Nonbinary Enough: The Awkward Realities of Being an AFAB Femmby

So, I’m technically nonbinary.

This isn’t a coming out post. In fact, I’ve been pretty open about it since I realized it a few years back. Yes, I know I’m a woman, and yes, I do use she/her pronouns for the most part, but it hit me that there’s more to the story. I’m not just a woman or just feminine. I’ve realized I have some definite masculine energy, and I’ve been going out of my way to honor that little man inside me.

Like, I did drag!

His name is Richie Styx and he’s a British rock star. Think a less-sucky Russell Brand.

I’ll be honest, though. Sometimes I feel like a massive imposter when I enter nonbinary spaces. Like I said, I am an AFAB femmby. In fact, I blend in perfectly with cis women until I mention the fact that I’m nonbinary. And until I open my mouth, to be fair. A lot of folks recognized me as queer even before I came to terms with it. I guess I just have that vibe.

Conservatives will tell you it’s because I had blue hair.

But I don’t really embrace or shout about being nonbinary to the same extent that I shout about being pansexual or even polyamorous. And I think to some extent, that’s due to the fact that I’ve gone all in on being pan/poly. I’m literally dating a woman, married to another nonbinary person, and casually seeing a couple of guys. I’m out here living as visibly pansexually and polyamorously as possible. But — like I mentioned earlier — most people would have no idea I’m nonbinary until I say something.

So when I enter spaces for nonbinary folks, I almost feel like I’m a fraud. And it sucks because I still feel some of the negative stuff that comes with the territory of being nonbinary and don’t really know how to address that. I definitely have some degree of dysphoria, but there’s really no feeling gender euphoria for me unless I could literally shapeshift between being Jessica Rabbit and a hot twink at a whim. There are things I wish I could change about my body to make me feel more androgynous, but I’m talking like, adding an extra head of height to myself. Testosterone wouldn’t do shit for me — I’d just get hairier, smellier, and hornier than I already am, and that sounds like a nightmare for everyone involved.

Real picture of what I’d look like on T.

There are times I straight up don’t feel nonbinary “enough” to call myself nonbinary, because I’m comparing myself to other folks who are transitioning medically to mold their bodies into what they want. I realize this is a very transmedicalist viewpoint to hold, and one I’m trying to unlearn. I know there’s no right or wrong way to be a woman, and no right or wrong way to be a man (okay, there are a few wrong ways.) Why is there a “wrong” way to be nonbinary, then? If anything, being nonbinary should be the most liberating of the three mainstream options, since there’s no predetermined social roles for us in Western civilization. It’s a relatively new concept in our culture (although it’s existed in other cultures for millennia).

I’m starting to realize, though, that there is a place for everyone at the gay table (gay-ble?), so long as all folks are treated with respect. There is no “Queer Olympics” and it’s not a competition to see who can be the most unambiguously, outwardly queer. Some folks can’t be openly queer for safety reasons, and we need to save them a seat at the table as well. The nonbinary people who don’t mind presenting as their birth gender, and the ones who present as their birth gender to keep from getting hate-crimed, and even the ones who present as their birth gender because they’re just tired of correcting people — they’re all valid. We’re all valid. I say “we” because yours truly has very much been in all of those situations I listed.

I’m glad I’m nonbinary. I feel a lot of freedom in the way I go about the world and represent myself. Although I present mostly as femme, I get a lot of joy out of letting my dudely side out too, to the point where both of my primary partners have questioned if I’m actually transmasc! For the record, I don’t think I am. I’ve just got a little man inside me, and I like to honor him every once in a while.

To be clear, here is the little man I am picturing.

Stepping Into My Own “Barracuda” Moment

Let’s talk about Friday night.

I’ve been sitting on this blog post for a few days now as I process what happened at karaoke on Friday. Here’s the SparkNotes version of the events.

Basically, I was already riding high from a very successful music bingo night that I’d just hosted at a different bar. That part is important because had I not been in such a powerful mood already, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do what I did. I got to Old Dog Tavern (shout out to one of my two favorite bars in Kalamazoo!) around 10 I think and met up with one of my bandmates and best friends, Ellie. We were just outside on the deck probably sharing a joint with a few friends or something when we both headed inside for some reason. Not ten seconds after we stepped inside, some crusty short old white dude with a Colonel Sanders goatee in a green hat came up to us. He reached his shriveled hands within an inch of our titties and made a honking motion, remarking “Eh, isn’t this how you greet women?” and shyly begging “Can I?”

