Engaged and Poly: What It All Means

If you haven’t heard the news yet, I proposed to my long-term, long-distance partner Olivia last night at a house show, the two year anniversary of the show we met at.

I had it all meticulously planned out — I bought her a rose gold opal ring and played the song I wrote for her during the show and did the whole “down on one knee” thing. She cried. I cried. I think some random strangers cried. It was beautiful.

Now begins even more planning, venues and dresses and cakes and all that. We’re going to go through all the motions and do a spiritually binding ceremony of sorts. But here’s the thing — we can’t legally marry. I’m legally married to my wife, Crass. No, I’m not leaving her for Olivia. They know about each other and like each other a lot. In fact, we all plan to live together as a family.

That’s the joy — and pain — of polyamory.

It hurts that I can’t ever legally make Olivia my wife, but for all intents and purposes, she will be my wife. I plan to do everything in my power to treat her as an equal to Crass, from adding her to my will to making her legal guardian of my future kids (whom she will have a hand in making as the sperm donor). We’re fighting an uphill battle against a monogamy-centered world that doesn’t understand, but it’s worth it. She’s worth it.

As a queer woman, I’m reminded of all the LGBTQ+ couples throughout history who never got to have their love validated by the government. I’m a romantic at heart, as much as I want to deny it at times. I don’t need a formal piece of paper saying we’re a couple. The greatest love stories of all time were never “sanctioned” by the government, all the queer and otherwise forbidden romances between folks of different races or socioeconomic backgrounds during a time when those relationships weren’t allowed. The Romeos and Juliets and the Jacks and Roses.

There’s a Bon Jovi song (of course) that reminds me of these relationships.

I was afraid to listen to it as a church-going kid because it mentioned sin and sin is supposed to be bad, right? But the message of the song is so much more beautiful than my child-mind could have comprehended. It’s about not needing the government or the rest of the world to validate your love. The young couple in the song maintains that it’s not legal marriage that makes a love, but the love itself.

Or is it right to hold you
And kiss your lips goodnight
They say the promise is forever
If you sign it on the dotted line
Bon Jovi, “Living in Sin”

Listening to this song as an adult through a queer lens, and especially as someone in a “scandalous” polyamorous relationship, it takes on a new, deeper meaning. I don’t know where we fit, the three of us, but I know I belong with my partners. I belong with Crass, and I belong with Olivia, and nothing can ever take that from me.

True love is a rare, special thing, and I was lucky enough to find it not once, but twice. That’s not something to take for granted.

How My Parents Convinced Me to NOT Become a Doctor

I’m about three weeks into my internship now. I don’t know why I’m shocked. I guess I assumed I’d spontaneously combust before I got this far, but here I am, actually doing the damn thing.

It hasn’t been an easy road, but at least I don’t have to go it alone. My wife’s been so supportive and understanding, cheering me on from the sidelines (well, from the couch in our Airbnb). Sometimes when it’s especially stressful, she puts on kids’ shows to cheer me up. Today, she put on Bluey, which is her go-to for wholesome entertainment.

The episode she chose was “Dragon,” where the titular puppy’s family draws and narrates a fairytale adventure. The rest of the family is floored when its matriarch reveals her secret talent — she can really draw. While the dad struggles to draw a simple stick-figure donkey, the mom illustrates a beautiful horse companion for her character in the story. A flashback reveals the true reason she’s so good at art — her own mother encouraged her when she was a child.

“Doesn’t that remind you of us?” my wife said. “We’re good at what we do because our parents encouraged us too.”

You see, I wasn’t always going to be a music therapist. When I first signed up for college courses as a high school senior, I had my mind made up. I was going to be a cardiologist. I liked to tell people I was doing it because my dad had a heart attack and I wanted to help other people like him, but the real reason was because my boyfriend’s best friend’s dad was a cardiologist and he was like, really rich and powerful. So I decided I was going to be a pre-med student.

But fate had other plans.

The night I went to orientation and declared my major, my parents walked in on me practicing guitar. They sat me down and lovingly told me that if I went down the med school path, I’d be wasting my talents. They told me I had a future in music, be it as a therapist, professor, or rock star. Screw the money and prestige — they encouraged me to follow my passion instead.

