Don’t Fear the Reaper: Coming to Terms With Growing Older

Your girl almost had a “crying in the club” moment, and on her own birthday, no less. Ever become like, overwhelmingly aware of your own mortality? Like, really aware?

I was at karaoke and scrolling through That Accursed Platform™ when I stumbled across this picture:

My hero, Ann Wilson, whose trademark long dark hair and straight bangs were the inspiration for my own hairdo. Her signature hair is missing. She looks beautiful, as always, but she no longer resembles me. She resembles another woman now.

My mother.

Ann is getting older.

My mom is getting older.

I’m getting older.

And if I’m honest, it terrifies me.

I don’t want to think about a world where Ann Wilson doesn’t exist. No one wants to think about their hero dying. Dying is such a vulnerable state, and your hero is supposed to be invincible, right? It’s the cracks in that invincibility that give you that unsettled feeling. Also, your hero is supposed to be someone you see yourself in. And seeing Ann get older is like seeing myself get older in real time. I’m seeing an older version of me.

I guess this is a Part Two to my first birthday post, since that last post also talked about my impending death. I won’t lie, I’m actually pretty content in my life right now, but there’s always that nagging feeling of “You are mortal. You will die. You will be forgotten.” It colors everything I do. I thought I was out of the OCD woods when most of my lifelong obsessions and compulsions went dormant a few years back, but now I’m realizing it just morphed into something else. There’s something called existential OCD, and it’s hell. Imagine grappling with the Meaning of Life every single fucking day.

Yeah, it’s not fun.

The good news is…well, I started typing that and didn’t really come up with anything great. I am going to watch all my heroes die. I’m going to watch my mom die. I’m going to watch my dad die. I’m going to probably watch a lot of friends die. And God forbid Crass or Livvy die before me.

But I’m not alone in any of that.

Death is part of the human experience. There’s a reason tarot experts tell people not to fear the death card. Everyone in human history has perished eventually. No man has truly achieved immortality. The closest anyone has ever gotten has been men like Jesus and Mohamed and Aristotle, whose ideas transcended millennia. But they’re rare exceptions. Most humans fade quietly into time. No one remembers who your great-great-grandmother was. In a way, the universal experience of dying and becoming forgotten unites us all.

I may be slowly catapulting toward death, but we’re all slowly catapulting together. I named this post “Don’t Fear the Reaper” for the Blue Öyster Cult song, but when I was writing it, I had the words from “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac in my head. “Time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I’m getting older too.” There’s a good reason I chose it as my daddy-daughter dance (which was the only dance I was allowed to do at my own wedding — long story short, don’t marry a Baptist).

I wish there was an easy answer. I wish I was gullible enough to believe wholeheartedly in afterlife, but I don’t know anymore. I still consider myself a Christian, but a fairly agnostic one. I want to believe more than anything that there’s a special place for our souls after we die. More than that, I want to believe in that elusive Meaning of Life, some higher purpose for our existence, but I’m starting to lose faith in humanity for a lot of reasons.

I want to leave a mark on this world somehow, because I’m finding the only way to quell my fears of death is to life fully and with purpose.

I want to believe that should I die, there will have been some reason for me to have been here.

AuDHD Dreams and Impulsive Schemes

When I opened my app to check my site’s stats for the day, this little prompt popped up:

Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.

I’ll be honest, this is a hard question for me, and not because I’m like, the queen of all things DIY. I’m not even a baroness of all things DIY. The world of DIY is a mystical land with which I am simultaneously very familiar and also very much a stranger.

The truth is, I often cycle through creative interests, sometimes very rapidly! I can recall flipping through like, five different artistic outlets in one summer before finally realizing I sucked at all of them. I have music and writing already — maybe it’s what I get for being greedy with the fine arts. But one of my best friends is also a musician and writer, and they also have time to make bead art, crochet, sew shit, put together enormous puzzles, and 3D print whatever the hell they can’t make doing everything else.

My problem, as always, is my brain wiring. I’ve got the fun combination of ADHD and autism, and they love to fight sometimes.

One of autism’s defining traits is the presence of “special interests,” or things were just really fascinated by and want to learn everything about. As a child, it was 8-track tapes and parakeets. In adulthood, it’s been lost architecture and cults (I dare you to let me tell you about multilevel marketing cults for hour). Not every autistic person gets special interests like this, but it’s incredibly common and definitely marked my experience growing up autistic.

