicken, so foodie blog is out.

Still, I want there to be some sort of direction for my blog, so I came up a few more ideas for weekly or biweekly columns. I already have Dear Cadence and the Venona series going, but I want to get to a point where I’m posting a little something almost every day. Let me know in the comments if you’d be interested in any of these. I’d love to try my hand at different kinds of content, like:

Music Reviews No One Asked For

I write pretty extensively about music on here already, since it’s one of my biggest passions. Music critic almost seems like too perfect of a job title for me. My problem is that I don’t like good music. Like, my childhood favorite band was Bon Jovi, who I still listen to regularly and unironically. And my present day tastes aren’t much better. You won’t find anyone else bopping to all two albums from Lindsay freaking Lohan’s short-lived music career in the year of our Lord 2023, but here we are. Still, I think it would be fun to analyze and dissect the songs I listen to every day, especially as someone who is a trained musician and would-be music therapist, but even more so as a person whose taste in music generally sucks.

Jessa Reviews Beauty Crap

Basically what it says on the tin. I get a product, I tell you if I like it or not. Not that I have any significant pull or insight when it comes to this stuff, except that I’m a lifelong makeup and beauty product enthusiast, but it would be fun.

Fiction Fridays

Believe it or not, I have more story ideas than just Venona! Venona’s kind of my baby, but I have a lot of stories floating around in my noggin I’d like to get out there someday. I think I’ll do a dump of whatever I’m writing currently every Friday, just because I like alliteration and “Fiction Fridays” sounds cool as heck. I’d like to explore more short story writing anyways, and this blog would be the perfect outlet for that.

Sunday Morning Coffee

I’ve dabbled in spiritual stuff on here before, but I know it’s not everyone’s thing. So I was thinking of starting a weekly devotional thing where I just pick a verse in the Bible and talk about my perspective on it as a queer, progressive Christian. I realize I have a pretty unique experience as part of that niche demographic, so I’m excited to share my views on things with the world.

Video Content

This is the one I’m most nervous about, yet also excited for, if I can pull it off. I know videos get more attention in general than writing, so Id like to branch out into making video versions of my regular blogs. I’m nervous because visual content opens you up to a lot more criticism — YouTube commenters are mean sometimes — but I need to accept that not everyone is going to like what I put out into the world. But in order to make the greatest impact, you have to put yourself out there, and that means being vulnerable. And I think I’m ready for that.

So what do you think, reader of this blog? Which columns would you like to see regularly featured on this website? Let me know in the comments!

Who Wants to Be Jessa Joyce?!

Apparently, this person:

I don’t know how I should feel. It’s not often someone straight up pretends to be me. I guess they’ve been adding my friends too, which is frickin’ creepy.

But I’m kind of weirdly flattered?! Like, this person not only thinks I’m cool enough to emulate, but also thinks I’m hot enough to put an “18+” link in the profile. To be fair, it’s almost definitely a scam. I did have an OnlyFans very briefly, which was a wildly unsuccessful endeavor, but I had only one fan. And I’m highly doubting they cared enough about my mediocre derrière to have saved any of my tasteful noods. (And if you want to see my tasteful noods, click here.)

I know this is something I’m going to have to deal with even more as I become more and more of a public figure, what with my music and writing. Like, the band is actually starting to get attention. And it’s as exciting as it is scary. I’ve written about stan culture on here before. I doubt I’ll ever be Taylor Swift famous, but you don’t have to be to get a stalker. There’s millions of not-famous people who have stalkers, and here I am putting myself out there like I’m wearing a hi-vis vest with the words STALK ME printed in all caps.

That’s the price of being a creative, though. You have to put yourself out there if you ever want your art to make a difference in the world, and that’s going to open you up to attention from all kinds of weirdos. Including ones that use your pictures to make fake Instagram accounts.

I guess it could be worse. It’s annoying, but it’s not the end of the world. I’ll still continue to post on my own account (which y’all should follow) and create content that matters for the people who care about me and my work, and hopefully this creepo will languish in the depths of Instagram.

But like, don’t try to be me. There’s already enough of me in the world.

Dear Cadence, Part Six: Your Middle School Crush is Just a Guy

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, and Part Five

My first crush was Peter Frampton.

Peter Frampton was a British musician from the 70s, when you’re grandmother was young and hip. She’s the one who passed along her humble vinyl collection to me, including a Peter Frampton record called “I’m In You.”