I saw red. It was enough that this fucko disrespected me, but also poor little Ellie, who is for all intents and purposes a little sister figure to me. I pushed back through the doors to where my wife, Crass, was sitting outside, and all I had to say was “creep,” “tried,” and “grope” and she was equally livid. We both bursted back inside, her to find the pervert and me to make a fucking statement.

I ran up to the stage and grabbed the microphone. Fuck whatever else was going on. This man had to be stopped. I screamed to stop the music, took the mic, and with all of the pent-up rage of 32 years worth of creeps thinking they can test me, I declared:

“Nobody is allowed to sexualize me and my friend without our consent.”

The bar bursted into a frenzy of confused looks and claps, save for one asshat heckler in the front who yelled “Too late!” like a goddamn Reddit troll in real life. This made me even more angry, and I lunged toward him, grabbed him by the collar to make him look me in the eye, and said “What the fuck did you say?” At that point, Crass had turned her attention to the heckler, and she literally chased the whole man out of the bar. The original pervert got tracked down and kicked out as well, and the whole time, I was shaking and crying and in shock at what I had just done.

I — the bullied little girl who had to eat lunch in the library to avoid being pelted with ranch dressing packets — finally stood up for myself.

Then, the most amazing moment happened. The whole bar rallied around me, encircling me physically with their bodies and figuratively with their love. I sunk into my friends’ arms and let out all of the emotions that had built up.

Because I was no longer scared. I felt like I had become something new. I stepped into who I was supposed to be this whole time. Like, there was something deeply spiritual about what happened that night. My good friend’s girlfriend said it’s a Leo moon thing. I keep drawing powerful feminine cards like The Empress and the Queen of Wands, the latter of which is a card that’s always resonated with me, though I couldn’t place why at first. I always thought I was more of a Cups girl — soft and emotional — not a fiery, passionate Queen of Wands.

I’ve mentioned my ridiculous admiration for Ann Wilson, frontwoman of the classic rock band Heart, on here many times, and it’s fitting that this particular night was the day after her 75th birthday. I wanted to be her so bad growing up, to the point where I’d study her singing and her performances and her fashion sense and even her personal life, as stan-ly as that sounds now (give me a break, I was an autistic child). One thing I learned when reading about her childhood was the fact that she was bullied extensively too, like me. She was overweight; I was underweight. She had a stutter; I had undiagnosed ADHD and autism. But I saw myself in her. Hell, I created a cringey wish-fulfillment OC based on her! She gave me hope that I could someday be the badass rocker chick I desperately wished to become.

That night at karaoke, that’s exactly what I did. I became that woman. The take-no-shit rock and roll queen who isn’t afraid to call a fucker out.

After the creeps were exiled from the bar and karaoke resumed as normal, the DJ (who may just be the best cishet white man this side of Steve Irwin) asked me if I was okay and if there was anything he could do. I had one request, because I knew exactly what my last song of the night would be.

Back in the 1970s, Ann and her own (actual) little sister, Nancy, were frequent victims of slimy men in music venues, especially since rock was very much considered a man’s world back then. The iconic “Barracuda” was written as a response to some guy backstage who made a creepy joke toward Ann at her sister’s expense, insinuating their relationship was incestuous. Absolutely filled with unbridled rage, she wrote the scathing lyrics that would eventually become the now-legendary song.

And that night was my “Barracuda moment.”

I got on stage to a roar of applause. It’s funny because a while ago I wrote a song half-joking about wanting to be “Kalamazoo famous” instead of actual famous. In that moment, I really did feel like a small town celebrity. With what little was left of my voice after cussing out the pervs, I sang my musical heroine’s battle cry, dedicating it to her for helping me find my voice — and to every man who ever intentionally made a woman feel unsafe in a bar.

I left the best part out. After everything was said and done, a young woman came up to me and quietly thanked me for what I did. She’d been victimized by the creep too. It made me realize how much power we have as women to lift each other up and protect one another.