That’s just one of the ingredients in my particular brand of brain soup.

It’s actually alphabet soup but all of the letters are “ADHD.”

ADHD comes with impulsivity. It’s one of the main symptoms, in fact. I technically have inattentive type ADHD according to my psychiatrist, but I’m shocked I didn’t qualify for the hyperactive-impulsive type instead. The hallmarks of my ADHD have always been the impulsive and hyperactive behaviors. And when I get an impulse to try out a new hobby, I gotta dive right in, headfirst, without checking the depth of the water beforehand.

It was pretty detrimental for a while because I was blowing all my money on these hobbies I’d be into for only a week or so before giving up. There’s the thing — if I wasn’t immediately good at the hobby, I quit. I also didn’t have the patience to get good at anything.

I realize I haven’t actually answered the prompt at hand yet (which is another very ADHD thing of me to do), so allow me to list the top five lofty DIY projects my neurodivergent ass stupidly took on:

5. Boating

I’m not quite sure this counts as a DIY project because I didn’t really make anything, but it was lofty nonetheless. Do you know what all you need to safely operate a boat? A lot of shit, that’s what. Yet I ordered a whistle and high-powered flashlight and lifejackets, all for the little inflatable boat I bought while we were living on the lake. How many times did I actually use the boat? Exactly once. It was a magical time, don’t get me wrong, and I wrote a song about the experience, but that song basically costed me $600. (And this is why I have credit card debt.)

4. Perfumery

I don’t know how many of you remember my witchy phase, but I definitely dabbled in the mystical realm for a while. Still do, to a lesser extent, but at the height, I was really into making my own “potions” out of herbs and essential oils. This inevitably led to me making potions not for magical properties, but because they smelled really nice, and giving them to my friends and family. I also made a lot of spell jars around this time, containing stuff that reminded me of the folks I made them for. It was kind of a cool hobby actually. I still have a lot of spell jars from that era.

3. Sewing

This was the shortest-lived of all the hobbies listed here. I went to JoAnn’s (RIP) for a small sewing kit because I wanted to alter my Chappell Roan costume to make it a little sluttier. Like, I wanted to show kneecaps. And the nice very gay man helping me suggested I also try a pillowcase. Not wanting to disappoint a fellow gay, I happily bought material to sew my own pillowcase as well. When I got home, I immediately got too overwhelmed and threw the sewing stuff behind the TV to hide my shame. It remains there to this day, and the Chappell costume remains unslutty.

2. Painting

Of all these hobbies, this one has been the most successful, if only because I’m not a stranger to visual art. I do digital art and coloring pretty regularly with my iPad, but traditional painting is a whole different beast. My college guitar professor was an incredibly skilled oil painter and I always really admired him, so I figured I’d try my hand at it as well. And I got some pretty okay results!

This painting of my girlfriend’s girlfriend turned out better than I anticipated, although she didn’t want to keep it (to be fair, what would you do with a painting of yourself??). I think I’d feel better about this hobby if I had some success selling my art, because for now it’s just kind of languishing in my apartment. I still have the equipment for oil painting, so I could easily revisit this one if I wanted.

1. Crocheting

Ah yes, the most tragic one. The one I had such high hopes for. I always imagined myself knowing how to crochet someday, probably as a little old lady sitting on a porch swing with a glass of sun tea. It was just part of how I envisioned being a grandma, and now that I’m officially an age where I can be a grandma (like, I just saw a report about a 32-year-old grandmother), learning to crochet seemed like the next logical step. So I ordered a beginner’s kit from the Woobles and well, here is the expectation:

…and result:

You can almost hear it crying to be put out of its misery. This ~~cat~~ potato was eventually given to my girlfriend as a Valentine’s Day gift, and I think her car ate it. My one and only crochet attempt, lost forever.

Although maybe that’s for the best.

Autism and 8-Track Tapes: How I Made My Inner Child Happy

Here’s a fun fact about my childhood. When I was around 8 years old, I was obsessed with 8-track cassette tapes.

The bane of everyone’s existence in the 70s, apparently.

I distinctly remember how fascinated I was by them, ever since my mom gave me her old tapes as a kid. I recall riding around in my grandma’s old Oldsmobile listening to her Beach Boys album on 8-track. At one point, I went to the library asking for books on them, and the librarian on site was absolutely dumbfounded that this tiny girl was so preoccupied with these ugly bulky-ass tapes. I wanted to collect more and more, even though collecting vintage media wouldn’t be “cool” for another decade or so.