Now this album cover awakened something in me. Was it the fluffy blonde hair? Was it the tight purple pants? Was it the seductive pose? Was it the hilariously overtly sexual title? Maybe it was a combination of these things, plus my own burgeoning sexuality at the age of 12, that led me to feel weird tinglies I’m sure you don’t want to imagine your mother having. All I knew is I wanted to die and be reincarnated as this man’s talk box. Like, I’d never been so jealous of a plastic tube.

But shortly after Peter Frampton came Kyle Kelley. Kyle Kelley was not a British musician from the 70s, but a guy who was actually my age and lived in Michigan and was, you know, actually attainable. But he didn’t feel attainable to me at the time, because he was gorgeous and popular and I was still a tiny weirdo. He had floppy auburn hair with bangs that fell just above his sea-glass eyes. He was short, maybe an inch taller then me, but I could care less. To me, he was the most handsome specimen I’d ever laid eyes on.

We met at church youth group, something I’d been talked into while attending a wedding for one of my aunt’s family members. The youth pastor and his wife were in attendance, and with me being 13-ish and lonely, they figured inviting me to one of their events was the perfect antidote. And it was there that I’d find Jesus — and Kyle Kelley.

I was a little hesitant about the church thing at first, mostly because I wasn’t sure if there was anything supernatural out there at that point. But Kyle Kelley — he was supernatural, this otherworldly beautiful being to me. He looked like a literal angel. Not the terrifying Biblical five-billion-eyes-having angel, thankfully, but part of me was convinced that I’d still be madly in love with him even if he did have five billion eyes. He could be a disembodied foot for all I cared. I just wanted him — bad.

But alas, he was already spoken for. His girlfriend, Cati, was everything I wasn’t. She was a cheerleader (of course), tan and curvy, outgoing and likeable, and generally the antithesis of teenage me. I remember them joking about getting married someday, because doesn’t everyone marry their middle school sweetheart?

I had to do something to win him over, to make him notice me. Like, I did do a pretty mean performance at the youth group air guitar contest to Relient K’s “Sadie Hawkins Dance,” one of Kyle’s favorite songs, which got him to talk to me to congratulate me. It also won me a four-pack of Monster, which everyone joked I did not need after that. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted more.

We went on a couple of trips to the quintessential Midwest amusement parks, Cedar Point and it’s little sister, King’s Island. On the King’s Island trip, his parents were chaperoning, funnily enough, and Chelsea and I got to ride down with them. Kyle was too cool to hang out with his parents and us plebs, so he rode with the cool kids in the cool kid van.

When we finally got there, though, Chelsea and I found ourselves sucked into the cool kids group, somehow, as we all went to ride the biggest roller coaster in the park. Nothing of interest happened here, except that Cati insisted we pray before getting on the ride, and crazily enough, the ride malfunctioned the very next day and I think people died or something. I’d like to think Cati’s prayers spared us.

Cati was turning out to be a literal saint, somehow, which was not the plot twist I was expecting from the pretty, popular cheerleader. When we went to bed that night, she noticed I didn’t have a place to sleep, so she went out of her way to build me a comfy little nest out of couch cushions and blankets. And she made it a point to talk to me, the loser, whenever she saw me by myself (which was a lot). Suddenly, I felt a little guilty for daydreaming about ways to steal her man. She was so…good.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to steal her man, because they ended up breaking it off in eighth grade. I think Chelsea was the one who told me excitedly as soon as she got the news Kyle Kelley was back on the market. And I finally got my chance to show him how badass I was on our youth group trip to Cedar Point.

I don’t know exactly how it happened. He and his friends split, and I got separated from my friends, and somehow we ended up in line for the Millenium Force together. That warm late September night, we stood in the crowded line, so close our hands brushed several times, and he regaled me with stories of hockey and…well, whatever else he was into. This was middle school — not exactly a deep relationship, you know? He was Into sports, though, so I let him yammer on about that, hanging on his every word because he was Kyle Kelley and I was madly in love. When we finally got to the front of the line, he chose the front row seats. I mustered up all the courage in my body to sit down next to him in the front row. We tightened our seatbelts, the car began to move, and he leaned over and whispered to me.

“Keep your hands up.”

And I did. And in that moment, I’d never felt more alive. I was there, with who I believed to be the love of my life, racing through the night sky at breakneck speeds, hands in the air. When we finally landed back on solid ground, we traversed the park to meet up with the others, running through the arcade and laughing the whole time. It was like a movie, and if it had ended at that very moment, that would have been the “good” ending.

Unfortunately, happy endings are just stories that haven’t ended yet. (Isn’t that a Mayday Parade song?)

