Autistic Joy: Little Things That Make Neurospicy Brains Happy

It’s rather unfortunate that autism has the less-than-favorable reputation it does. Sure, it’s more accepted than ever, to the point where it’s trendy on TikTok to claim neurodivergence (a trend I have mixed feelings about if I’m honest). But many on the spectrum still feel misunderstood by the public, with only 16 percent of autistic folks and their families feeling people actually “get” them and many choosing not to interact with the world because of it. It’s a big reason I’m self-diagnosed — when my childhood psychologist suggested the “A” word back in the early 2000s, my well-meaning parents ran the opposite direction, afraid their beloved daughter would get saddled with a label that would get her further ostracized by her peers. My girlfriend had a similar experience growing up. And then you have people like RFK Jr. who say — and I quote:

“[Autistic people will] never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date.”

So yeah, it’s pretty clear the world looks down on us for being different, which, to be fair, has always been the case. It’s never been “cool” to be autistic, right? Why would anyone want to be on the autism spectrum?

Here’s where I’d say “Wrongo, partner!”

Definitely read that in her voice, by the way.

There are lots of special kinds of joy that come with being autistic, or even ADHD and similar kinds of neurospicy. There’s been quite a bit written on the neurodivergent love languages, many of which I feel are closely connected to the kinds of neurodivergent joy. That neurodivergent joy is what I want to write about, because I saw it at work amongst me, my ADHD wife, and my AuDHD girlfriend this past weekend when I took them to my hometown. That brings me to my first joy:

1. Sharing Lore

Taking my partners back home was such a cool experience. I got to share so many parts of my backstory with them, parts I couldn’t show them without taking them to the exact place in time where my story unfolded. I could point out my high school, the Dairy Queen I went to as a kid, all my favorite plushies in my childhood bedroom, and so much more. It’s all part of my lore, as I’ve started to say. Sharing parts of your past with your loved ones scratches the same itch as infodumping, except in this case, you’re infodumping about yourself!

Hearing other people’s lore helps us connect to them as well. This past weekend, my dad regaled us with the story of how he saved for two months to go to Woodstock, despite his coworkers making fun of him, because he knew it was going to be a big deal. He ended up going with six friends and left with 28. I knew music was a big part of my family’s lore, but I never truly knew the extent to which my own father was present for a huge moment in music history. Just taking that time to talk to him gave me a lot of joy.

2. Sharing Media

During the trip, I allowed my girlfriend, Livvy, to take control of the hotel television, since she has some sensory stuff regarding talking and background noise. Most of the time, she left the TV off and the three of us, ya know, engaged with the outside world. But when we got back to the room every night, Livvy would search for one of her childhood favorite shows, Zoom. She loved that show so much that her grandparents taped it and sent it to her so she could still watch it after it went off the air. And now, she wanted to share it with us!

I can’t express how happy she was that we not only took the time to watch what she wanted to show us, but actively participated in it as well. We started daydreaming funny skits and science experiments we could do in our spare time, like the kids on the show. We even had our favorite cast members and tried doing the “ubby wubby” language ourselves (with little success). Livvy was so pleased we were as into the show as she was!

3. Being Around Other Neurospicy Folks

When you’re wired differently, it can be exhausting masking in order to fit in with polite society. Masking is typically associated with “higher functioning” autistic individuals, as shitty and outdated as that terminology is (we prefer people refer to our support needs instead of the “high and low functioning” labels). As someone who’s gotten so good at masking that many outsiders aren’t aware I have the ‘tism in the first place, I can tell you it’s absolutely exhausting. It’s a form of hyper-vigilance and suppressing natural urges. You basically have to water down your entire personality.

But when you’re in a group of other neurodivergent people, you can let all of that fall away and reveal your true self. I don’t have to pretend to be interested in mundane things. I don’t have to make eye contact (which is scary as hell to me if I’m honest). I don’t even have to say words. I can communicate in noises if I want to, and oftentimes, that’s exactly what my partners and I do! It’s freeing to not be restricted by social norms and expectations.