There’s the issue. None of this was cool, especially not to my peers. I’d already cycled through obsessions with Bon Jovi and parakeets. I didn’t need something else making me even weirder to my classmates. So I made the decision to hide my excitement about 8-track tapes and quietly let my obsession fade.

In other words, I masked.

“I may look normal, but I’m thinking about 8-track tapes.”

I’ve talked a little about masking in past blog posts, but it bears repeating. Many autistic folks feel the need to hide parts of themselves to fit in with the rest of society, and if I’m honest, it’s exhausting. It’s especially prevalent among autistic women, who often experience burnout from having to mask so much. For me, it was meticulously studying the way other people interacted with each other and mimicking that to the best of my ability.

So imagine how secretly tickled I was when, during my last audio engineering class, the entire lecture was about magnetic tape. In other words, the technology behind 8-track tapes! This was the exact information I was seeking when I went to the library all those years ago!

People ask me all the time, “Hey Jessa, how do you heal your inner child?” Okay, I lied, no one has ever asked me that. But if they did, I’d tell them to explore the interests they had as a kid. Remember your dinosaur phase? Get to the library and get a fuckin’ book on velociraptors! Did you want to be a mermaid? Study mermaid mythology and invest in some nautical decor! Were you a horse girl? It’s high time you get some ridin’ lessons! Throw yourself into the thing you loved most as a kid. That’s the purest joy you can achieve — making the part of you that never grew up happy.

I think there’s a reason why so many people my age collect Funko Pops and play video games or watch cartoons for fun. We’re constantly trying to make our inner child happy in some way or another. I’m learning how to care for mine the same way I would care for the child version of me if I met her. Little-Jessa had to hide her fascination with vintage audio equipment to be accepted, but Adult-Jessa is picking up where she left off. It feels like I’m coming home to a hobby I long left abandoned. It feels good, man.

We Need Each Other

I’m starting to really appreciate the concept of community.

You see, I realized something recently — up until last year, my wife Crass and didn’t really have a community of our own. We had a few friends, even a few ride-or-dies, but no village, so to speak. And every night was the same — we’d get home from work, sit on the couch, and veg out until we inevitably got tired enough to sleep. It was a life, but it didn’t feel like living. It felt like we were just wasting time until the sweet release of death.

“I heard you were desperate for friends.”

I think things started to change for us when I met my girlfriend (we’re polyamorous, to clarify). We actually met at a Valentine’s Day event that I was hesitant to even go to because I wouldn’t know anyone there. But I met Olivia, and she had this contagious energy about her. As I found out, she loved going to things like art shows and open mics and festivals, and I found myself following her to those types of events. Suddenly, I was doing more than just working. I was living.

But karaoke was the catalyst that led to the life I know now. When we first went to Fort Wayne for my ill-fated internship, Crass suggested checking out the local gay bar the first week. Which was very uncharacteristic of her, an introvert, but I think she was feeling what I was feeling at the time. Restless.

It was at the gay bar that we met the first karaoke crew. There was Kyli, feisty and charismatic, and Theo, her calmer (albeit very silly) best friend, and their pal Zariel, a big lovable goofball who could sing “Poison” by Bell Biv DeVoe like no one’s business. They were so quick to welcome us into their world. We started going on all kinds of adventures around town, and despite the internship falling through, I don’t regret a thing because of the people I met there.

As I’ve started to say, the real music therapy degree was *the friends we made along the way.*

I’ll admit it sucked moving away from them (which was the only part that sucked about leaving Indiana, where no one should be). We’d finally found a tribe to call our own, only to lose them almost immediately. But we had to do what we had to do, and that involved moving to Kalamazoo, where the universe had been leading us for years. I started to worry if we’d find our people in this town. It was a college town after all, and we skewed a little older than college age. Were we doomed to be lonely again?

Then Crass threw out the same suggestion that seemed to work in Fort Wayne — let’s check out the local karaoke scene.

That first night, we met so many fantastic people (and one awful person), and we were hooked. From then on, every Friday, we’d gather at Old Dog Tavern downtown and sing our hearts out. There was Steve and Luke and David, the three most wholesome white cis dudes you’ll meet this side of Mister Rogers (but with a lot more marijuana). There was Mary Emma, a beautiful and confident slightly older queer woman who quickly became someone I could look up to. There was Clara, a kind statuesque blonde bartender who could quite possibly out-belt Aretha herself. There was Kim, who admittedly sucked, but they can’t all be winners I guess. The karaoke scene had so many colorful characters, and I loved getting to build relationships with all of them (except Kim, cause fuck Kim).