Which makes my parents the first in the history of human civilization to convince their child to *not* be a doctor.

So I called up the university right away and told them I’d made a mistake. And that’s how I ended up studying classical guitar instead of, I don’t know, anatomy and crap.

Music hasn’t been an easy road, and I almost gave up multiple times. There were the times I dropped out of the music therapy program. There was the time my own pastor told me I wasn’t a good enough guitarist to perform on stage. There was even a time I almost gave up on playing music entirely after my first real band broke up. But each and every time it got difficult, I went back to that conversation with my mom and dad, and I remembered why it is I was put on this planet — to make the world a brighter place through music. And I pressed on.

There will be times during this internship where I’ll want to give up. But I have so much support and so much love in my life. It’s why I’m able to do what I do. I still remember the pride in my dad’s eyes when he’d tell everyone he’d meet about how his seventh grader could write and perform her own music. That kind of stuff sticks with you. I want to make him proud.

I’m going to finish this internship and make it as a music therapist, even if it kills me.

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.

Dear Cadence, Part Fourteen: Marry Your Best Friend

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, and Part Thirteen

Fun fact! When your Mama Crass first met me, she hated me. Like, a lot.

We met because she was dating another girl in the program. I latched onto them while they were walking to grab some books, since I too needed books and had no sense of self-awareness. I figured it was college, I was hot now and everyone wanted to hang out with me anyways, and they could use the company, right? Had I been more self-aware, I would have noticed how your mother’s eyes were daggers the entire walk there and back.

I didn’t see her much freshman year, after I had invited myself on her and her girlfriend’s excursion to the bookstore. The next time we actually talked was the Best Day Ever.

I was outside in the quaint courtyard between our two dorms, playing harp like a little angel, when Mama Crass passed me on the way to her room. She was having a terrible day, probably the worst day ever. But I recognized her from the bookstore trip and knew she worked at the newspaper as well, so I interrupted my playing to yell out a “hi!” And to my surprise, she came over and talked to me. I guess she figured her day couldn’t get any worse, so might as well see what the weirdo with the harp had to say.

“There’s a festival thing over at the Student Center,” I said. “Wanna check it out?”

And her saying yes to my spontaneous adventure was the catalyst for many, many years of friendship. We were inseparable from that evening forward. I’d never had a best friend I clicked with like her. She was my other half, to the point where people became concerned if one of us was somewhere without the other. Me, her, and eventually your aunt Mel (who was a nerdy meerkat of a human and not the badass confident woman you know now) became something of a power trio. We went on vacations together, stayed up late studying (and smoking a certain herb) together, we even ran the newspaper together. We had our inside jokes and knowing glances and for the first time ever, I felt completely, wholeheartedly loved by someone who wasn’t my parents.

One night, Mel was asleep next to us. I felt your mom brush her hand against my thigh. Normally, I wouldn’t do this kind of thing, not the good little Christian girl who’d had the whole “homosexuality is evil” thing hammered into her brain from a young age. But something came over me that night. I figured girls experiment in college all the time. When in Rome, do gay shit, right? I’ll spare you the details, but everything changed from then on. In all but name, Mama Crass was my girlfriend. I’d just never admit it.

(And yes, that happened next to Aunt Mel. No, she hasn’t let us live it down.)

I had my boyfriends, but none of them stuck, and she was there the whole time, trying to figure out what my confused bisexual ass was thinking. I even got married, and she was the maid of honor, naturally. She didn’t look all that maidenly at the wedding — she was really leaning into the more butch look at the time, with her cropped hair and suit and tie. There exist pictures of us at this wedding, and you’ll probably flip if I ever show them to you. I probably won’t, because I looked equally awful at the time, having cut all my hair off in an attempt to pull off a flapper bob. But I digress. This was a bad time for both of us, as evidenced by the questionable haircuts.

At some point when I was married to Josh, I came to this striking realization — whenever I was hanging out with him, why did I wish I was hanging out with her instead? And that was the moment I knew this marriage wasn’t going to work. I mentioned earlier that I moved out to Ypsilanti to be closer to my school and job, but I didn’t mention all the BS that came with that.