I want to carry this night with me whenever I feel like I’m not strong enough to stand up for myself. Because now I know I have what it takes. I’ve seen it. My friends have seen it. The entire city of Kalamazoo has seen it.

I have more power than I thought.

Following Your Heart: Lessons From My Lifelong Muse

Last week, my best friends from the Kalamazoo karaoke crew stole me away to Detroit for the night to see my childhood heroes, Heart. And let me tell you, it was magnificent.

And bittersweet.

And oddly galvanizing, in a strange way.

To think my lifelong obsession began with this American Idol performance I watched in my parents’ living room one evening as a wee 10-year-old. I remember thinking out loud that it was a really pretty song, and so my mother beckoned me to her cassette collection as if to show me a clandestine secret.

And there it was. The Rosetta Stone that would decode my entire direction in life.

I’m also fairly sure Heart invented Pokémon with this album cover.

I’d never heard anything like it before. That voice, it was almost unreal. I was already captivated by the audio, but then I managed to catch the music video for “Alone” on VH1 (and recorded it onto a VHS tape, natch) and by God I was mesmerized.

I mean, Nancy Wilson, the guitarist and the younger of the two sisters, was beautiful. As a young blonde girl who’d just picked up guitar herself, it was expected for me to gravitate towards Nancy. Everyone in my life asserted I was a little Nancy. But the sister who really stole my heart was the raven-haired, soulful-voiced siren, clad in all black, with a longing gaze that burned into the CRT screen of my childhood TV.

That would be Ann fucking Wilson, and suddenly, I didn’t want to be a veterinarian or a racecar driver when I grew up. I wanted to be her.

I’m not actually goth — I just watched this music video too many times as a kid.

In fact, I think this particular album cover made me realize I was into girls:

Better than the album cover that made me realize I was *also* into guys.

Ann had become my biggest musical inspiration, my baby lesbian crush, and perhaps most importantly, somebody I could see myself in. I remember my favorite cringy OC from my middle school stories and how it was essentially just Ann Wilson but like, with a cool outfit and a hot boyfriend too. At the time, I was a far cry from the effortlessly cool rocker chick I desperately wanted to be, but I still had hope.

Because Ann wasn’t always the effortlessly cool rocker chick either.

In fact, when she was a kid, she was just like me. She was bullied relentlessly, same as I was. For her, it was a stutter; for me, autism. For her, it was being overweight; me, I was scarily underweight. I remembered finding out about her struggles and felt an odd kinship with her. In a way, she felt like my big sister, the one who went through hell first so she could show me the way through.

That’s why the show felt so bittersweet. In a way, I felt like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. Because — and it hurts my heart to admit it — I don’t know how much longer I’ll have her. She did recently beat cancer, which makes her even more badass, but I’m not naive. Even if she is in otherwise perfect health, she’s not getting any younger, and who knows how many more years she’ll be able to tour. Same with most of my musical heroes. The remaining members of Queen will eventually die. There will someday be a world with no Bon Jovi. And after my pantheon of boomer musicians have passed on, I still have to watch all the gen X musicians I looked up to perish. And after them, it’ll be my generation.

But despite sobbing on three separate occasions at the show, I left that night feeling strangely empowered. Because one day, Ann may be gone, but she’ll live on in my heart (pun only slightly intended). And I’ll carry on her legacy as best as I can by creating beautiful music and giving it my all at every performance I do. I owe so much to her, because she’s the one who made me realize I could be whoever I wanted to be. I didn’t have to be a scared bullied kid anymore. I could be a rock and roll baddie. It’s kind of funny — a few days ago, a woman at my music bingo show said, and I quote:

“You know who you remind me of? The singer of that one band. You know, Heart?”

Music, Failure, and the Weight of the World: A Small Rant

So I was let go at Guitar Center.

It was the professional equivalent of a relatively amicable breakup — my boss saw me struggling to even make it in on time due to my insane work schedule, and so she mercifully allowed me to quit with no hard feelings. I’ve never been fired, and this doesn’t even really count as a firing since I left on my own terms, but it still stings.

I’m not a stranger to failure, despite it rivaling death and abandonment as one of my biggest fears. Leaving the internship in Fort Wayne felt like a huge failure after everything I’d put myself and my wife through in order to finish my music therapy degree. I wasted so many years in school and have absolutely nothing to show for it. That was a rough moment in my history, but I managed to claw my way out of the dark depression it sent me into.