They say no man is an island, and it takes a village to raise a child. I’m sure those proverbs extend to women and nonbinary folk as well. I don’t often quote from the Bible on here anymore because I know spirituality can be a touchy subject, especially with our current political climate, and I don’t want to alienate any of my readers. Still, there’s a few verses from my favorite emo song — ahem, Biblical book — Ecclesiastes, that describes this phenomenon perfectly.

Two are better than one,
    because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
    one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
    and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
    But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered,
    two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

-Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

I’ll leave y’all with this, and I promise it’ll all come together. When I married my ex-husband, it was a shotgun affair because of his faith, so I didn’t know a lot about him, like the fact that dancing is prohibited in his aforementioned faith. No one told me that until the reception. I was pissed. All I wanted since I was a kid was a fun session I could dance at with all my friends and family! I honestly should have been more of a bitch about it than I was.

I shoulda gave *Bridezillas* a run for their money.

Anyways, that marriage obviously failed, and when I remarried my current spouse, we had a small, intimate (also shotgun) ceremony that lasted all of ten minutes. So I never got my wedding dances.

As I mentioned in a different post, Olivia and I are engaged-ish. We can’t legally marry, but we can have one hell of a commitment ceremony to make up for it. And when one of my new friends found out about the disaster that was my first wedding, he offered to rally the karaoke crew together to raise funds for a ceremony for me and Olivia, one we could really dance at. It was enough to almost make me tear up. Not just the idea of finally getting to dance, but the idea of all my friends coming together to help us.

I have a community now.

Things aren’t great at the moment, and it has been weighing on me quite a bit if I’m honest. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few years. The Trump administration already removed the T from “LGBTQ,” which does not give me warm fuzzies about the future of us queer folks in this country. Will I be rounded up and imprisoned or worse for loving another woman? I don’t know yet, and it’s scary. But I’m not going into battle alone. I’ve got so many good people in my corner now, and I have no doubt in my mind every single one of them would fight for me if it came down to it.

Community is going to be what saves this country. More than ever, we need each other.

Back to School Blues

Tomorrow is my first day of school. Well, back to school. I say “back to school” as if I haven’t tried and failed to do the school thing again three times since I initially graduated with my music and journalism degrees in 2015.

But I’m nothing if not persistent.

I’m trying to stay optimistic in the face of everything that is happening and will happen — financial hardship, music therapy falling through, the new administration taking over and probably borking the country, and probably a million other things I’m not actively worrying about but are still looming in the horizon. I’ve always been an optimist, maybe to a fault. I want to believe the best in everything and in everyone, but I’m learning that I’m a lot less optimistic when it comes to believing in myself. And why should I be? I’ve let myself down so many times, part of me is wondering how long this endeavor will last before I inevitably fuck it up.

That’s not to say I don’t like Jessa Joyce — I’m quite a huge fan of hers. But I feel like she’s just an image of that perfect, badass version of myself I put out there. I love who she represents to me, an ideal self in a way. Yet underneath Jessa Joyce’s glitter and confidence lives a different me, one that’s not really sure she knows what she’s doing. I wrote a song about it recently, actually:

I used to know exactly what I wanted to be

But now I really don’t know what I want anymore

Who am I supposed to be

When all my flaws catch up to me?

I was the brightest star in the whole damn sky

Right until I flew too high

When I wrote those words, I was reflecting on that version of myself, the one that stands on shaky ground as she realizes she’s at a crossroads. Do I go all-in on pursuing rock stardom and all of its trappings? Do I start a music academy? A recording studio? Both? Do I take up the art of luthiery and build guitars? Do I continue my education and become a music professor? Do I work as a sound guy for a church I’m probably too gay to attend? All of the above? None of the above? What if I can’t choose, or worse, choose the wrong thing, like I did with music therapy? I can’t afford to waste another 12 years studying something that I don’t even follow through with. Starting school again will be a good first step, but I can’t ignore the nagging feeling that I’m going to screw this up again somehow.

In short, I really don’t have it all together.