We didn’t get together immediately after that. It took a few more years of playful flirting and banter for him to finally ask me to be his girlfriend. And when he finally did, I guess it was a little more anticlimactic than I was expecting. Sure, we went through the motions of high school sweethearts, him picking me up for movie dates in his white Grand Prix and all that, but there something was missing. And we never kissed, not until one night at the end of youth group. It was our first kiss, and I had a gut feeling that it was also our last. His lips were like sandpaper. There were no sparks. We had nothing in common. Why was I even dating this guy?

I thought back to the countless nights I cried over at Chelsea’s because I was so scared I’d never end up with him. I remembered all the times I’d fantasized about that moment, our first kiss, and how badly my entire body ached to be close to him. And somehow, now that I had everything I wanted, I could see how shallow this puppy love really was. We were the gender-flipped Avril Lavigne “Sk8r Boi” couple, me the musically-inclined emo kid and him, well…his favorite back was Nickelback. I’d built my entire life around a dude whose favorite band was Nickelback.

My relationship with Kyle Kelley fizzled out with little fanfare, and to be honest, I wasn’t even hurt. Sometimes you need to get what you want to realize you never really wanted it. Sometimes, you just wanted the idea of it. I held onto this idealized version of him for so long, I couldn’t see what he really was — just some guy. And not even a guy I really connected with. In the end, he was just a guy.

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This Land is My Land, Too

I’m going to say something that might be unpopular with some circles.

I’m proud to be an American.

For all its faults, it’s still my home. And it’s the home of MLK and Stonewall and a long legacy of people fighting for a better future. It’s the home of countless influential scientists and inventors. It’s the home of many of my favorite musicians, and the home of some of the greatest entertainers to ever walk the Earth. And most importantly, it’s the home of my closest friends and family. We’re all tied together by this shared land and a shared culture, the same way people have been tied together since the dawn of civilization.

Still, I don’t think America deserves a birthday party this year.

That party hat is starting to look like a dunce cap.

The Supreme Court just ruled that discrimination against certain groups of people is a-okay because free speech or whatever. This would be fine if the group in question were, let’s say, Nazis, but everyone knows this ruling is meant to be a slap toward us gays. As one law professor and analyst put it, “What you’re going to start to see eventually is people saying, ‘I run my little inn in this little town somewhere, and I don’t want to have same-sex couples sleeping in one of my bedrooms.’” It feels like the tippy top of a slippery slope toward something nasty. Not wanting to leave us with just one gut punch, the Court also ruled against student loan forgiveness. This is going to screw over so many hardworking students, current and former, who will be in debt to their eyeballs until death. Like, I’m pretty much banking on just freaking dying before I have to pay back everything at this point.

The debt collectors will never find me in here!

All this on top of the crimes the U.S. has been found guilty of — ridiculous amounts of gun crime, a rising fascist movement, the ever-present racism, stealing the land from the folks who were here first, need I go on?

All that said, I’m still optimistic. I still love this country, warts and all, because of the people here who are trying to make it a better place.

There’s a sentiment among the more jingoistic types that if you’re truly dedicated to your country, you’ll accept it no matter what. This is America — if you don’t like it, get out. You know the type.

But let’s say your family’s home is on fire. It’s a beautiful, beloved home that’s been passed down through generations, and now it’s up in flames. Do you leave it, or do you stay and put it out? There have been times I’ve considered leaving the country, building a raft to Canada or something (as if emigration were ever that easy). But what good does that do for the loved ones who are still trapped in the burning house? What good does that do for the house itself? Maybe the brave thing to do is to stay and fight.

Certain groups of people want to gatekeep the American dream. Hell, I saw this image from a “friend” on my newsfeed just the other day—

—as if you can’t be gay and American. As if you can’t be trans and American, or black and American, or Hispanic and American. There’s going to be people who try to convince you this isn’t your home. That you’re not welcome here. It’s in the face of these literal anuses that we need to stand up and claim our identities, resting our feet firmly within this blazing house we were born into. This is our home too, and the fight’s not over until all Americans are safe and thriving on her land.

Dear Cadence, Part Five: Find Your Passion

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, and Part Four

From the moment I emerged from the womb, I was obsessed with music.

Well, maybe not from that exact moment. I was probably preoccupied with, you know, learning how to breathe air and stuff.

But music was my first love and first language. I remember humming little songs to myself as I spun around, my first dabblings in songwriting. I didn’t know how to write those songs down, as I was a literal toddler, but I loved making up little melodies and singing them to myself. My parents even got me a tiny Walkman with a “record” option and had me singing into it from time to time. I wish I knew whatever happened to those old cassettes. If I ever hit it big, those tapes would be worth millions.