I don’t know how much clawing I have left in me, though. My fingertips are bloodied and raw. I’ve struggled enough.

This is all on top of the weight of the world, which has been crushing me with every disheartening story that passes through the news cycle. We live in a truly evil world where people get their kicks by literally kicking others down. Some bitch got hundreds of thousands of dollars for calling a child the n-word. How is it that terrible people get rewarded, but actual good people get fucked over? There’s still a whole bunch of bullshit happening in Israel and Palestine to folks whose only sin was being born in the wrong place at the wrong time, and don’t even get me started on the mess that is my own country at the moment. I wish I could just leave, but it’s not that simple. I can’t leave my family and friends and partners behind, so my only choice is to stay and fight the good fight, wherever that leads me.

But like I said, I’m don’t know how much fight I’ve got left. I’m fucking exhausted. The one thing that’s kept my spirits up at all is music and the prospect of someday becoming a successful musician in some form, but I’m afraid of becoming obsolete. I’ve already mentioned on my blog how dabbling with AI software started to bork my creativity, but like, what’s the point of writing songs when I can push a button and make the robots write one for me? And that’s the future we have to contend with. I’m not a vehemently anti-AI Neanderthal — I think there are legitimate uses, even in the art and music fields, and I’d be a hypocrite if I said I’ve never used it. Like, sometimes I’ll use AI to test out acoustic demos with a full band so I know whether or not the song is even strong enough to work with. But I’d never, ever release something to the public that I didn’t create myself. And I’m realizing most people don’t operate with those kinds of creative ethics. So as AI music becomes more prominent, I’m going to have to compete with a torrential onslaught of “creators” cranking out slop. Like, how long until we have an AI popstar?

But even if I didn’t have robots to compete with, I’m still racing against time. I’m 32. No one wants to listen to grandma sing her little songs, and I’m practically a grandma already to the suits who run the music industry. I remember when I was a freshman in college, it was a big fucking deal that Carly Rae Jepsen, who was at the height of her “Call Me Maybe” era, was 26. I’m six years older than that, and I have yet to make any significant waves in the industry. The music video for “Sweet Honey” sits just below 100 views, which is next to nothing. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had I moved to Nashville or LA in my youth, but it’s too late now.

And even if I was still a hot twentysomething ready to take on the music industry, you have to remember, the music industry has changed. A lot. It’s damn near impossible to make money with streaming. And there’s no such thing as rock stardom anymore. Unless you’re Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, or Beyoncé, no one knows who you are, and no one cares. Monoculture is dead. Back when you had to listen to music on the radio, people could bond over hearing their favorite songs together. Now, everything is so fragmented. If you want to listen to nothing but progressive zydeco pirate metal, you can just search for bands that fit that perfectly in that very niche and never bother putting on anything else again. Vinyl sales are up, but that’s not gonna help your up-and-coming local band that’s still getting off the ground and doesn’t have thousands of dollars to drop on printing physical records. Which leads me to the biggest problem.

It costs too damn much to “make it” in the creative fields.

I could have moved to Nashville had it not been prohibitively expensive. I could sink all of my time and energy into recording quality music if I didn’t have to work three jobs for the privilege of breathing air. The famous folks you know and love are largely only there because they were born into money and had multiple safety nets to catch them in case of failure. Taylor Swift’s wealthy upbringing has been the subject of much scrutiny, but even one of my personal favorites, the aforementioned Chappell Roan, had a charmed life, growing up in a sprawling gated home that looked like this. I’m livid that the music industry and this entire country as a whole demands you be born with a silver spoon in your mouth, or else what you have to say or contribute isn’t important and you should just fuck off and die. It makes me viscerally angry, the amount of talent we’ve lost to poverty. The next Jimi Hendrix could be just around the bend, but if that kid’s parents can’t afford to get him a guitar and lessons, too fucking bad.

It’s a cultural crisis. And I’m scared I’m becoming one of its casualties.

I want to make it in music more than anything, but I’m so disillusioned at this point. I’ll never be a rock star. I’ll never be John Frusciante. I’ll never be Ann Wilson. The best I can hope for is some steady gig where I can make the music I want to make and earn a decent living, but there’s not a lot of jobs like that out there, especially not here in Kalamazoo.