At the time, all I could afford was a room in these shitty apartments where someone got murdered almost yearly. The apartment complex operated similarly to a dorm, where tenants were matched with each other based on interests and roomed together. Unfortunately, the system was not foolproof, and I got stuck with a pair of evil lesbians (pro tip: not all queer folks are cool, sadly). They didn’t like me or my cat, Krubby, so they tried to get rid of us the only way they knew how — by calling animal control.

On Christmas Eve.

To get Krubby taken away.

(I told you they were evil.)

Needless to say, the animal control worker came in, inspected the apartment, and saw no reason to take Krubby. But I was furious. In fact, I’d never been more furious. And so was your mom. So much so that she left the safety of her parents’ house, where she’d taken refuge after graduation, and came to stay with me and Krubby until we could break the lease and leave.

And only then did I realize what I was missing. Why I didn’t want a family with Josh. It was your mother all along. I saw how loving and maternal and warm and protective she was with Krubby, and I knew she was the one I wanted to mother my children someday.

It wasn’t easy — despite having come out as pansexual, I’d never actually dated a woman before, so the social transition to outwardly queer was uncomfortable at times. Some members of my own family have distanced themselves from me. But the ones who matter have stuck around. My dad called me up in this serious tone shortly after getting together with your mother officially, saying he needed to talk to us about something important. So he took us to a Coney Island and sat us down and basically said “Fuck what the rest of the family says, I love and support you no matter what.” And my mom, after years of denying the fact that I was probably some kind of gay, came to terms with it. “Now I get two daughters,” she said.

We married in a tiny ceremony with both my parents present by the Detroit River on Valentine’s Day. I was never really a romantic, at least not until I met your other mom, but standing there in our casual but pretty dresses on that windy winter’s day, I felt like I finally believed in true love. I felt like happy ever afters not only really existed, but I could have one. I had a love story, a truly marvelous, one-of-a-kind love story, and it was hers and mine.

Marriage is a beautiful thing, and it’s even more beautiful when the person you marry is your best friend. It’s not all rainbows and roses, but when you’re fighting side-by-side with your favorite person, everything seems to come together. I pray you find someone (or multiple someones) who make you feel the way your Mama Crass makes me feel, because the people you spend your life with make everything worth it.

Dear Cadence, Part Three: Embrace What Makes You Weird

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 and Part Two

My earliest memory was waking up from a nap on top of a stack of rugs inside a sketchy flea market. But my second earliest memory was watching Wheel of Fortune.

I didn’t know what it was – the colors, perhaps. That’s the only reason I can think of why a toddler would enjoy a words-based game show. I got a little older, and I found myself scared of cartoons because they were so loud and bright compared to my beloved Wheel of Fortune. And CNN. My dad always had our boxy TV on CNN, and it became such a thing to me, I’d freak out if anything else was on. And I needed the History Channel on my bedroom TV to sleep. I wouldn’t accept anything else.

I was really sensitive to noises. If my mom was vacuuming, I’d hide behind the recliner and cower for my life. There were some sounds I liked a lot, like the sound of the bath filling. I’d curl up in the corner of the bathroom and just listen to the sound of the water until my mom would inevitably pick me up and put me in the tub. Sometimes, I’d make little sounds just because it felt right, usually bird noises. And music. I always say music was my first language. Growing up, I didn’t talk a lot to people who were my age. I could and would give my entire life story to the cashier at Kmart, but I had a hard time socializing with peers. But I loved singing for absolutely anyone who would listen. My classmates would even throw coins at me for singing songs at recess.

What I didn’t realize, though, was that they were making fun of me.

I was 17 or 18 before my mom said the “a” word to me. As in autism. It’s a scary-sounding word to a lot of parents, and when I was a child, there was an even steeper stigma attached to it. No mom wanted their kid to get diagnosed with autism. So she never got me diagnosed, not even when my childhood psychologist had mentioned it. And my teachers didn’t bother to check up on me either. So little Jessie spins around in the back of the classroom during lectures, obsesses over 8-track tapes, and has no friends? Well, she gets good grades and doesn’t start problems, so we’ll just pretend there’s nothing weird about this child.