Some of my favorite memories involved singing and dancing around pretending I was Dodger, a cool dog voiced by Billy Joel from an old Disney film called Oliver and Company. (If, by happenstance, you end up with a brother, his name will likely be Oliver. He is not named after this film. Let this be clear. Your brother was not named after a movie with a cool dog voiced by Billy Joel. I just liked the name, okay?) Sometimes my mom would work out and play stuff like Foo Fighters and the Backstreet Boys, which is probably considered oldies by the time you read this. While she would do this, I’d stand in the mirror and lip-synch to the songs, make-believing I was some kind of rock star.

The point being, music and performing have always been an integral part of my identity. Noting this, “Santa” gifted me my first guitar for my eighth Christmas. A year or two later, my parents signed me up for one-on-one guitar lessons with a young punk named Eric, who my mom thought was hot. I’d been kicked out of swimming, gymnastics, dance, and pretty much everything else due to my then-very-undiagnosed ADHD, but I couldn’t get kicked out of guitar lessons. And I didn’t want to be kicked out either! I took to the instrument like a seal to water, and while I didn’t practice as much as I should’ve (read: undiagnosed ADHD), I was a natural. The language and theory of music just made sense to me.

But there was more to my love of music than just the music itself. I loved the idea of sharing it with people. I would watch Behind the Music documentaries for hours on end all about the inner workings of bands I liked. Maybe it’s because I had trouble making friends and was hilariously unpopular as a kid, but I idolized the idea of having a musical found family. I craved the intimacy of working closely with other people who had the same goals and interests as me.

Still, music was very much my personal thing, until one fateful day when I realized I needed to perform, to share my music with people outside my inner circle. It was the first time I ever sang in front of an audience.

In seventh grade, we took an end-of-the-year field trip to the Motown Museum in Detroit. My days at that school were numbered — I’d convinced my parents to let me switch to a semi-private school to escape the constant bullying. Still, I had to get through this stupid trip, which actually was a welcome reprieve from my usual day of sitting in the library like a loser and actively trying to avoid contact with my peers.

The museum, nicknamed Hitsville, USA, was actually more like a small house than whatever you’re picturing, and it’s been said some of the greatest songs of all time had been recorded there. I don’t remember much about the field trip itself, except that in the recording studio, there was a giant hole in the ceiling. This was a reverb chamber, where recordings would be played into and recorded back in order to get a crisp echo effect. The tour guide wanted a student to demonstrate how it worked by singing beneath it. No one’s hands went up. A shiver ran down my spine.

I will never see these people again.

Meekly, I raised my hand and all eyes were on me, the class weirdo who never talked. I took my place underneath the reverb chamber and sang the chorus of my favorite Motown song, “My Girl” by the Temptations.

The silence that followed was deafening as dozens of wide eyes zoned in on me. Suddenly, the room erupted into applause. As I took my place back in the group, I was greeted with a flurry of “Woah, that was incredible!” Even my biggest bully asked me not to forget her when I won American Idol. For my last few days at that school, I was no longer the class pariah, but the class Mariah.

Things changed quickly once I discovered my niche in life. I started playing guitar and singing for literally anything I could weasel my way into. At my new school, I became “the voice” of the student population, singing the national anthem for every event and accompanying the jazz band with its vocal pieces. I even got to play (an obviously much whiter) Beyoncé in a choral performance of “Single Ladies,” leotard and all. I became a significantly more confident person with every performance under my belt.

Cadence, I don’t know what your calling will be. Considering who’s likely going into making you, you’ll probably be musically gifted as well. And incredibly smart. And beautiful. And probably have IBS, but you win some and you lose some. No matter what, I know your passion will find you one way or another. And once you find it, chase it with everything you’ve got.

The Creative Grind: What You Should Be Doing Every Day

There’s only two types of people in the world — the ones that entertain and the ones that observe. Is that a direct quote from a Britney Spears song? Maybe. Whatever. Just stick with me here.

You see, my problem is this. I’m dreaming away—

—wishing I had a stable career as a writer, or musician, or really anything creative. Like, I’ve been streaming “let’s play” content in a dog costume because at this point, I’m just throwing spaghetti at the fridge and seeing what sticks.

And let’s face it, I make an adorable doggo.

And I’m not alone in these dreams. Last night, I was sitting in a dear friend’s living room with my wife discussing how we wished we could make a living off of our creative endeavors, me as a musician and writer, my wife as an artist, and my friend as an actress and playwright. That’s when my wife shared a gem of wisdom.

“You gotta do it every day. Even when it’s hard.”