I don’t want to end this post on a negative note, as many things in my life are going well. My dad was recently hospitalized, but he’s made a speedy recovery. My two primary partners have been incredibly loving and immensely supportive of me, and I might have a third partner who is also very sweet if I play my cards right. My dream pedalboard is finally finished, and since moving to Kalamazoo, I’ve got more friends than I can keep track of. I do have a lot going for me, but there’s always that part of me wondering when the other shoe is gonna drop. And a big black cloud hanging over me as of late is my frustration with, well, everything.

But I’m going to keep pressing on. With Guitar Center out of the way, perhaps I’ll have more time to work on the songs I want to get recorded and produced. Maybe I can sink more energy in the podcast I started with my best friend. Maybe I can even sleep a full eight hours like a normal person.

I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic, but optimistic nonetheless. That’s all I can really do.

Putting on the Straight Jacket: Choosing Between Safety and Your Own Identity

Alright everyone, today we’re talkin’ trauma. But first, the daily prompt WordPress gave me tonight:

What sacrifices have you made in life?

It’s serendipitous that this was today’s prompt, because while this wasn’t necessarily the direction I was planning to go in with this topic, I feel there is another important angle to consider.

Living and being in the world authentically requires sacrifice. And it absolutely can cause trauma.

Up until a certain age, the trauma I experienced never really left the school hallways, so once I was done for the day, I could compartmentalize all that BS and, I don’t know, play Sims all day. My bullies didn’t really live rent-free in my mind since I was too busy thinking about all the stories I wanted to write, and to be entirely honest, I didn’t have much else to worry about as a child. You know, aside from my terrifying OCD-driven intrusive thoughts.

No brain, I *don’t* actually want to stab my mother, I literally just want to play dolls.

Here’s something I came to realize: things were so easy because I actually had a pretty privileged life growing up. I was white, relatively well-off (well, blue collar, but my family never hurt for food), and straight…right?

Oh.

In the immortal words of NSYNC, bi bi bi.

I think I always knew in my heart of hearts that I was bisexual. You see, speaking of Heart, I came to realize I was staring just as longingly at old photos of Ann Wilson as I was at Peter Frampton. Yes, I am a millennial. My mom gave me some of her vinyl collection when I was around 12, and the cover of Dreamboat Annie just like, awakened something in me.

Then, I went to the church I grew up in and that got beat out of me pretty quick. I learned what it was called when a girl thinks another girl is hot. It was called being a homosexual and it was bad because…they never really said aside from a couple of Bible verses that I’ve since discovered meant something else entirely. But the message was clear. If being gay was bad, then I was not gay, simply because I did not want to be bad.

And then I met my best friend in college. She was a lesbian. The closer we got, the more I realized I preferred being around her to any of the guys I dated. I even realized I preferred her company to that of the man I eventually married. No one made me laugh like her. No one understood me like her. And like, she was way cuter than most of the dudes too.

If you haven’t caught on yet, she’s my wife now.

But something changed when I just said “fuck it” and started living openly queer. Suddenly, religious and political discussions were a minefield and I’d be taken aback by how freely people would say the most dehumanizing bullshit about folks like me — especially if the person I was talking to didn’t immediately register that I wasn’t straight like them. I had to watch how I word things around strangers, as dropping a phrase containing the words “my wife” could potentially put me in danger. Driving through smaller towns felt especially unsettling now. I wasn’t sure if I was surrounded by people who’d want me dead if they knew the truth. I’m originally from a small town; I know how it is. These folks don’t often meet people who aren’t like them, and when you’re that insulated from the full range of human diversity, exposure to that diversity can feel threatening. And when people are threatened, all sense of reason falls to the wayside and it’s fight mode.

I don’t want to fight with these people. But they want to attack me. All for something I never chose for myself. All because I thought girls were pretty.

In the last few months since the current administration took over, I’ve been considering what I’d even do in the case that homosexuality is outlawed. I am bisexual, and I could put on the straight jacket if I really needed to. I had for all those years I exclusively dated men. But I realized I wasn’t truly happy in that arrangement. I wasn’t fully, openly myself.