4. Researching What You Love

I (probably rightfully) get a lot of crap from my loved ones for being too glued to my phone, but I’m going to let you all in on a little secret. If you see me on my phone, there’s a very small chance I’m texting a friend. More likely than not, I’m reading!

I’ve always been like this, and I’d be the first to admit that had smartphones not been invented, I’d have to carry a huge bag of books around with me everywhere I go. I’m always reading something or other, usually nonfiction, and usually about one of my special interests. I love reading about creativity, spirituality, or whatever library book has captured my attention most recently. When I was a kid, I’d hide in the nook between the kitchen and the bathroom in my grandma’s house, right where she kept a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannicas on a bookcase, and just study them for hours. I kind of miss physical books, if I’m honest, but I love having the ability to read about anything and everything at a whim nowadays. It’s a kind of special joy.

5. Being Respected

Obviously we love researching things, but we also love getting recognized for our research too! We love the thought of being an expert in our field of interest, even if it’s not a formal area of study. For me, music theory is a big area of interest. I do have a degree in music, which does make me feel good about myself, but even more than that, I love when people tell me that I’m knowledgeable. Even more than that, I love when I get a chance to demonstrate my knowledge. When someone asks me why a song works, I’m always happy to explain things like chord progressions and the circle of fifths and why those concepts are important in popular music.

I think that’s why it almost feels like a personal slight when we don’t get the respect we require as it involves a particular special interest. I still remember the one of the only times a non-music professor made me feel like shit about my abilities and know-how. It took me years to recover and get back to a place where I felt confident about myself in music again. We autistic and ADHD folks are so sensitive to the slightest criticism — we’re prone to rejection sensitive dysphoria for a reason — but the flip side is that we get an even stronger sense of pride from positive feedback.

Which of these “joys” do you relate to the most? Leave a comment below! And as always, if you enjoyed the writing in this post and elsewhere on the site, please consider donating to Jessa’s tuition fund! Any help is appreciated!

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More Than Words: Five Quotes I Live By

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

If there’s one thing I can take away from being a writer my whole life, it’s the fact that words are powerful tools. We can use them to build people up, tear each other down, spread information, spread misinformation, and evoke strong emotions. Something I’ve always been fascinated by is the use of mantras or affirmations for self-improvement. Just repeating a certain phrase to yourself can make an impact on your mental health. And here’s the thing — your affirmations don’t have to be anything in particular, so long as they resonate with you.

Like a favorite quote!

As I began writing this post, I realized I have a handful of quotes I constantly repeat in my head like mantras. They’re the words that shape my personal philosophy and the way I approach life. I never really stopped to actively consider and appreciate how these words have shaped my experience as a human being. But I wanted to share a few of these quotes I carry with me.

She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring.

–Zelda Fitzgerald

This first quote comes from the iconic flapper wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who absolutely should have been absolutely as famous as him in her own right. She was a Renaissance woman — a writer, painter, and dancer, who went on to die tragically in a mental hospital fire. I see a lot of myself in her story. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but had she lived today, she would have received a bipolar diagnosis like me.

Zelda was a wild child with many diverse interests, so I can’t imagine a woman like her would ever be bored. That’s kind of how I want to be. I don’t enjoy being idle, and I don’t ever want to be boring. I always want to be involved in exciting new projects and opportunities. Life’s too short to sit around and be bored. You gotta actively make a life worth living. That’s kind of what the quote means to me.

Show love with no remorse.

-Red Hot Chili Peppers (“Dosed”)

I remember the first time I heard this song and being entirely floored by how beautiful it was. It was in the car with my former drummer Jerry and another short-lived bandmate on the way to our bandiversary date. I’d heard plenty of Red Hot Chili Peppers before that day, but this was the song that really made me appreciate them on a deeper level. I loved the guitar work, the harmonies, and perhaps most importantly, the words.