Earlier today, I was talking to my bandmates about an acquaintance of mine who just seems really excited to know me. Which is flattering, I have to admit, but I wonder how well that person really knows me. Because if he did know me, he would know I’m not anything to look up to. If anything, I’m a dumpster fire masquerading as a sexy rocker chick who knows what she wants and knows exactly how to get it. But at the end of the day, I’m still the same old dumpster fire.

Believe it or not, I’m not writing this from a state of depression. I’m actually having experiencing hypomania, the bipolar state where you feel REALLY GOOD but not so good that you drop $500 you don’t have on a boat (thanks, mania). I’ve been in a surprisingly good mood actually. It’s just I’ve done the “back to school” song and dance enough times to understandably be a bit wary. Is this really the path for me? Can I forge my own way and start a career I can be proud of? Will I be able to make enough money to support my partners and our future family? One thing’s for sure — I’m going to work my ass off to make this thing happen. If I keep grinding, eventually it’ll pay off, right? Right?

I hope so. I want to believe in me again.

Serving Glimmers: How Art and Performance Can Save Lives

I had a realization a while back — one of the reasons I pursued music therapy was because it looked “good.” It seemed like a noble profession, using music to improve people’s lives in a meaningful, measurable way. I’d tell people I was studying music therapy and it was an instant “Ah yes, I can trust her, as she is clearly a good person.” All my boyfriends’ moms loved me for it, and strangers would tell me what I’m doing is so beautiful, so kind. It may just be playing guitar for some kid in a hospital, but to that kid, you’re a hero! And who doesn’t want to be a hero, you know?

I think I have a hero complex, and I think that’s what’s prevented me from jumping headfirst into performance instead. I always wanted to be a hero. I wanted to help people. And if I became a rock star, who would I be helping except my own selfish desires?

The typical perception of pretty much everybody is that performing and the arts are just little “extras.” They’re nothing but fun little distractions, right? No one needs a movie or a comic book or music to live.

QUICK! GET HIM THE LATEST TAYLOR SWIFT ALBUM!

What I’m slowly realizing is that, while we don’t need the arts to live, we absolutely need the arts to really live.

When I moved to Kalamazoo, I searched frantically for work. I would have taken damn near anything, but I wanted to try finding a job involving music. And lo and behold, a trivia company was looking for a music bingo host in my area. And I mean, getting to essentially be part-DJ, part-game show host every night?

I love what I do. It’s a great gig. But for a while, I was feeling like what I did didn’t really matter in the long run. People come into the bar, play music bingo, and leave, going on to live their own lives. I imagine there are probably nurses and firefighters in the audience, and what I do must seem so inconsequential compared to what they deal with every day. And I think those thoughts were starting to wear on me, because I got complaints from one of the bars I work at that I wasn’t “engaging enough.” At first I was angry, because what do you mean I’m not good enough?! But then I realized maybe I’m not giving it my all, and maybe that was because I felt like my job wasn’t important.

So I determined that this show would be my best show yet. I dressed just short of a full drag queen getup, picked some banger categories, and drank enough caffeine to kill a horse. I promised myself I’d socialize the whole time, even if I wanted to sit down. I even moved the chair so I wouldn’t be tempted to just sit down. I was going to give this show my all.

Then, something amazing happened. Sometimes, when you put good vibes out into the universe, the stars align and give you exactly what you need in that moment. What I needed was a glimmer.

Everyone knows what triggers are, but I recently saw that someone coined a term for the opposite phenomenon — glimmers. These are the tiny moments that make life worth living. I experience a glimmer every time I laugh with my wife, or hug my girlfriend, or hear my parents say they’re proud of me. They’re what being alive is all about. They’re little moments of pure joy, which was exactly what I needed.

I walked into the bar to an array of balloons. It was an older couple’s 55th anniversary, and I was going to be hosting music bingo smack dab in the middle of it. Thankfully, the couple was cool about me coming to blast disco at them and even joined in the game, along with many of the other folks in attendance. The older woman who was celebrating her anniversary came up to me and told me that her and her husband’s song was “You’re Still the One” by Shania Twain. And anyone who knows me knows I never miss an opportunity to play Shania Twain.

Tangentially related fact: I was so obsessed with her as a small child, I’d draw pictures of her and not my mom. (Yes, my mom was a little jealous.)

When intermission came, the bar dimmed the lights, leaving only the hanging Christmas lights to illuminate the room. I cued up the song and introduced the couple to the entire bar. Then, everyone gathered around the couple with their phone flashlights. Seeing all of their friends and family surround them in a sea of twinkling lights actually made me tear up a little. The family would remember this moment for the rest of their lives.