That’s why the topic of sacrifice kind of hit me. I’m sacrificing a lot of comfort and privilege just by being who I really am for the first time. There’s a term for that constant sense of looking over your shoulder that comes with being a marginalized person. It’s called minority stress, and refers to the chronic stress that we experience from constant discrimination and not knowing if the next person we run into will be a crazed bigot who wants to murder us. The thing is, I never had to experience that as a kid. My wife may have, since she’s black and race is a lot harder to conceal than sexuality. But remember, I was a white kid in a white family in a 99 percent white town. The only source of trauma for me, like I mentioned at the start, was being bullied.

All of that being said, would I go back in the closet if it meant freeing myself from the stress and potential threats? Would I willingly live out the rest of my years playing the role of the traditional wife in a heterosexual marriage? Would I sacrifice my own identity for my safety? Honestly, I don’t think I would. It is hard adjusting to being a marginalized person when it’s not something I grew up experiencing, but after spending years running from myself, I’m not about to backtrack on work I’ve done to be who I really am. Because who I really am is finally here, and she’s ready to take on the world.

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 Unsettling Trend of Dehumanization (And Why We Must Fight It At All Costs)

Oh. My. God.

So the government is planning on rounding up the info of folks with autism and doing God knows what with it. As someone who is (now thankfully) self-diagnosed, I’m probably safe for now. But this doesn’t exactly bode well for those diagnosed with other forms of neurodivergence, and considering RFK Jr. has already laid out his plans for people with ADHD, a condition I am properly diagnosed with, I have some cause for concern.

Because we’re in the beginning stages of genocide.

Just listen to the way he talks about us:

Autism destroys families, and more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who 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. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.

Dehumanization. That’s where we are.

We live in a world that values labor above everything else. If you’re not able to hold down a job, sucks to suck, you just don’t get to live. If you can’t contribute to society in any meaningful way, you’re a waste of carbon atoms and a drain on our resources and should probably be Old Yellered on sight like the useless sack you are.

*Rabies* are what happen when you don’t believe in vaccines, *RFK.*

The value of a person is determined by what they bring to the metaphorical table, and if you lose that value by losing the ability to work, you wear the scarlet letter of being a freeloader at best and a symbol of the downfall of civilization at worst. Sometimes you don’t even need to lose the ability to work. Sometimes your perceived lack of contribution to society is not paying your share of taxes (like undocumented immigrants) or not making your share of babies (like queer folks). But whatever it is, these people are not contributing like good citizens.

And I think that’s where the disconnect is, because a human life shouldn’t be weighed against how hard it has worked, how much money it has given, or how many babies it has popped out. Human life should be considered inherently sacred, with no conditions. Hell, all life should be considered sacred and handled with care. My dad (who dubiously claims he is of indigenous descent, although I’m not sure I buy it) says when certain Native American tribes kill an animal for food, they say a prayer of thanksgiving for it. And apparently there’s some truth to that. And if a buffalo’s life is worth enough to warrant a gratitude prayer, a human life should be worth so much more. The Good Book even says so:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

-Matthew 10:29-31

But we don’t value each other.

Wanna see something horrifying?

Those are people. Human fucking beings. “But these are violent criminals!” Well, for one, 179 out of 238 of these guys don’t have a criminal record and were sent to this fucking gulag without due process, which, may I remind you, is so important to our American way of life that it’s an amendment in our Constitution. You know, that thing that’s supposed to govern how we run this country?

But imagine, for a second, these dudes were violent criminals. Should they be rounded up like cattle and tortured for their sins? It’s tempting to say yes — if someone violently murdered my family, my kneejerk reaction would be “throw them in the woodchipper.” But in addition to a multitude of arguments against capital punishment, just by saying “x, y, & z are worthy of punishment by death,” we set a dangerous precedent that crime must be paid for with human life, and who decides what’s a crime? Rape and murder are obviously bad to most decent people at least, but remember that historically, being queer was a crime, and it still is in parts of the world.

You can see where this is going, right?

You can’t tell me you did Nazi that coming.

When the government decides an entire group of people are worthy of death, it’ll make their very existence a crime. That is dehumanization.

I’m honestly afraid of how and even if we can come back from this. How do you teach people that they should care for one another? How do we teach people that altruism and compassion are cooler than “owning the libs”? How do we teach people that kidnapping and torturing folks is bad? That all feels like common sense to me. And yet so many Americans are clinging to the very ideas their grandfathers fought against in World War II.