I’ve always said I wanted this exact lyric tattooed on me someday. I just think it’s a simple concept. You’ve got nothing to lose by giving love freely and joyfully. We need much more love in this world, and now is not the time to be stingy with it. You’ll never regret treating people with kindness.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

-Robert J. Hanlon

I hesitate to call this a quote. It’s technically a philosophical razor, which eliminates — or rather, shaves off — weak explanations for a particular phenomenon. The phenomenon at hand when it comes to Hanlon’s razor is “Why are people awful to each other?” And the explanation it offers is simple: people just don’t know any better.

Hanlon’s razor is why I still have faith in humanity, even after I’ve witnessed some of the worst of it. People very seldom intend to hurt each other. We’re all just big dum-dums that say and do the wrong things sometimes, and we really need to treat each other with more grace. That’s why I don’t believe in cancel culture — we need a grace culture. If you make an honest mistake and own up to it, that shouldn’t be held against you. No one is perfect, and we can’t hold people to impossible standards.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

-Romans 12:21

I struggled to think of just one Bible verse to include, since so many have been influential to me growing up in the church. But this one felt really relevant with some of my recent posts about loving your enemy and fighting the rampant dehumanization of marginalized folks in our society. It’s easy to lash out against the people who are hurting me and my loved ones. But you have to remember that they’re human and they’re hurting too. Hurt people hurt people. It’s not an excuse, but it’s an explanation. And it’s why I choose love — because you don’t know what someone else is going through.

The verse immediately before this one talks about how offering your enemy water when they’re thirsty is akin to heaping hot coals on their head. The Good Book is telling us to kill them with kindness. I saw a post recently that said the true test of a Christian is not whether they love Jesus, it’s whether they love Judas. I’ll admit it’s hard for me to show love to the people who hurt me. The human part of me wants revenge. But the divine answer remains to be love.

Where words fail, music speaks.

-Hans Christian Andersen

I’ll admit I never knew the person behind this quote was none other than the Danish purveyor of fairytales such as The Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and Thumbelina. But I’ve always related to this quote. As a child, the signs of my autism were very apparent. I would often stim by pacing or making bird sounds, and I had sensory issues surrounding things such as loud noises and upsetting smells (looking at you, ranch dressing). And like many autistic kids, I struggled to communicate with my peers. My classmates thought I was from France for the longest time because I never spoke in elementary or middle school, so they assumed I had an accent or didn’t know English or something.

But then I picked up a guitar, and everything changed. When I learned to play music and started performing, that was when I truly found my voice. Music was my way of reaching out into the world. I call music my first language for good reason. It was the bridge that connected me to other people for the first time in my life, and for that, I’m forever grateful.

What quotes do you live by? Leave your favorites in the comments!

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The Queen of Hungry: Surviving When Food Loses All Appeal

I just had a horrific realization.

All I’ve had to eat today is two mini Reese’s cups and three bites of a Tim Hortons croissant. There was a nonalcoholic beer and a virgin Moscow mule in there too for good measure, but for the most part, I’ve been subsisting off whatever nutrients my body has stored up.

And I’m still.

Not.

Hungry.

It’s not that I don’t want to eat. I simply haven’t had an appetite in months. And it’s getting worse.

My mukbang videos would consist of me staring at a cupcake and maybe licking the icing off while crying.

A few years back, I started Adderall as a way to combat my ADHD symptoms with quite a bit of success. For such a scary drug with so much potential for abuse, I didn’t notice any negative side effects at all — except for the small fact that it nuked my appetite. But I didn’t mind at the time. I was pretty overweight due to having just quit drinking in order to stifle a worsening alcohol problem, and getting sober did wonders along with the Adderall in getting me back down to a healthier weight. But now that I am a healthy weight, I don’t want to go too far in the opposite direction either.

So here’s the real scary thing I realized today. it was around noon and I’d been awake for a few hours when I went to grab food and coffee for me and my wife from the Tim Hortons down the road.

Okay Canada, just annex Michigan already.

I was ordering and nothing sounded appetizing, which isn’t unusual. Except I remembered I hadn’t taken my Adderall this morning. Instant-release Adderall only lasts 4 to 6 hours and the XR version lasts 12 hours, which means yesterday morning’s dose shouldn’t have been affecting me anymore. Typically by noon, if I don’t take my Adderall, my appetite starts coming back, but it was crickets. My appetite was still nowhere to be found.

