Dear Cadence, Part Three: Embrace What Makes You Weird

This is the latest installment in my memoir project, written as a series of letters to my future daughter. Here are the previous entries: Part One and Part Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because that’s exactly what I did.

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Cadence, Part Two: The Furnace Man Can’t Hurt You

I promise this will make sense. But first, we need some exposition.

I was born in the middle of a snowstorm on March 5th, 1993. Two other very important people were born on March 5th as well — John Frusciante, the greatest guitarist ever, and your grandmother, my mom. I was indeed a birthday present. In the immortal words of Kanye West, who may or may not still be a Nazi sympathizer by the time you read this (hopefully not), my presence is a present, kiss my ass.

This was planned, kind of. You see, I had the cord wrapped around my neck in utero. I was a suicidal fetus. Instead of letting me abort myself, the doctors decided to cut me out. My mom planned the surgery for her birthday, since my original due date was about a week afterwards anyways. There are a lot of other unusual circumstances behind my birth and how exactly I came to exist, which I will get into later on. (Don’t worry, I’m not gonna explain the birds and the bees in the context of your grandmother, uh… making me.)

Our family moved frequently when I was very young, or as your grandmother would say, we were a bunch of gypsies, which is a word that American baby boomers could get away with saying but is actually pretty offensive to actual Romani people. To be clear, we are not actually Romani, or anything exciting for that matter. I’m literally 95 percent British, which means you are approximately half-British. But most of our immediate ancestors came from Kentucky.

Your great-grandparents all moved up to Michigan to take part in the industrial boom that was happening in the 1950s, as did many other Kentuckians, settling in the working class southern suburbs of Detroit. This region, called the Downriver area, is not to be confused with the affluent WASP-y northern suburbs where your other mom came from. No, Downriver was hillbilly heaven. Trailer parks as far as the eye can see, confederate flags, NASCAR merch, the works. And our family, we settled as far into the country as you could get and still be considered a suburb of Detroit.

Your grandfather was a steelworker, and your grandmother was a homemaker, much like her mother before her, and her mother before that. The women in our family traditionally had very little contact with the outside world. This was less because of the misogynistic worldview that was prevalent in their formative years and more because of their crippling anxiety. As in, your grandmother was too scared to drive most of the time, and your great-grandmother didn’t drive at all after crashing her car into a bank or something during her first attempt behind the wheel.

Me, I was fearless. Or so I liked to think.

The reality was I was scared of absolutely everything. One of my earliest memories was at my grandma’s house for Christmas Eve, a tradition that persisted until her death. I still remember my brother and cousin pulling all kinds of shenanigans, like hiding jewelry inside a box inside a bigger box inside an even bigger box (and so on), then giving it to my grandma as a good-natured prank. I remember my uncle Arnie bringing weird smelly cheese and shrimp cocktails every year. The men in my family would have a few beers and play poker — that was the only time my dad ever drank around me, in fact. And then there was Furnace Man.

Furnace Man lived in my grandma’s furnace. He wore a plaid shirt and had no head, and every time the furnace made a sound, I imagined him kicking around in there, lying in wait, ready to like, eat me or something. Sometimes I would get close to the furnace, as if to test my theory that he was lurking, then got scared and ran away, terrified.

Obviously, Furnace Man was not real. In fact, my “vision” of him came from my dad going into the utility room to try on a flannel he received one Christmas Eve and getting his head stuck in the head-hole. I was too little to know what was going on, so my brain pieced together “headless man from the utility room,” and decided he came from the creepy blue-gray furnace that always creaked and croaked menacingly when I walked past it.

Looking back, this was when my OCD first manifested, and it took on a lot of forms throughout my life. As I got a little older, I was scared of my precious irreplaceable adult teeth falling out, so I’d wiggle them a little every day to make sure they weren’t loose. In kindergarten, we had a fire drill, and that sparked a fear that our house would catch on fire and I’d lose all of my stuff. A watched pot doesn’t boil, or something like that, so I thought if I never left the house, nothing would catch on fire.

Keep in mind this was how my brain worked in kindergarten.