A moment I helped make happen.

It’s easy to dismiss entertainment as an opium of the masses, even more so than religion, as Marx famously said. But I’d argue that entertainment is as important as the STEM fields, just in a completely different way. Sure, a particular song may be insignificant to you, but that song could have been the one thing that stopped someone from taking their own life. There’s a reason for this album’s existence. I know people who stay alive because they want to see what happens next in their favorite video game franchise. The arts and media provide those small glimmers that keep people going.

So maybe I will go all-in on being an entertainer and creator. Because someone somewhere needs my music. Someone somewhere needs a fun game night at the local bar. Someone somewhere is reading my writings about mental health and my own personal journey and feels less alone because of it. Artists, writers, musicians, video game developers, game show hosts — they’re all heroes in a unique but important way. Entertainment and art communicate ideas, and more than that, hope.

That’s why I do what I do.

Reflecting on the Year That Almost Broke Me

As of writing, we are halfway through December, which means the new year is lurking. As everyone prepares to sing “Auld Lang Syne” and kiss a stranger, now is the optimal time to look back at the previous year and reflect on how things went.

And damn, did they go awry this year.

2024 was a trash-fire year for me, rivalling 2015 for the title of Worst Year of Jessa’s Life. 2015, of course, was the year I simultaneously got my heart broken by my crush of four years, graduated and realized I wasn’t going to find a job in my field and would probably never find success, and also dealt with some familial and health issues. But this year was honestly worse in every way. Like, this has literally been the worst one.

To think of how optimistic I was at the start of the year too. I was getting ready to begin the internship I’d been working toward for over a decade. I had just moved to Fort Wayne and was expecting an adventure. And what I got was a soul-crushing internship experience that I had to leave for the sake of my own mental health. I was going to drive my car into the fucking river if I cried one more time at that godforsaken clinic. I couldn’t handle the pressure. I failed.

Tail between our legs, we retreated to Niles, MI, where I could at least be close to my girlfriend. But we had trouble finding paid work in the area, our savings were dwindling, and we couldn’t afford to keep living out of AirBNBs. So my wife decided we should check out Kalamazoo instead, as we’d previously talked about it and decided it was a good central location between our family in Detroit, our new friends in Fort Wayne, and my girlfriend in South Bend.

Moving to Kalamazoo was the best decision we could have made, as the only good things to happen this year happened because of the move. My wife and I got involved in the local karaoke scene and made a lot of friends, which is new for us. We’d been shut-ins for most of our marriage. I decided that since music therapy was off the table, I’d pursue a different dream, one of becoming a producer and audio engineer. So I applied to the local university and actually made it into the competitive multimedia arts technology program. And I got back into doing what I love for a living — teaching music.

I realize I started this blog post very doom-and-gloom, but the more I write, the more I realize this year wasn’t so heck. Sure, we’re still broke and I still wasted so much time and money on a career that will never happen. Then there’s all the political unrest and the fact that the jabronis who won the election want to make my marriage illegal. But if there’s anything I’ve learned this year about myself, it’s that I’m resilient as fuck. When shit hits the fan, I’ll figure something else out. That’s what I do best.

Looking back at 2024, I don’t know how I could have survived without the people I’ve met this year in Fort Wayne and Kalamazoo. I never realized how empty my life was without my own little “tribe” of sorts. We’re social creatures by nature and we need each other. Maybe I’ll never be a music therapist. Maybe I’ll be broke for the rest of my life. But when I’m surrounded by the amazing folks I’ve met this year, well, you can’t buy that feeling. My Little Pony had it right — friendship is magic.

The real music therapy degree was the friends we made along the way.

I don’t know what awaits me in 2025, but I’m confident I can face anything now. This year absolutely took the wind out of my sails, but I’m going to keep persisting. I’m ready.

The Autistic Bimbo: My Former Life as a Dumb Blonde

I was on That God-Forsaken Platform That Shall Not Be Named when I saw someone share this status:

Everyone is cringy at 14, but I was a special kind of cringe. You see, at age 14, I was a very different Jessa (or shall I say, Jessie, as I was going by back then). I was in a sort of state of transition, as most people are at that age. For me personally, that transition was between shy, awkward me and cool, confident me.