Desperate, I got home and hit the uh, Penjamin Button.

Typically I can stimulate my appetite with a certain herb that is legal (and very prevalent) in the great state of Michigan. Today was different, though. I could have smoked enough green to make Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson look at me funny, and absolutely no amount of THC in my bloodstream made me want to eat.

If my Adderall isn’t what’s causing me to stop eating, and if weed isn’t making me hungry anymore…

Am I dying?

Probably not, to be fair. My brother and my mother are certifiable hypochondriacs, so it’s not too outside the realm of possibility that I, too, am assuming the worst about my own state of health. My doctors have all commented on how healthy I seem. Like, high blood pressure runs in my family, and I’m at the age where my siblings had to start worrying about it, but my blood pressure is always low. (Pretty sure I’m a vampire or something — it would also explain the light sensitivity.)

Let’s play “Vampire or Just *Really* British?”

Still, there’s something unsettling about living with anorexia. And that’s what this is, albeit not the anorexia nervosa most people would associate with the term. Anorexia is the medical term for a loss of appetite, and while I’m not intentionally starving myself, I am afraid I’ll start seeing some of the symptoms of the eating disorder if I don’t get some nutrition in me soon. I could develop such nasty side effects as dry skin, bad breath, and even infertility, which is a deep-rooted fear I’ve written about before. Like, not to be TMI or anything, but my periods have dwindled to almost barely extant. And worst of all, I could lose my hair. Female pattern baldness and facial hair already run in my family. If I play my cards wrong, I could spend my twilight years looking like the white woman version of Steve Harvey.

I don’t know what the solution is to this problem either. Forcing myself to eat is nauseating, even when it’s stuff I love. Sometimes, when I need a quick snack, I buy myself a two-pack of Reese’s cups, which are by far my favorite candy, only to leave the second cup uneaten. My wife’s been racking her brain trying to think of ways to get me interested in food again. She’s spent probably well over $100 on fast food in the last few days trying to find anything that will get me eating. Most of it is still in our fridge, languishing. I feel awful about wasting it, but I just can’t bring myself to consume it.

This isn’t the first time an alarming lack of appetite has been a problem for me. As a kid, I was very sickly and uninterested in food for the most part. Part of it was because it often hurt to eat (I was prone to tonsil infections), and part of it was because I was a small autistic child with the taste of a small autistic child. But a lot of it was because I just wasn’t into eating anything. Nothing tasted good to me. And when I got sick (which, again, was frequently), it was even worse. At one point, I dropped down to a potentially deadly weight following an unfortunate flu immediately after my tonsillectomy. I vaguely remember even being turned away from the pediatrician; they didn’t think they could do anything. So my parents stocked up on Pediasure, intent to fatten me up one way or another. My dad would even go out of his way to bring me my favorite food at the time, the only thing I’d eat half of the time — Pizza Hut.

And I mean, I’m still here today. And I’ll get through this somehow. I often think back to just a few short years ago when I wrote about my struggles with being overweight, back when I was still drinking heavily and *surprised Pikachu face* not losing weight. There’s probably a simple solution. My friends who’ve been in a similar situation say they lost their appetites due to stress. And while I personally don’t think of myself as stressed, I do work three jobs (including a new one that’s probably going to be hella stressful), in addition to having classes, several music projects, and two serious romantic partners. My bandmate often chastises me for getting in over my head, and I’m realizing they often have a point.

That being said, I don’t know when things will eventually slow down for me, and part of me doesn’t want them too. I enjoy staying busy, although if it’s coming at the expense of my health, maybe I really do need a break. For now, I’m going to try to be diligent about taking my vitamins and attempt to drink a protein shake every day. That’s what I had been doing for a while, when my Adderall first started messing with my appetite. I made myself a shake every morning to drink with my medications, and I took my multivitamin, and so I knew that even if I didn’t eat anything else for the day, I’d still have some nutrients going into me. I need to get back into doing that.