It evolved into even scarier things as I got into my teenage years, like a fear of death or of hurting people I love. I was even afraid to have you for years because I was scared I’d lose my sanity somehow and hurt you. I wish I could say some inspirational “oh, I just prayed and God miraculously cured me” spiel, but the truth is, my saving grace was getting the help I needed from psychiatrists and therapists. Although, to give credit where credit is due, perhaps God put those people in my life to save me from myself and my crippling anxiety. There’s a lot of things I don’t know about this universe and how it works, and while that’s another source of anxiety for me at times, in a way, it’s almost reassuring that I’ll never have all the answers.

I don’t know why He chose to pass along the generational curse of anxiety and mental illness to me, but I’d like to think it was to better prepare me for taking care of whatever mental health needs arise for you. I pray you never have to deal with the severe mental health issues that have plagued our family for so many years, but if you do, just know that I’m on your side. I’ve been to hell and back again — I could get there with my eyes closed. But now I know the way back home, and if I ever find you there, I’m ready to fight alongside you.

No matter how real he seems, the Furnace Man can’t hurt you.

Pride & Joy: How God Lead Me INTO Being Queer

Another post I originally shared as a FB status but figured it warranted its own post on here, especially since I haven’t posted on the blog in a minute. It’s been a crazy few weeks of coursework but my classes are over after this upcoming week, so expect more ramblings on here soon!

I see people posting their “I was gay but THEN I FOUND JESUS” testimonies all the time, but never any “I found Jesus but THEN I WAS GAY” testimonies. So allow me to share mine.

I used to attend an evangelical megachurch, first in my teens and again when I reached my lowest low after graduation. I was so broken and jaded I needed somewhere I could call home, and the church of my youth seemed right. I started going back, got deeply involved in the music ministry, and even married a man with an intention of starting a family, because that’s what you were “supposed” to do. But I wasn’t truly happy. I had to drink wine just to make household chores bearable. I had such a bad mental breakdown I had to go to a psychiatric emergency facility. I isolated myself from the people I loved and tried so hard to break my own bones to fit into a box that didn’t feel right to me. Even my own mom saw that I was miserable.

The breaking point came when my church announced a conversion therapy class for teenage girls — while I was standing on the stage about to lead worship. I should have walked off that stage, and I still kick myself for not doing it in the moment. But it planted a seed — something wasn’t right. I started to realize I was one of those girls! I’d been attracted to people of every gender, but I had to crush the parts of me that weren’t straight because I wanted so desperately to fit in and be “normal” by these people’s standards.

I was tired. And so I came out.

I’m so glad I chose to live my truth as a pansexual woman. I ended up leaving the marriage I rushed into for the sake of “staying pure” and married my best friend, who I realized I was in love with the entire time. I have a family of fellow queerdos who are truer friends to me than anyone at that church I left. My blood family even sees how happy I am now and is happy for me! And I didn’t have to leave behind my faith in Christ to embrace my true self — I found an affirming church that accepted me and my gay and trans siblings for who they are.

Being queer and following Christ aren’t mutually exclusive things. My faith is stronger for having been tested. God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, and He truly blessed me with so much. I love who He made me to be, and I’m glad I can finally live in the light.

Feel free to share if my story reaches you in some way. I want the world to know it’s okay not to fit into the mold of American evangelical Christianity. God doesn’t love you any less. You are exactly who He created you to be ❤️

Think of the Children! (An Easter Manifesto)

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

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

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

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

To a Much Older Me

Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.

Dear Jess,

You’re 100. At least, hopefully you live that long. Or rather, we live that long. I’m you, only 30! Remember those days? When we were living in Clawson with Krubby, who is now probably a faded tattoo on your saggy thigh skin. When our parents were alive and you had Crass and Livvy and so many friends who are probably all gone now. God, I’m making myself cry just writing this. But I’m slowly learning that nothing lasts forever except love, and it’s better to have loved someone and lost them than to have never loved at all. It’s a hard truth to swallow, but I’m coming to terms with it.

I don’t know exactly what to say to a 100-year-old me, except that I hope we accomplished everything we set out to do. I hope we got to start that family and get those degrees and write the songs that changed the world. I hope when we’re gone, our legacy lingers long afterward. I hope you never lost your childlike wonder and big dreams, even after shouldering the weight of a century of life. I hope you still have imaginary friends who live in the universes you created in your head. I hope you finally got that “Dr.” in front of your name, which is definitely still Salisbury (we’re not making that mistake again). I hope you dyed your white hair pink and wear all the tattoos of memories we made with pride.