She’s been practicing what she preaches too, drawing even just a small doodle on days when she feels uninspired. And it’s been paying off — her art has been getting way more attention lately, just because of the sheer volume of work she’s putting out into the world. I could make an entire separate blog post about the benefits of being prolific when it comes to putting your work out there, but in this post, I mostly just want to focus on how your perspectives change when you’re forced to work every day.

Like I previously said (or rather, like Britney said), there are two types of people in the world — those who entertain, and those who observe. Creators vs. consumers. And the difference isn’t necessarily creativity. Lots of creators really aren’t that creative, and lots of consumers have plenty of latent creativity waiting in the wings. No, what separates the two categories is the willingness to put in the work, to make something happen. Saying you’re doing something isn’t the same as doing it. You can call yourself a writer all you want, but if you never write, you’re actually a liar, and nobody likes those.

The solution is to constantly engage yourself in your creative interest. Every. Single. Day. It seems daunting at first, but it’s the only way to progress in your field. The trick is to build up whatever it is you want to do into a habit, even just a tiny one.

In James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits” (which I highly recommend), it is suggested that one find the initial spark of what it is you want to do, and turn that into a habit. Maybe you want to run more, but running a marathon seems too out of reach. Make your daily habit putting on running shoes. Put those shoes in the way of your door so you don’t forget. You might not necessarily go for a run, but you made that first step, and once you cross that line, you’re more likely to actually go for a run. It’s all about getting past that threshold.

This can work for just about any creative endeavor. Wanna write more? Just open up your word processor once a day. Maybe read through some past stuff. For convenience, do your writing on whatever device you use most. I’m writing this on my phone while sitting on the toilet, as a matter of fact. I’ve made a habit of just opening up my writing software whenever I have to, uh, answer nature’s call. Which is more frequently than I’d like to admit, but it’s good for my writing output.

IBS stands for “incredible blogging skills,” obviously.

If you make it a point to even just get a tiny bit better at your craft every single day, over several weeks or months or years, you’ll see exponential improvement in your skills. You just have to force yourself to do the thing, even on days when it feels like an impossible task. Carve out even a few minutes a day to practice or write or draw or what-have-you. Even if it’s not presentable, at least you did something for the day, and that’s what matters. It’s all about keeping up that inertia — the more you do it, the more you’ll keep doing it.

So my challenge to you this week is to find a way to make your creative passion into a daily habit. Find ways to make that habit unavoidable, and keep up that creative grind. It’ll all pay off in the end.

Dear Cadence, Part Four: Never Take Friendship For Granted

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, and Part Three

These stories are going to jump around a lot. I promise it’ll all make sense in the end. Probably.

I mentioned in the last chapter that I wasn’t exactly popular in grade school. I could count all the friends I had on one finger, and she didn’t even go to my school. That changed when I met Chelsea, though.

I don’t even remember how I met Chelsea. I’m pretty sure she was the cousin of one of the few girls in my grade who didn’t run away out of fear of catching the Unpopular when I approached them. Her name was Natalie, I think. It doesn’t matter. Anyways, I’m pretty sure Natalie and I got called lesbians by the other girls in our class, which is hilarious in hindsight, but I was one hundred percent not attracted to her. In fact, my big gay crush at that time in my life was my classmate Shelby Cox, who had the same dark hair with bangs and cute perky lips as Ann Wilson from Heat. It would be another fifteen years or so before I’d ever admit it was a big gay crush, though.

But I digress. I don’t recall our first interaction, but I’m pretty sure Chelsea stood up for me when another kid was committing an unspeakable act like calling me a lesbian (which is totally not true, obviously). And she was so. Freakin. Cool. She was younger than me by a year but already quite taller than me, and incredibly svelte, like a dancer. She had a splash of freckles across her pale face and dark hair cut into a stereotypical emo style. If you don’t know what that looks like, Cadence, just look at any pictures of me between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four. Chelsea was the one to inspire me to get that haircut, actually. This girl was unnaturally beautiful, like a punk-rock Snow White. And even better, she liked me! Not in a gay way, although in retrospect some of my burgeoning sapphic feelings were definitely directed toward her. Girls that don’t have baby queer fee-fees toward their middle school best friend don’t scream “All the Things She Said” by t.A.T.u. with them in the car on the way to Thursday night youth group. But for the most part, she was just this ridiculously cool girl who took a bizarre interest in being friends with the most unpopular girl in school.