Anyways, apologies to anyone who reads this and freaks out (Mom). My health has otherwise been pristine, although I am knocking on like, all of the wood. And I promise most of my life is actually going very well for once. I have some creative endeavors to throw myself into, a new job that will help me make enough money to afford the emo cruise I signed up for (IT’S GOOD FOR NETWORKING!), and I have the best support system in the freaking world. I just wish I liked food still, because you could air drop me a chicken shawarma from my favorite restaurant in the entire world and I’d maybe take three bites, tops.

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Grieving in Advance: Why My Brain Won’t Just Let Me Enjoy Things

I have severe OCD. I’ve talked about it pretty extensively on here, but I don’t think I truly delved into how cripplingly bad it was at its height. When I was dealing with fears relating to the internet, I wouldn’t even touch a phone or computer without someone sitting with me in case I had a panic attack. In my “literally everything in this room could be used to kill me” era, I couldn’t even take a shower unless my mom was in the room.

As of writing — and I am knocking on like, an entire lumberyard’s worth of wood right now — I have not had any compulsions in multiple years. I define “compulsion” as a thing my OCD makes me do, like demand my mother watch me bathe at age 14 like a complete lunatic. Lately I haven’t had any of that, so by the looks of it, we’re out of the woods! (I’m not going to make another Taylor Swift reference here, I swear.)

But these days, I still deal with anxiety, albeit internally. To be fair, a lot of my anxieties about the world are, uh, justified (I don’t even know which awful news article to link to in order to make that point). That being said. I worry about a lot of things normal people don’t think about. Take, for example, my terrible habit of pre-grieving.

“Jessa,” you begin, “what the fuck is pre-grieving?” Glad you asked, nameless faceless reader! This is when I start mourning things that haven’t even happened yet!

Want me to ruin pets for you? By adopting a fuzzy ball of love, you’re basically investing in a shit ton of heartbreak a decade or so down the road. Like, Krubby is gonna die someday, and my brain literally can’t handle that. It’s not an irrational OCD fear like my old ones — this is something that will inevitably happen. And there’s no ritual I can do to alleviate that anxiety. I can’t beg my mom to sit with me. I can’t Google random words until I feel better. I just have to live with the knowledge that one day, I’m going to lose my feline soulmate.

And that fear extends to everything. I was with Olivia, my girlfriend, for our anniversary. We rented the same hotel room we got together three years prior, when we decided to meet in Kalamazoo, but the pool was closed. And you don’t get between a Pisces and the idea of soaking in a body of water. So I had this idea — let’s go to the hot tub gardens instead.

And it was nothing short of magical. We got there well past midnight, after a romantic evening together. We sipped sparkling raspberry juice and she held me under the stars, so close I could hear her heartbeat beneath the bubbles. At the end of the hour and a half session, we dried off and got dressed and I found myself saying something to the effect of:

“That was great. Even if it’s all going to be over soon.”

It really hit me in that moment. Maybe it won’t be that weekend, or in a year, or in 10 years, or even in 50 years if we’re lucky. But there will be a last time I’ll ever see her, and that scares the shit out of me. The current political climate only exacerbates this fear — I don’t want to think about my sweet Olivia being taken and tortured and killed, and it’s unsettling to think that could even be a possibility. I love her so much, and I don’t want to imagine my life without her.

It’s not just Olivia, or Krubby for that matter. It’s my wife Crass and my parents and my karaoke friends and if I’m honest, it’s everyone and everything. It’s all impermanent. Everything will eventually crumble. And I hate that. I hate that eventually, I’m going to lose everyone I love and quite possibly everything I love and then what? I die too?

There was this mostly forgotten very underrated vaguely Christian emo-tinged indie band called Shirock back in the late 2000s. I was a fan of them — my friends took me to see them for my 16th birthday and I got to sing onstage with them, actually. Their music was pretty good, and I still remember a lot of their songs fondly. But the one that stuck with me the most throughout the years is “Everything Burns.” The theme of the song is that nothing lasts forever — everything burns in the end.