I hope you can look back and be proud of me.

It hasn’t been an easy journey, making it to 30 years, and I’m sure it hasn’t been easy making it to 100. I know so much has changed — change is the only certainty in life. But we’re strong enough and brave enough to weather whatever storm we may face. We made it through mental illness, betrayal, loss, regret, and more hurt than one should have to bear, and yet, we’re still here. We made it. Hell, at the time of writing this, I’m staring down the music therapy degree we’ve been working toward for twelve years. I did that. You did that. And who knows what else you’ve accomplished in the time since I wrote this little post!

Maybe you’re reading this from a nursing home, where you’re definitely the little old lady everyone wants to befriend. Or maybe you have that lake house you’ve always wished for, and you spend long evenings looking out on the water reminiscing with Cadence about all our adventures when she was little. Maybe global warming made the planet uninhabitable and we’re like, on the moon or dead or something. There’s no way to know for sure, and that’s both the scary and exciting part. I don’t know how the story ends, but as long as you lived your life to the fullest, I know it will be a happy ending.

There will only ever be one Jessica Joyce Salisbury, and as her story comes to an end, rest easy knowing that she’s content with the way it was written. Relish that feeling of completion.

May the rest of your days be filled with joy and happiness.

Love always,

Jess

Even If It Kills Me

TW: sexual assault

I write this from my hotel room at GLR, the annual music therapy conference for the Midwest-based students, practitioners, and academics. It’s hard to believe the last time I was at GLR, I was still legally married to my ex and COVID hadn’t yet happened.

So much has changed.

The last GLR I attended was in Cincinnati. I remember all too well. You might remember too, if you remember this post (HUGE FUCKING TRIGGER WARNING ON THAT ONE). That was the year my dream of becoming a music therapist was stolen from me, when the aftermath of the rape I experienced on that trip tainted the very field I longed to be part of. Suddenly, everything related to music therapy reminded me of the person who violated me. My mental health got worse. I started drinking heavily. Soon, I wasn’t able to keep up with the coursework, and I dropped all my classes.

I’d already left the music therapy program once, due to my mental health, but this seemed insurmountable. And reentering the program after that felt like pushing a boulder up a mountain with a toothpick. I’d already given up twice. Surely I was too damaged to ever be a real music therapist.

But I’m here. I’m still here.

As of writing this, I’m not only at the conference, but I’m gearing up for the prestigious Undergraduate Symposium, where I’ll be giving a presentation on music therapy and autism. All of my current grades are, by some miracle of God, in the A range. I’m meeting with my professor to discuss internships in a week, and I won a research fellowship that paid for my entire senior year, and then some.

It doesn’t seem real. I shouldn’t be here, but I am. And I owe it all to the people who have helped me through recovery — my wife, my family, my professors. And to myself. I fought like hell to get to a place where I’m staring down graduation at last, where I’m finally on the cusp of claiming the title of MT-BC for myself.

This GLR feels almost poetic. I’m back at a hotel not unlike the one I was assaulted at, but I feel safe. I feel whole. Everything has come full circle, and my dream of becoming a music therapist feels not only within reach, but no longer tainted by the hands that hurt me. I’m not going to let trauma steal the very reason I was put on this planet — to heal through music. I am not too damaged.

On my 30th birthday a few weeks back, dad said something that made me tear up a little. When he briefly died on the operating table after a massive heart attack, he said my then-very-young niece appeared to him and said he couldn’t die yet. But he finally told me the rest of the story.

She said he couldn’t die because he had to see me graduate.

I’m not turning back because this time, it’s personal. I love my dad — and myself — more than I hate my rapist. I’m going to get this degree and this certification in spite of everything. In the words of Motion City Soundtrack, I so wanna get back on track. I’ll do whatever it takes.

Even if it kills me.