But I knew there was something wrong with me. There had to be. I had an encyclopedic knowledge of vintage music, but I couldn’t make eye contact or even speak a coherent sentence to someone my own age without feeling wildly uncomfy. And my ever-present weirdness made me an easy target for the innocent cruelty of schoolchildren. I remember how sensitive I was to the smell of ranch dressing. As soon as the other kids found out the stench alone made me gag, I had to start eating lunch in the library, lest I be pelted with ranch dressing packets.

Two memories stick out in particular. One was of my “frenemy” Carissa and her crony, another Jessica, framing me for hitting Other Jessica, simply because they didn’t like me. Because I didn’t “fit in.”Jessica had made a red mark on her face and claimed I’d hit her, and Carissa corroborated her story. It was my word against both of theirs, so I ended up getting sent to the principal’s office over it. I lost my trip to McDonald’s over that, actually.

Another time, I got punched in the stomach by some guy. Ouch.

My point is, if you’re anything like me — and I’m guessing you’re a lot more like me than you’d like to admit — you’re gonna be weird, and that’s going to make you a target for unsavory people. They’ll hurt you because they think it’s funny. They’ll take advantage of you because they know they can get away with it. And a younger, less-wisened version of myself would have said your best course of action would be to change yourself, to fit in.

Because that’s exactly what I did.

I meticulously studied what the “cool girls” were doing and started copying their mannerisms and adopting their interests. I learned to shut my big dumb face when I wanted to obsess over Bon Jovi or Pokémon. I ditched my 70s rocker style for a more conventional preppy look, and my beloved red lipstick got thrown in the trash. I stopped talking about my special interests and “smart kid things” and put on a bimbo facade because it made people tease me less. Everything that made me unique got watered down to something more palatable.

I broke my own bones to fit in someone else’s box.

Sure, I made friends, but inside I was miserable. It took so much out of me to hide parts of myself. And I knew deep down I still didn’t fit in entirely. I was last to be picked in literally everything. I remember going to on a trip to Chicago with the marching band and my “friend” group chose to room together without me. I did manage to get voted senior class president — because no one else ran.

My saving grace was that around the time I became an adult, the “manic pixie dream girl” stereotype became the hottest thing, and suddenly everything that made me eccentric and weird made me desirable. In college, I started dropping the act and grew into what I was all along — a confidently autistic woman, quirks and all. And it won me way more genuine friends, people who have stuck around in the long run, who would never ditch me or pick me last. My college years were filled with so many experiences of legitimate joy, the kind that only comes when you’re living as your authentic self.

So if your thing is trains, be the biggest freaking ferroequinologist out there. If you like dressing like a pirate in everyday life, tighten up that corset and straighten that eyepatch. If you love music like I do, sing and dance your heart out and don’t give a damn who throws coins at you and laughs. History forgets normal people like them, but weird people like us live on forever. Being yourself is one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do, but it’s worth it.

Confessions of the Family Dud

I have a cute little decorative plaque hanging above my household altar to Christ/Hildegard von Bingen/Freddie Mercury. It was a Christmas gift from my brother, and it reads “Family is your anchor.” Which is correct — I’ve always been very close to my family, and they are the anchor that keeps my feet on the ground when I’m feeling too big for my britches, or whatever the saying is. We’re a blue-collar working class family of hillbillies, after all, and I’ve learned from them to never forget where I came from.

Strong work ethic runs in my family, going back to the farmers and miners who left Appalachia to find a better life working in Michigan’s many factories. That same blood runs through my father’s veins, having retired after many years as a union steelworker, and continues through my generation. In fact, both of my siblings managed to break out of our income bracket and probably make enough to be considered upper middle class at this point. My sister is a successful businesswoman, while my brother does…powerwashing I think? All I know is he makes beaucoup cash from it. The point is, they’re the American dream, a couple of the rare folks who actually did manage to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Which probably explains why they’re Republican while the rest of my family are staunch Democrats, but this isn’t a political post.

Nope, it’s about me, the family dud.

I’ll be honest — sometimes I look at my brother and sister and wonder how I’ll ever stack up to them. My brother has the perfect white picket fence life with a wife, four kids, and a dog. My sister doesn’t have any children, but she gets to jetset around the world at the drop of a hat and mingle with powerful people. And then there’s the baby of the family, me, the artsy weirdo with a cat.