But love lives forever. At least that’s what the song implies.

I’d like to think my love will live on in some way after I die. I’d like to think that should my loved ones die before me, their love will live on in some way too. Maybe it’ll live on through me. I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. I sincerely wish I did, because that would make this whole anxiety thing a lot easier.

Unfortunately, considering my mental health history, I don’t think this is going away soon, but I’m trying to keep things in perspective as much as possible. As upsetting as it is to think about, everyone dies eventually. It’s natural. It’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m going to keep trying to enjoy life as much as I can, though. I don’t know how much longer I have in this earth. If I use this fear as motivation to spend time doing the things I love with the people I love, it might not be all bad.

If you enjoyed the writing in this post and elsewhere on the site, please consider donating to Jessa’s tuition fund! Any help is appreciated!

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Re-Joyce: How My Grandma’s Name Became My Identity

What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?

Here’s a shocker: my government name is not Jessa Joyce. I explained my choice of stage/pen name in a previous blog post, but I didn’t really go in-depth about the significance of the name Joyce, which is legally my middle name. Jessa was an older girl from my high school who was way cooler than me, so I ganked her first name. But who was Joyce?

Well, readers, this was Joyce.

My grandmother was born Joyce Sturgill in 1930 in the state of Kentucky. No middle name, as she was born at the tail end of the time before middle names were common. She was by all accounts a sweet person, and from what I remember of her, she was a bit sassy as well. She loved cats. She loved her family. She was an ordinary housewife and enjoyed simply taking care of her kids and grandkids. She never wanted for more than that.

I still remember her signature Appalachian accent yelling “Jaysee Joyce” from the other room when I was messing with something I shouldn’t have been messing with. Like the one time I hid her sweatpants under the bed and she caught them vacuuming. That was fun! But she was always quick to forgive my childhood pranks. I would cuddle up in her lap and watch Wheel of Fortune with her before falling asleep. Because she lived with us for the last few years of her life, we became pretty close.

She had a great sense of humor. One thing the women in my family are renowned for is our silly, off-the-wall, sometimes irreverent humor. When me, my mom, and my grandma were in the same room, there was never a dull moment. We’d have the entire family howling. And the food-catchers! The joke was that the female members of the family grew to be, uh, well-endowed in conjunction with our messy eating habits. In other words, my grandma’s shirts were never clean!

She unfortunately passed when I was still in high school. I remember walking into the hospital room to find her lying there dead. It appeared as if she’d been lying there alone for a while — no one had checked on her. I was the one who found her, actually. That was one of the darkest moments of my life. Things weren’t the same for my family after that. We grew apart. She was the glue that was holding us all together.

My grandma was not without her flaws. She had severe anxiety her entire life and would seldom leave the house over it. Her first attempt at driving a car, she crashed into a building, so she never tried again. Her cool Oldsmobile languished in the garage. I know people talk about how trauma can be passed down through generations, and it’s been established that anxiety is hereditary. My mother has severe anxiety as well, which has manifested as not really wanting to leave the house or drive. Sometimes I wonder if my grandmother’s and mother’s mental health issues poured into my own, as I’ve had almost crippling anxiety for most of my life. I don’t fault them for this, of course — we don’t pick our genes. In fact, it gives me perspective. I’m assuming these issues go back even further, perhaps multiple generations. The fact that the strong women in my family survived this long is remarkable.

Still, I don’t want to live in fear like the women in my family who came before me. I want to go outside. I want to live in the light. My grandmother was an amazing woman, but I’m sad she never got to adventure or see the world. That’s one of the reasons I embraced her name as part of my name. I want her legacy to live on through me. I want to travel and create and thrive, and I hope she can see me as I become everything I was meant to be. I hope I bring honor to her name.

Grandma Joyce never got to know me as Jessa Joyce. Sometimes I wonder what she’d think of me today, if she’d be proud of me. She wasn’t a performer or entertainer by any means. This life would be foreign to her. But I know she’d love me no matter what I went on to do or accomplish. She was more than just the matriarch of my family. She’s a part of me.

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.