What I’m Leaving Behind in My Twenties

Well, today’s the day. I made it to thirty, an age I never imagined being as a kid. Mind you, I imagined being twenty-something and hot, and seventy-something and adorable, but thirty is such a weird in-between age. Too old to be cute in a childlike way, yet too young to be cute in a little old lady way. Thirty isn’t exactly an age you fantasize about being. When you think thirty, you think adult responsibilities and bills and oh God my biological clock is ticking and I still don’t have kids yet and holy shit is that a gray hair?!

…I say as if I’m not going to do something like *this* when I go gray.

But I’m kind of excited to turn thirty, to be honest. I’ve made my peace with getting older (mostly) and realized there are a lot of aspects of being young I’m ready to leave behind. Like I’ve said before, your twenties are kind of your free trial run of adulthood, your first playthrough on easy mode, where people still give you plenty of grace if you eff it up at first. But at thirty, the training wheels come off. You become a full-fledged person, and while that can be scary, it comes with some perks.

Here’s what I’m ready to leave in my twenties.

1. Irresponsibility

My twenties were marked by frivolous spending. Like, I impulse-bought a boat (which my first boyfriend hilariously predicted I would do someday). And I had to impulse-leave that boat by a dumpster with a “free – take me!” sign taped to it when we moved away from the lake. I rode that boat one magical time with my girlfriend when she came to visit—and never, ever again. That one boat ride basically costed me $500.

There were plenty of other things I impulse bought because it looked so cool in the Instagram advertisement. Like the two exercise machines I barely touched before realizing I can’t work out unless I’m at a gym with no distractions. If there is a couch available to nap on, lizard brain always picks couch. And don’t even get me started on clothes and makeup.

Cody, my financial advisor, gave me a stern talking to earlier. See, when we first starting working with him, he asked me and my wife our “whys” — why do we want to get out of debt and build our savings? My reason was simple. I wanted to start a family someday.

Of course, Cody took one look at my spending habits recently and said something that shook me.

“Do you actually want to start a family? Because you’re spending like your don’t actually want to.”

And it hit me. I haven’t been spending with the future in mind. Every time I buy some bullshit, I’m taking away from my future daughter’s college fund. Every Tim Horton’s donut I buy could have gone toward a new dance uniform for her instead. Or I could have used the money to help start my private music therapy practice, or buy a cute home on a big plot of land. I’m not a huge fan of my old pastor’s theology, but I will admit he had some good adages I still abide by to this day. One thing he’d always say was “What you spend your money on shows what you really care about.” And I think there’s a lot of truth to that. I don’t spend like I love my future daughter. I spend like I love material things more than her.

So I think this kind of frivolous spending is best left in my twenties.

2. Sloppiness

I have to admit, I never saw the point of making my bed. Like, you’re just going to get it all messed up again the next time you sleep, right? And still, nothing feels better than pulling down the sheets of a freshly made bed in preparation for a long night of slumber.

Imagine if we had the attitude I had about making my bed about everything. What if I never brushed my teeth because they’re just going to get gross again next time I eat something? My teeth would end up rotting out of my face! Brushing your teeth is an act of self-care, and so is keeping house.

A book I read recently, How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis, invited the reader to reframe daily chores as self-care tasks, rather than a duty that needs to be fulfilled for the sake of being fulfilled. We do these things because we deserve to have a clean, inviting home. We owe it to ourselves.

I recently got into the habit of putting away clothes after I launder them. It sounds like such a little thing to be proud of, but I am. I love walking into my bedroom and being able to make it to my bed without tripping over a pile of leggings. I love how it looks, being able to see the floor again. I feel at home in my home. What a freakin’ concept.

Sometimes, the change is as easy as making sure you have the right tools to clean with. I stocked up on some all-natural cleaners that smell nice and come in pretty bottles, and weirdly enough, that makes me want to do more around the house. It’s all about tricking lizard brain into doing what I want it to do, and turns out lizard brain likes shiny things that smell good.

This guy has an unsettling amount of influence over me.

In your twenties, everyone sucks, so you don’t go to other people’s houses expecting things to be perfectly in place and meticulously cleaned. But once you turn thirty, there’s this expectation that you’ll stop being a goblin and start keeping your home like a person. When I was younger, I’d probably say “Well, expectations are stupid anyways” and go back to living in squalor. But cleaning really is an act of self-care. It’s deciding you’re worthy of having a clean, habitable environment that reflects who you are, and gifting that to yourself.