I remember the catalyst for that transition being my seventh grade obsession with this cool guy named Kyle Kelley, who I was definitely going to marry someday. Suddenly, I wasn’t content to stay in the corner doodling pictures of Richie Sambora and imagining what Pokémon I wanted to add to my team when I got home. I desperately wanted to be one of the popular girls, like Kyle Kelley’s cheerleader girlfriend.

But that would involve me — gasp — talking to other kids!

I’ve touched on my autism before. I will admit I’m not officially diagnosed yet — it’s damn near impossible to get a proper diagnosis as an adult AFAB person. Because of the sheer amount of gatekeeping when it comes to diagnosis, most autistic folks accept self-diagnosis as valid. And believe me, the signs were all there. I was sensitive to loud sounds, hiding whenever I heard the neighbor girl’s loud bass from her car or the sound of the vacuum cleaner. I’d hyperfocus on things like Bon Jovi and parakeets, learning everything I possibly could about them and talking incessantly about them to anyone who’d humor me. I’d stim by making bird sounds and running around randomly. I would finish my homework quickly so I could spin around in the back of the classroom (okay, that one might be on you, ADHD). And I was garbage at socializing. Talk to people? You might as well have asked me to build a rocket to the moon, because that was not happening.

Then, of course, I met Kyle Kelley and suddenly, I had this burning passion to become “cool,” whatever that even meant. I studied meticulously the mannerisms and interests and the clothing of the girls I thought were cooler than me. It was almost like a science project, observing the “cool girls” in their natural habitats and trying to emulate them. Looking back, it was just baby-me learning how to mask, and I was absolutely terrible at it at first.

Which led to me being labeled something of a bimbo, despite me being one of the smartest kids in my class.

I didn’t know how to speak to people properly, and I’d often clam up when confronted with an actual conversation. And so I’d say the first dumb thing that came to my head in my desperate attempt to say anything. I honestly didn’t know how to interact with other folks my age. I figured it was better to be considered dumb than be an outcast, and the kids in my grade thought I was funny and silly because of it. So I went along with the “dumb blonde” label, because at least it wasn’t “weird kid.” It was such a pervasive label, I even got typecast in the school play as the stereotypical bimbo. Like, this character was soap-eating levels of dumb. At least I didn’t have to actually eat soap for the bit (it was white chocolate).

And thankfully their chocolate tastes *much better* than their soap.

At some point between high school and university, socializing became more natural to me and I was able to shed the “dumb blonde” label. I certainly shed the “blonde” label when I dyed my hair dark (bleaching was starting to take a toll on my hair, and I wanted to emulate my hero, Ann Wilson). But I still have some empathy for the little girl who thought popularity was more important than being viewed as smart or deep. It wasn’t her fault people didn’t take the time to get to know her as anything else.

And I’d like to think she had a lot to offer.

“Emotional Bloodletting” (Or, Why This Blog Exists in the First Place)

Why do you blog?

Here’s the short answer: so I don’t lose my freakin’ mind.

The long answer is a bit more complicated.

I started this blog back in 2018 (I think). At the time, I was married to someone I wasn’t truly in love with and stuck in a conservative church that increasingly came to represent everything I didn’t want to stand for. I was still fresh out of college with a journalism degree I knew I was never going to use, but I still had the itch to write something. Anything. So my blog, which at the time was titled “I’m sorry I mean it,” simply became me screaming my displeasure with my current life into the void. “I’m sorry I mean it” was a double meaning — “I’m sorry and I mean it,” and “I’m sorry, but I mean what I’m saying.”

Writing has always been a catharsis for me, though, dating back to elementary school. When I was teased mercilessly and ostracized by nearly everyone, I made up characters to serve as “friends” for me. I didn’t have imaginary friends in the traditional sense of the word — I knew these characters were make-believe — but they were real enough to me to fill a void. My long school days were spent daydreaming about these fictional characters, and eventually, their stories spilled onto paper. I’d hurry up and finish my work for the day, then spend the rest of my time fleshing out these characters in stories I dreamed up, usually inspired by whatever I was into at the time. I had a whole series based around three pets trying to get home and the grand adventures they would go on.

My writing is nothing if not derivative, but it’s cool.