I could list a bazillion memories with her, but I don’t think I could do any of them justice with words alone. We were inseparable. We were — dare I say — BFFs (best friends forever, if that term is antiquated by the time you read this). We had the quintessential teenage girl friendship. We went to the mall together. We went to the beach together (and freaked out because we thought we saw a jellyfish — in Michigan, mind you). We played in the mud on New Years Eve like absolute hooligans, and trick or treated like we weren’t too old. I remember we’d go to the aforementioned youth group and giggle together about the boys we liked there. One time, she tried to give me “cool” lessons.

“You don’t say ‘hi’ to a guy,” she said. “You have to do it all suave, like ‘heeeey.’” She immediately went up and demonstrated on her crush, this older hipster kid named Robert I think.

He never dated her, but she liked to think he liked her back.

Despite being younger than me, she was almost a big sister figure, the less-naive of the two of us. Another time, we were alone in her dad’s apartment watching Degrassi on her TV or music videos on a Stone Age version of YouTube or whatever it was we were into at the time. That’s when she discovered I’d never been kissed.

“Don’t you want to know how to impress Kyle Kelley when you finally get to make out with him?” she asked.

“It’s not like you’ve ever been kissed either,” I said.

“Watch this.” She grabbed a can of Coca Cola and placed her lips to the rim. “You just do it like this. Like, pretend the can is Kyle’s lips.” After her not-so-subtle demonstration, she handed me the can, which I clumsily fake-made out with.

“Oh Jessie, you’ll get there eventually,” she sighed.

Some of my favorite moments with her include the many times we dressed up like Bon Jovi and danced around the living room. She was always Richie Sambora because she had the darker hair, and I was Jon Bon Jovi. In reality though, she was the Jon of the friendship, the charismatic frontman, the natural leader, and I was her Richie, her trusty guitar-slinging sidekick.

The summer of my eighth grade year, we traveled up north with my parents and a mutual friend. If my memory serves me correctly, it was a pretty good trip. We stayed in a condo my brother’s family owned — I think it eventually got flooded and torn down, but it was beautiful at the time. We were right off the lake, just down the road from downtown Traverse City, and I savored every minute I got to spend with my dear friends. And I’m glad I did, because it all came crashing down when I got home and noticed the sunscreen we’d bought was missing. I sent Chelsea a simple message asking if she’d accidentally taken it home.

Her response knocked me backward.

“Why would you accuse me of stealing it, you lying (insert catty teen girl insult here)?”

My worst fears were realized. She’d fallen into the wrong crowd and was suddenly “too cool” for me. By this time, I’d switched schools, but it still hurt to lose her for such a petty reason. I’d go on to make a myriad more friends, believe it or not, and became quite the social butterfly over the course of several years. Still, I always held a tiny bit of a grudge against my childhood best friend for leaving me the way she did.

I wish this chapter had a happy ending. She reached out to me in adulthood after turning her life around, joining the military, marrying, and having a kid of her own. She was beyond apologetic for abandoning our friendship, but we never became as close as we were back in those halcyon days of youth. By that time, I’d moved on too, going off to college and touring with a band and eventually getting married myself. I never bothered to rekindle a meaningful relationship again, because I had my own life now.

And I’m kicking myself for it.

On the warmest Christmas morning, I got a message from a mutual friend that shook me to my core.

“Jessie, I’m so sorry about Chelsea.”

Turns out, she’d developed a rare cancer that eventually took her life. She was 27.

I wish I had a chance to get to know her as an adult. She’d grown up so much from the girl I knew and, by every account, was an amazing mother. She was an aspiring writer. She made art. She wanted to go into ministry. She absolutely deserved the sweetest, longest life. She deserved to watch her son grow up. And she deserved better from me. I wish I could have told her how much she meant to me before it was too late.

Cadence, you will have a revolving door of people coming in and out of your life every second you’re on this planet. Relationships don’t last forever, but love does. So while those people who mean the most to you are still around, shower them with all the love you have to give. Love so hard it hurts. Because someday, they’ll leave, or you’ll leave, or you’ll simply grow apart, or, like me and Chelsea, the grim reality of death will separate you until the next life, whatever that happens to be. You’ll regret a lot of things, but you’ll never regret love.

As the Red Hot Chili Peppers said in their song “Dosed,” show love with no remorse.

Silent in the Face of Oppression: What I Would Have Done Differently

Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?

The platform I use to publish this website gives me little daily writing prompts as inspiration. Sometimes I use them immediately, sometimes I save them to write about later (and in all actuality, leave them to languish in my “drafts” for eternity). When this one popped up on my screen, I knew exactly what I needed to write about, because as much as I try to live without regrets, this is one of the few that I still cling to for some reason.