3. Unhealthy Habits

I wish I remembered most of my twenties, but I spent a good deal of it drunk. Of course.

I didn’t have a drink until I was twenty, and I barely drank until I was legal, but after my 21st birthday, all hell broke loose. With the exception of the time I was briefly married to a very conservative, very Christian guy who’d never touched alcohol in his life, I spent the majority of my twenties with a drink in hand. Life was just hopping from one excuse to get trashed to the next.

I wasted a lot of time being wasted. I thought being intoxicated helped me be more creative, but it actually stifled me. I wasn’t writing or doing much of anything productive while drinking. I’d go to shows my own band was playing and get blackout drunk, looking like a fool at a time when I should have maintained a sense of professionalism.

As of writing, I’ve been sober about a year. Wild, I know. See, I’ve found healthier alternatives to alcohol to fill the hole in my heart. Like, did you know there are companies that make nonalcoholic beer? It tastes exactly the same! And I can be a snob about it — “Oh, just give me the Heineken 0.0”

“I try not to poison my body with that alcoholic shit, thanks.”

Snobbery is a kind of underrated motivator, and one of the reasons behind another life change I want to take into the next phase of my existence. I’ve started working out every weekday morning, no exceptions. This is partially because I have to take my wife to her gym job at the buttcrack of dawn, but it’s a good excuse to get moving. I love being one of those motivational assholes who are like “Ah yes, I get up at 5 am every day to do 45 minutes of cardio before work. It keeps me grounded.”

I’ll admit there are some areas of my life I have yet to earn bragging rights for. Like, my eating habits are still abysmal. But that’s the thing about progress. If you don’t have something you’re constantly working toward, you might as well be on your deathbed. Constantly aiming toward new highs is what keeps you young. And as hard as it is to say goodbye to young adulthood, I know it’s not the end of the journey. I have a good 30 more years at least — and that’s a conservative estimate. If I have my way, I’ll be around twice as long as that.

But even if I do make it to 90, as long as I still have dreams and ambitions and goals, I’ll never truly be “grown up.”

Pieces of Myself: Learning to Love Past-Jess

Full disclosure: I started using the good ol’ Mary Joanna to help me sleep at night. Yeah yeah, I know that technically means I’m not sober by the broadest definition of the term, despite being alcohol-free for about a year new (hell yeah). But I use it medicinally to help with my constant waking up in the middle of the night, and honestly, it does help me get a more restful sleep

Sometimes after I smoke, I don’t immediately fall asleep, and when that happens, I either get horny, paranoid, or philosophical. It’s kind of a crapshoot every time which of my high personalities shows up. It’s usually the one I don’t want at the time, which means using it as an aphrodisiac is a gamble.

“Jess, this is *not* the time to ramble about how we’re living in a simulation.”

Last night, though, I had a strange experience. My wife was giving me a pep talk regarding my mental health, which has been pretty bad as of late. Nothing concerning, just the usual “What if life is meaningless and everything I do will eventually be forgotten?” Which is pretty heavy stuff to think about literally every second of the day, and I’ve been in this mindset for most of my life. Yay, anxiety!

But, in my high, pseudo-intellectual stupor, something my wife said really itched a part of me I didn’t know I needed to reach — the past Jesses (is that the proper plural of Jess?).

I haven’t been nice to past me. Not any of them. I tend to think of my past selves as different people, instead of a cohesive part of who I became. I look at Child Jess through my adult eyes and judge her unfairly for being, well, an outcast. A pariah. The weird autistic little girl who stims by spinning around in the back of the classroom and making bird sounds. I get mad at my younger self for having the nerve to not fit in and be popular. And as my wife said, that little girl is a part of me still, and every time I resent my childhood eccentricities, I bully her the same way I was bullied by other people.

Then I think of College Jess. The me who was skinny and outgoing and optimistic and popular and excelled at school despite barely trying. Although she’s a part of me as well, I resent her for being all the things I wish I was now. I’m jealous of a past version of me! It makes no sense when I really think about it — at that time, my mental illnesses were worse than they’d ever been before, and I’d sooner saw off my own pinky toe with a nail file before I’d willingly deal with my OCD at its worst again. But I only see this rose-tinted version of the past, with this girl who is infuriatingly everything I want to be. Everything I was.