I had a lot of hopes placed on me as a kid. When my brother was a teenager, he was a bit of a troublemaker, and my sister didn’t have much of a direction throughout her younger years. But I was a responsible kid who finished at the top of her class and never got in trouble and had a ton of talent in a variety of fields. I was on track to become a doctor, in fact! And on top of that, I was conventionally attractive — the skinny doe-eyed blonde with big boobs. I was basically Barbie.

I know I compare myself to my brother and sister a lot, but the problem is me. I’m the former gifted kid burnout everyone talks about. In these cases, I think it’s important to remember that we’re in different stages of life. There’s a sixteen year age gap between me and my siblings, after all. They didn’t have it all together yet when they were my age. You’re not supposed to compare the beginning of your story to the middle of someone else’s, and I haven’t even been an adult for the majority of my life.

Maybe if I’m in the same place as I am right now in another ten years, I’ll have reason to worry, but I honestly shouldn’t be. All things considered, my trajectory is pretty great. I’m an internship and a certification exam away from finishing my degree, and after that, we’re planning on kids and a masters degree. Maybe I won’t have the financial success of my siblings — or maybe I will. Maybe my band will take off. But I’m not going to stress about it.

Something funny happened when I told my sister about my insecurities. She said she was jealous of me. She’d tried to take up guitar as a teenager and wimped out because her fingers hurt too much. She wished she was creative and musically talented as much as I wished I was business savvy and smart like her. She thought I was silly for comparing myself to her! My brother-in-law, the like, regional director of freakin’ Quicken Loans, said something similar when my artist wife mentioned feeling like her family’s dud. He wished he could create art like she could!

We think of creatives as duds, but in reality, so many wildly successful people wish they were creative. Maybe instead of wallowing in the fact that we’re not successful by the world’s standards, we just keep creating and doing what gives us life. We’re just wired differently, and that’s okay. You wouldn’t judge an eagle for its ability to run, nor would you judge a cheetah for its ability to fly.

I’d like to think I’m carving out my own niche in my family, using that same work ethic that got the farmers and steelworkers and powerwashers and businesswomen who came before me through life. I’d like to think I’m making them proud in my own way, even if it’s just writing and playing music. The world needs that sometimes.

Dear Cadence, Part One

This is the first in a series of posts I’ll hopefully turn into a book someday. It’s a story that’s particularly close to my heart, because it’s my story. I wanted to write down all my experiences and advice for my theoretical future daughter, so that she can read it someday when she’s not theoretical. I don’t know how regularly I’ll post from this series, mostly because I want to put my heart and soul into it to make sure it’s JUST RIGHT, but I wanted to share my progress on this project for you all to read and enjoy as well. If any part of my story resonates with you, feel free to leave a comment. I hope you love this project as much as I do.

Dear Cadence,

If you’re reading this, I’m dead.

Kidding! Well, maybe not. It depends on if I die before you get this little book of wisdom. When will I give it to you? Who knows! Maybe when you go to college. Maybe when the red peony blooms, if you know what I mean. Maybe I’ll read it to you on my deathbed. Maybe I’ll even publish it as a memoir-type thing, and we’ll both be famous someday, me as an author, and you as the recipient of my 30-ish years of knowledge.

As of writing this, you are not alive yet. You’re just a lil egg floating around in my ovary, probably. That, or you’re adopted. I’ll probably break that news to you before I give you this book, though. Or—more disappointingly, I die before I can birth/adopt you, in which case, I give full permission to my surviving family to publish whatever is written here. Seriously, it’s okay! The saddest stories are the ones that get irretrievably forgotten, and the least I can do is immortalize my crazy life in writing.

I’m not a celebrity or anyone of note, at least not yet. By the time you read this, I could be the frontwoman of a celebrated, beloved rock band, or an esteemed professor of music therapy, or a Folgers jar of ashes on your mantle (and I swear to God you better put me in a more respectable urn than that or I will haunt you). But I’m your mom (or maybe dad—your other mom and I didn’t want you to get us confused). I don’t even know you yet, but as my firstborn/possibly only daughter, you mean the absolute world to me. This little collection of anecdotes is more than just a bunch of autobiographical stories I want to preserve and share with you and the generations to come. It’s a book of hard-earned advice I’ve gained from three decades on this giant rock we call home.