I cut my teeth as a musician and performer in the worship team of the church of my youth. Normally I’d leave it unnamed, but honestly, Metro City Church doesn’t deserve that dignity. Not after the events of this story, at least. I will be honest — my time on the team was an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience. I had the honor of playing with some of the best musicians I’ve ever met, and on the largest stage I’ve ever played. Imagine a slightly scaled-down version of whatever comes to mind when I say “megachurch,” and that’s basically what we were. A mini Hillsong in the heart of Downriver, with one of the largest congregations in the entire area.

Every week or so, I’d stand up on that stage and play my heart out for the Lord, which is still one of my favorite ways to connect with the divine. Giving credit where credit is due, I think Metro lit a fire for music and worship in me that still burns to this day. In fact, I still play in my current church’s worship band every now and then. But playing on Metro’s stage was nothing short of amazing. We had all the lights, fog machines, a state-of-the-art audio system, we had in-ear monitors for Christ’s sake (literally!). My point is, for all the smack I’m about to talk when it comes to this church, they did do something right, and that something was music.

The downside was that the church’s politics leaned a bit further right than I would have liked, but in the pre-Trump days, this was easy enough to ignore. Like, I’d get the occasional unprompted “ew, you like Bernie Sanders?” from the pastor or his kid, along with a lecture on why Bernie Sanders sucks. Again, this was entirely unprompted — it’s not like I was wearing a Bernie Sanders shirt, or had a Bernie Sanders sticker on my guitar case, or even brought up Bernie Sanders in conversation, ever. They just knew I was one of the small tribe of progressives, mostly fellow musicians who’d giggle irreverently at the post-worship breakfast about sappy “pro-life” messages or whatever subtle jab the lead pastor decided to throw at the libs that day.

For the most part, though, I could look past it. Sure, the church supported anti-choice measures and preached the dreaded “love the sinner, hate the sin” message when it came to the queer community, but these topics came up so rarely that I didn’t mind. Metro was one of those insidious religious institutions that disguised itself as a “come as you are” church, welcoming everyone and trying to cast as broad a net as possible, as to not alienate anyone. But beneath the surface, those ideologies still lurked. I know way too many gay/trans folks who were duped into feeling safe at Metro, only to get hit with a nonchalant homophobic or transphobic quip from a member of the congregation.

I wasn’t out at the time, and I was married to a male member of the church, so I was marked safe from most of these comments. As far as anyone knew, I was a regular, God-fearing, heterosexual woman. But I knew in my heart I wasn’t straight, not entirely, or even mostly. I had to push down a lot of my gay fee-fees to fit in with the rest of the church, which is why I came out as late in life as I did.

Everything changed in one moment, though.

I still remember the burn of the stage lights and the eyes of the congregation as I stood on the stage, guitar in hand, while the pastor rattled off a list of upcoming events. It wasn’t unusual for him to come up and make announcements between songs like this. But one of the upcoming events he named this time shook me to the core: a conversion therapy class for young women.

Here’s where I should have done everything differently. I should have thrown my guitar down and walked off that stage. Screw subtlety — I absolutely should have made a scene. Instead, I froze. I stood there complacent in my own oppression and complicit in the abuse of these girls.

Thankfully, this was the beginning of the end of my time at Metro. As controversy swept over the church throughout the local (and even national) queer community, I found myself torn between the church I loved, who I thought loved me, and my own gut instinct that this was not fucking okay. I even posted a tone-deaf defense of the church, claiming not all of us were raging homophobes, and my ally friends (rightfully) called me out for trying to defend them at all. I knew I had to do something.

So I came out. In front of everyone. I’m queer. I’m one of those girls. I’m on your side. And I’m so glad I did, because the act of finally admitting it to myself led me to leave a marriage my heart wasn’t in and marry my best friend instead. I left the Metro and never looked back, settling on a truly inclusive Methodist church that practiced what Christ actually taught, instead of the Americanized evangelical crap propagated by hipster megachurches.

But I still wonder what would have happened if I’d walked off the stage that morning. It still eats at me that I was silent in the face of oppression and hate. What does that say about my integrity? I’d like to think I’ve grown exponentially since then. I’d like to think that should I be placed in that situation now, I’d stand up for myself and for those girls. The Bible teaches that real love is laying down one’s life for their friends; the least I could do is lay down my pride (and probably get excommunicated, but as they say, que será será).

I don’t hate Metro, at least not the people there. They’re lost in the sauce just like I was. Love the sinner, hate the sin, as those circles always say, and while I hate what Metro stands for, I know there’s still some decent people there fighting the good fight to make it the loving, affirming safe haven it could be.