The thing is, these aren’t two different people. They’re all me, and they’ve taken me to where I am now. And honestly, where I am now isn’t that bad. I have a wife and a girlfriend I love dearly (that poly life, I’m tellin’ ya). I’m back in school for music therapy, and I’m closer than ever to getting this degree. I even won a scholarship for it! I’m about to be debt-free, and I’m working on getting back in shape. And despite my depression being ever-present, my mental health has never been better. Everything is falling into place for once, and I owe it all to my past selves for bringing me to this place. I started thinking of these past selves as an Inside Out-type of inner council that influences my day to day decisions and emotions.

It’s going to be a process, but I’ve started making peace with my past. I want to continue to honor and integrate these past versions of Jess into myself as a whole. Writing this out was my first step in healing these broken pieces of me. If your brain works at all like mine, I hope this little blog post helps you, too.

I’m Autistic (And Why That Matters)

Fair warning: I’m going to be writing about this topic a lot in the next few months for reasons I’ll elaborate on in a few paragraphs.

And yes, I *will* be using this topic as an excuse to post as many adorable pictures of little Jess as I can.

My last blog post delved a little into what it was like growing up autistic and how I’ve learned to mask to such a degree that most of my psychiatrists don’t even take me seriously when I mention that I’m likely on the spectrum. For that reason, I’ve been hesitant to “claim” the title of autism. If I’m “cured,” then I don’t have autism anymore, right? If I can blend in enough with the “normies” to not have any visible disability, and I can’t even get a proper diagnosis, I’m not really autistic. I’m just faking it for attention. Initially, I gave up on getting “properly” diagnosed for that reason.

Last week, I began research on my project for the undergraduate symposium. It will go hand-in-hand with my presentation that is conditional for my receiving of the Brehm fellowship, awarded to students who are looking to contribute to the field of disability research and advocacy. I chose autism as my focus, primarily because it has affected my life in deeply personal ways, even without a clinical diagnosis.

Even if I had to “change” to fit in with neurotypical society.

One of the books I found myself drawn to study was Unmasking Autism by Dr. Devon Price. His research comes from a neurodivergent place, being autistic himself, as well as having a queer perspective as a trans man. The book focuses on the ways neurotypical “passing” folks have used “masks” to fit in with societal norms. Traditionally, these masks were forced on us by things such ABA, now viewed as harmful by most autistic advocates. Some of us, like me, consciously decided to, as I like to say, break our own bones to fit in someone else’s box.

At this point in life, after decades of studying people’s behavior and learning what works and what doesn’t in social situations. I “pass” well enough that I’ve hesitated to claim the autistic title. I’m scared I’ll be looked at as a fraud by the community, someone who claims the title for clout and to excuse my admittedly sometimes annoying idiosyncrasies. But as I’m learning, that’s about as nonsensical as me trying to pass as straight for so many years when I knew damn well I was pansexual, and about as harmful too. It’s harmful to the community, as I perpetuate internalized prejudices by denying my identity, and it’s harmful to myself, as I force my body and mind into a crevice they were not designed to fit into.

Here’s the thing — Price explains that oppressed folks are ridiculously underdiagnosed because we’re forced to conform even more than people who are part of the majority. Straight white dudes can skate by on their privilege, but we have to try harder to make it in this world, and part of that involves hiding the less socially acceptable pieces of ourselves. Not only that, but the current diagnostic tools used for detecting autism is literally based on its presentation in white little boys. If you’re black, or an adult, or a woman, or any combination of that, it’s damn near impossible to get a proper diagnosis because of implicit biases in the testing process.

Here’s the other thing — a proper diagnosis isn’t a requirement to be part of the autistic community. In addition to the roadblocks mentioned above, there’s also the problem of access to testing, which is often prohibitively expensive and not readily available to everyone. For this reason, self-diagnosis (or as Price puts it, self-realization) is valid. If you relate to the autistic experience, you’re probably one of us. Surprise!

So that’s that. I’m autistic. And no, I don’t have autism any more than I have pansexuality. It’s just part of me. And that’s important, because we need more people to advocate for people like us.