So, with that in mind, here’s the life story of yours truly, the greatest woman to ever walk this planet (well, at least until you arrive!).

Think of the Children! (An Easter Manifesto)

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

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

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

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

So Long and Goodnight: How My Middle School BFF Shaped My Entire Life

Strap in, guys, gals, and enby pals. We’re in for an emotional roller coaster with this one.

This is your last warning. You *will* cry.

I think every thirteen-year-old girl has a chosen name. Think back to when you were thirteen and you wanted to be called, I don’t know, Renesmee or something. It was definitely inspired by something cringy like that. Me? I tried to get everyone to call me Sophitia, like the badass Greek sword-wielding action mom from the Soul Calibur series.

Definitely *not* a MILF (mother I’d like to fight)

No one called me Sophitia, of course, save for my dad (until my mom made him stop). Well, him and Chelsea. Or, shall I say, Helena.

Her cringy thirteen-year-old chosen name was Helena, like the My Chemical Romance song. She insisted it was pronounced “huh-lay-nah,” not “hel-en-uh.” True to the girl in the music video of the emo standard, she had pale skin and a tall but slight frame and dark hair and piercing blue eyes, all of which she took pride in. She was gorgeous and she knew, but you couldn’t help but love her nonetheless.

I don’t remember exactly how Chelsea and I met, but I remember her as an absolute spitfire who hurled herself into my life with the intensity of a tigress. She was spirited, witty, and strong-willed, the kind of girl who stood up for me in the face of notoriously cruel grade school bullies. For a solid two years, we were practically inseparable. Those years were filled with memories I’ll never forget. Like Thursday nights at my church’s youth group, getting all giddy over which cute guy talked to us. Or staying up late during sleepovers on my bedroom floor, telling each other stories until we fell asleep. Or editing our MySpaces together on my family’s computer, and the one time I got interrogated because my mom found “emo boys kissing” in my search history. Thanks for that, Chels.

Music was an integral part of our friendship. One of our favorite activities was dressing up like our favorite rock stars and putting on shows for ourselves. Being obsessed with Bon Jovi, I had us dress up like Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora. She was Richie because her hair was darker, even though I always liked him more. She’s the one who introduced me to the emo genre that defined my taste in music as I grew older. She loved this song called “Fer Sure” by The Medic Droid, and in the car she’d always sing “Kick off your stilettos and THROW THEM IN THE BACKSEAT” loud enough to obscure the fact that the actual lyrics were “fuck me in the backseat.” And of course, there was Helena and Sophitia, our cringy chosen names that doubled as our stage names. We would have these big dreams about someday starting a band together, and she wrote a little song with a melody that still gets stuck in my head to this day.

Something changed after a trip up north together, though. I asked if she had the sunscreen we bought while there and she accused me of accusing her of stealing it. What transpired was a platonic breakup worse than any of my romantic breakups have been. It’s such a stupid thing to ruin what was one of the most important friendships of my life. A girl’s BFF-ship at that transitional age of late preteendom is so important, and just like that, I lost her.

What followed was radio silence for years. I watched her grow up from afar. She joined the military, married, and had a son. Me, I went to college and had a couple of rock bands that didn’t work out. But as adults, she reached out to me and extended the olive branch, and we reconnected over our shared spiritual goals and, of course, music.

We were never as close as we were as kids, though, because shortly after we reconnected, a little global health crisis called COVID-19 happened, and all our plans to meet up fell through.

She then had a private health crisis of her own. On the warmest Christmas morning in memory, I got a text from one of our old mutual friends.

“Hey Jess, I’m so sorry to hear about Chelsea.”

I couldn’t even cry. I was numb. All these memories came flooding back like a tidal wave. I ran to my guitar and immediately started strumming the old song she wrote, and suddenly, I knew what I had to do. That day, I turned her melody into a full song she’d be proud of.

My only regret is she’ll never get to hear it.

Life is so short, and we take moments with our loved ones for granted. The next time you hang out with your best friend could be your last, and you wouldn’t even know. So cherish every memory you get, because in the end, that’s all we can carry with us through life, and those memories are what carry us through life.

So long and goodnight, my dearest friend. I’m a better person for having known you.

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

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

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

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

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

And here’s the other:

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

And I would 100 percent wear this outfit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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