Well, maybe if the lead pastor would stop doing *this.*

Yeah, I’m being too optimistic.

Amateur Hour: Why You Don’t Need to be the Best at Everything

I’m a Pisces through and through. Not like I necessarily believe the position of a bunch of gas balls a bazillion miles away had anything to do with my personality, but I feel like the Pisces label fits me eerily well nonetheless. Over-emotional artsy-fartsy weirdo” is too many syllables anyways.

Another characteristic that comes with the territory is the love of all things aquatic. We Pisces love water — being in it, or even just being near it, brings us a kind of primal joy. We’re fish, after all. It’s our natural habitat, and having grown up in Michigan by a river, it makes me feel at home.

With all this in mind, you’d think I’d be a natural swimmer, right?

This morning, I decided I’d swim some laps in lieu of my normal morning workout. Typically I go to the gym at like, 5 in the morning, when no one but the craziest fitness fiends are there. The pool’s usually pretty dead at that hour.

Usually.

I get there and there’s two other people — a man who looks slightly older than me and a woman who looks slightly younger than me. And they clearly know what they’re doing. The woman even has the full swim cap and goggles look going on, and they’re both breaststroking from one side of the pool to the other at lightning speeds. Me, I dip my toe in and start my meager doggypaddle to the other side, while Michael Phelps and his little sister swim literal circles around me.

This is me pretending I know what I’m doing.

At first, I was a bit self-conscious. Clearly I had no idea what I was doing. I never learned to properly swim. In fact, I got kicked out of swim lessons as a child, probably for my then-very-undiagnosed ADHD symptoms. I mean, I got kicked out of ballet, tap, and gymnastics for the same reason. (One-on-one guitar lessons were the one thing I couldn’t get kicked out of, but that’s a whole other story.) But all I know about swimming, I learned from jumping into the pool at my childhood home and splashing around with no motive or goal in mind, except to have fun.

There’s nothing wrong with striving to be the very best at stuff, but I feel like we devalue the idea of doing something just because you like it. We live in a world that screams at us to monetize everything, to use our free time to hustle and find hobbies that will move us ahead in the world. I’d normally agree with that sentiment, at least somewhat. It’s helpful to find something you’re good at and to be able to make a little extra cash with it. But we forget that life’s about more than just making money and flaunting skills. Sometimes, you simply gotta jump in the water and do what your body tells you to do, even if the form or technique isn’t perfect.

The word “amateur” is often used as a derogatory term for “person who sucks at a thing.” No one wants to be an amateur, right? But the thing is, it’s not supposed to be an insult. The opposite of amateur is professional, or a person who does something as a profession. I’m a professional musician, for example. I use my skills as a vocalist and guitarist and make (an abysmal amount of) money. When I create music, I’m thinking in terms of how I can market this new single, or how I can fit this new song into our set list, or worrying about a plethora of other things that could affect the trajectory of my career.

When I paint, though, I paint through the eyes of an amateur. Sure, I know the basics of mixing colors and mediums and paint thinner, but I’m not exactly the next Picasso or Dali. And I’m fine with that, because I’m not painting professionally. I’m painting because the act of painting relaxes me. I’m painting because I get a sense of joy from it. I’m painting because, well, I just love to do it. That’s where the word “amateur” comes from. It’s French for “one who loves.” I’m an amateur painter because I don’t do it for compensation or recognition. Rather, I paint because I love it!

I have to love it, because I’m obviously not making any money with *this.*

That’s what I kept in mind as I swam my measly five laps this morning. I’m not training for the Olympics. To be honest, I don’t work out at all for any good reason. I just love the act of working out. I love the rush of endorphins, and the way it makes my body feel, and that moment of solitude I get doing cardio in the morning before work. I’m not an athlete. I’m an amateur. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

So the next time you feel discouraged because you suck at sometime, take a moment to evaluate why you’re doing it. Are you doing it because you want the fame and fortune? We live in this capitalistic society that teaches us there’s no value in something unless we’re using it to make money. But embracing being an amateur is an act of defiance against this system of belief. It’s punk as hell.

As kids, we sing, dance, paint, run, and swim without worrying what people think of us. These things come naturally to us as human beings, and we only stop because society says we’ll never be good enough at them. I challenge you to pick up that paintbrush or jump into the water. Whatever it was you used to love doing, whatever it was you stopped doing because you sucked at it, try your hand at it again. Don’t compare yourself to the professionals. You might never make money doing it, but that’s okay. Just do it because you love it.