That’s part of why I find it harder to write these days. For the first time, I’m genuinely pretty happy. I don’t have to rely on my inner world to satiate my desire for human interaction. I have two amazing partners, a wildly supportive family, and more friends than I know what to do with. But I still love writing to clear my mind on the bad days. It’s how I handle negative emotions, as evidenced by the everything on this blog. If I couldn’t write about my music therapy journey on here, for example, I probably would have lost my mind. The entire experience was so traumatic, I needed to vent about it somehow. Just the act of hitting “publish” on a blog post gives me a sense of relief. As painful as it is to put these emotions down into words, once it’s over, it’s no longer stuck inside me. In a way, it’s emotional bloodletting.

There are other reasons I write too. I realize I have a unique lived experience as a queer polyamorous Christian woman, and I have a platform where I can tell my side of the story. In a world that’s become increasingly hostile to folks breaking the norm, I feel like my words give a voice to a lot of people who aren’t represented in media. I know this from private messages I’ve received. My blog makes people feel seen, and I love it for that reason. My mom always encouraged me to write about socio-political issues — the pen is mightier than the sword, as she would say.

I *know* I’ve made this joke before, but it bears repeating. It’s what Mom would’ve wanted.

Writing, to me, is my biggest catharsis aside from music, and the two often go hand-in-hand. I’ve written some of my best lyrics as a result of emotional turmoil. “Ladies Don’t Start Fights (But They Can Finish Them)” was written about a feud with a former best friend who betrayed my trust. “Queen” was written during a time when my bipolar swung into a deep depression as a way to lift my own spirits. My newest song, “Fake Nice,” is my way of coping with criticism from my partner’s mother, someone whose opinion of me I valued. If I couldn’t write about the things that bother me, I don’t think I would have made it this far in life.

If you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time, I want to personally thank you for being with me through the highs and lows. It hasn’t been an easy few years, and this blog has seen me through some of my worst days. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to read my words and take them to heart. I do this not just for me, but for you, too! This is my way of screaming to the world, “Hey! You’re not alone!” I just want to be a light on someone else’s darkest times. I want people to read this blog and know that they’re in good company, that things will eventually turn out okay with time.

And that’s why I write.

My Strange Addiction: Watching People Suck

Oh hey, a prompt.

How do you waste the most time every day?

I have a confession: I’m fascinated by the worst people. It’s probably detrimental to my mental health, but I often find myself looking in the comments section of absolute cesspools on the internet for hours on end.

In my more naive years, I’d often debate people like this. I’d craft some well-written argument about how yes, trans folks are valid, gay folks should have a right to be with who they please, and black folks should, ya know, exist. This is usually followed by guys with profile pictures that look like a frostbitten toe laugh reacting the post to hell. I’ve since stopped because it’s no use arguing with people who look like this:

Apologies to this man for using him as an example but like, do better bro.

I consider it a matter of knowing my enemy. I want to know what these asshats’ talking points are so I can watch for signs of that shit in everyday conversation. The second someone brings up TERF rhetoric or starts talking about how we need a “straight white pride” month, I know to run in the opposite direction as fast as humanly possible. But also, it’s just kind of fascinating to me. Like, what leads a person to that level of hate? What makes one devolve into posting bullshit like this?

Ahh yes, the worst thing a woman can be, the mother to a biracial child.

It costs zero dollars to not suck. Imagine if people just minded their own business and didn’t brigade random people’s posts because they shared a picture of a queer person having fun? The other day, I had to put one of my own posts on private because it kept getting shared to hate groups. Like, why though? What are people getting out of this? I wasn’t even that mad — haters make me famous and all that — but the notifications were annoying as hell, and I was tired of seeing Greg’s thumb-looking ass popping up on my feed every few minutes.

I guess to me, it’s a reminder of what I fight for everyday. I use my platform on here to humanize the queer experience. I realize a lot of these folks have probably never met someone who isn’t exactly like them. I was similar when I first went off to university. I repeated the whole “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” BS because my high school friends would say it — God knows I’d never admit to being bisexual in front of them. But a funny thing happened when I moved to my college town. I met other queer folks and even came to terms with my own queerness, and I changed. But these people have never left their hometowns. They’re in a white, cishet circle-jerk forever, and it’s actually pretty sad. There’s a lot of beauty in human diversity and the way we connect with one another. We’re just people, and we want to live and love too.

Imagine seeing something this precious and being like “wow, I hope they all die.”

I should probably cut back on my “patrolling” these ugly spaces though. Even reporting doesn’t do any good — the comments never get taken down (thanks, Zucc!). Maybe I should look more toward the beautiful things in life and focus my energies there instead. Even the Bible says so:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

-Philippians 4:8

Hmm, maybe the Good Book is onto something.