Just a few days ago, a dear well-intentioned friend of mine invited me to an online seminar about some wellness products. The speaker went on and on about how her tinctures and potions can cure this and that. And then — I shit you not — she spoke this exact sentence:

“Our products have been shown to eradicate autism.”

Almost immediately, I excused myself and logged off. I felt gross, like someone told me they could fix my gay, as if that wouldn’t erase the beautiful, loving relationship I have with my wife. This time, that sentence — it was about me. It took me three decades to come to terms with who I am. It took me three decades to learn to have a beautiful, loving relationship with myself, with my own identity. And the fact that someone tried to sell me a cure for that feels insulting.

We need more people to fight the good fight for us. We need more people to stand up and declare that there’s nothing wrong with us, just that society isn’t built for us. We’re not the problem, the current rigid sense of “this is what is socially acceptable and this is what is not” is the real problem. As long as we don’t fit into the narrow ideals of what is acceptable behavior, we’re going to continue to be dehumanized and discriminated against. So something needs to change, and maybe it shouldn’t be us.

This was a lot of words, but I feel like it’s important to say. I am autistic, and I don’t owe anyone a proper diagnosis to claim that. Not in a world that makes it prohibitively difficult for an AFAB adult to even get clinically diagnosed, let alone get assessed. Not in a world that beat all the quirks and idiosyncrasies out of me before I even reached adulthood.

No, I don’t owe anyone a damn thing.

Phantom of Me

Damn it, Rina Sawayama. This website is going to turn into a fan blog if you keep this up.

I swear this woman lives rent free in my head.

I was on my way to work, listening to her as per usual, when her song “Phantom” came on. I’d listened to it in passing, but I never really listened to it. The second verse just hit me like a truckload of turkeys.

If I could talk to you, I’d tell you not to rush
You’re good enough
You don’t have to lose, what makes you you
Still got some growing to do

When did we get so estranged
Haunted by the way I’ve changed
Claiming back the pieces of me that I’ve lost
Reaching in and hoping you’re still, waiting by the windowsill
I’d bring you back to us

I wasn’t a popular kid. Quite the opposite, actually. A lot of it, looking back, was because of my (finally freaking diagnosed) ADHD and (still freaking undiagnosed) autism. I was the weird kid who spun around in the back of the classroom and stimmed by making parakeet sounds. I had special interests like 8-track tapes and Bon Jovi, stuff “normal” kids thought were strange. I had sensory issues when it came to smell and gagged at the scent of ranch dressing, which my peers loved to torment me with. I had to eat lunch in the library to avoid being pelted with the stuff! And it’s so easy for me to forget that I used to come home from school crying every day because kids are so fucking cruel.

What changed?

In the autistic community, there’s a term called “masking.” You hide parts of yourself to fit in. You learn to “pass” as neurotypical, because there’s no other way for people to love you. When I got into middle school, something flipped. I methodically studied what the “cool kids” were wearing and doing, and made myself into a caricature of who I really was in order to be the “most popular” version of myself. I clipped my own colorful wings to become something I wasn’t, all for my peers’ approval. And it worked. By senior year, I was unrecognizable. By college, I was — dare I say — popular. But little Jess—

—that Jess was dead. And I killed her.

I’ve brought up getting a proper autism diagnosis to my therapists several times, and each time I get almost laughed out of the clinic. But you’re so popular, and social. You don’t look autistic, whatever that means. You don’t go on and on about your special interests — because I learned early on that talking about the color of Richie Sambora’s toothbrush would get me ostracized. You don’t stim — because making silly little sounds and moving my body in ways that make me feel good aren’t “socially acceptable.” You don’t have sensory issues — because I had to force myself to deal with things that made me really uncomfortable, because otherwise, no one would like me.

I broke my own bones to fit in someone else’s box, and left me with a phantom of myself.

I wish I could tell my younger self that she doesn’t need to change to fit in. That she doesn’t need to hide entire parts of herself. That she’s valuable the way she is, and doesn’t need to change. That’s why autism acceptable — not just awareness — is so important. Because somewhere, some little girl is feeling the exact way I felt back then. And I don’t want her to feel like she needs to kill her autistic self in order to be loved.

I hope she’s still there, waiting by the windowsill.