There’s a quote in the first Pokémon film from Meowth of all characters that goes like this:

I think about my big brother, who ended up an all-out Trumper despite being raised by the same blue-collar Democrats as me. We have very different values and views, but at the end of the day, we were both born from the same womb. The same blood runs in our veins. Despite the fact that he’s a business owner with a traditional marriage and four kids and a perfect picket fence life, there are so many things we share as well.

He is every bit as human as me.

I recently started a job at an assisted living home, and last night while I was changing one of the residents, I noticed his bright red MAGA hat staring at me from his bedside table. You know what I did?

I gave that man the exact same care I would have given my own grandfather. Because that’s what being human is about.

In that moment, I didn’t see a man who voted to take away mine and my loved ones’ rights. I saw a man with a family who loves him enough to bring him a giant stuffed puppy, who lay helplessly in his own excrement, desperately crying for help. Jesus said to love and pray for your enemies, and I’m gonna fucking do that if it kills me. I want to love so fiercely and fearlessly that it baffles everyone around me.

And that’s why I have this blog. Our best defense against genocide is humanizing our experiences. I want to soften hearts. I want to humanize myself as a queer, polyamorous, neurodivergent woman. I recognize that many people might not have ever met someone who ticks all those boxes and only get their information about those demographics from sources like Fox News and other conservative media companies. To those people, it’s my job to be a positive representative. I’m demonstrating to them that I’m not some irredeemably evil sicko that needs to be put down. I’m a daughter, a partner, a friend, a future mother, a musician, an artist, a caregiver, a teacher, and a writer. But most importantly, I’m a human.

We all are.

Chosen Family: The Life-Changing Power of Finding Your People

Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.

Family.

That’s the first word that comes to mind after this Easter.

The day started in the fucking crapper. It was my third overnight shift as a caregiver and my chronic-whatever that’s making me not eat was really flaring up, to the point where I had to sit down every two minutes or so to keep from passing out. From the start of the day to the end of that night shift, I’d eaten maybe 400 calories, tops. I couldn’t get home from the facility fast enough. Once I walked through the door, I peeled off my scrubs and climbed into bed with my girlfriend and her other girlfriend, who were staying the night, and I slept like a damn rock.

I thought Easter was going to be pretty shitty as well, considering my state of health. And it would have been, except today made me realize I have the greatest support system on the planet.

From the moment I woke up this morning, the whole polycule doted on me. Livvy, my girlfriend, headed out into the wild to fetch me food I’d actually eat. Crass, my wife, hunted down my Sylveon kigurumi and made sure I was warm and comfortable. Meanwhile, Gabbi, my metamour, played all of the funniest bullshit she could find on YouTube for me. As my loved ones went above and beyond making sure I was healthy and happy, I came to this really beautiful realization.

We might not share a bloodline or a surname. But we’re family nonetheless.

Growing up, I was pretty close to my family. But after my grandmother’s passing when I was in high school, the glue that held my family together sort of dissolved. I haven’t had real quality time with my cousins in years, and my older siblings and I text maybe twice a year. The only blood relatives I still talk to regularly are my mom and dad, who are, in all fairness, the greatest humans to ever have the honor of being parents. But aside from them, I don’t really have a strong connection to my family, which kind of sucks, especially considering I wanted that kind of connection. There’s a reason I begged my parents to give me a little sibling for years.

Yet I’m realizing lately that family looks different for everyone, and sometimes, it’s your chosen family that’s really there when you need them.

This was a short post — more of a life update if I’m honest — but I wanted to write about how happy my little family of neurospicy queerdos made me this Easter, just by caring for me when I really needed it. I know it’s not conventional or traditional, but why stick to tradition if there are other ways that work just as well, or even better? They say it takes a village to raise a child, but really, we’re all still growing. We all need support throughout our lives. That’s what being with my partners means to me. That’s what being polyamorous means to me. That’s what being a family means to me.

I’ll leave y’all with a song by one of my favorite pop artists, Rina Sawayama, who absolutely should be as big as Chappell Roan.

Family is what you make it.

Worth the Fight: A Few Thoughts on Faith and Sacrifice

This blog post begins with a song. And it’s not a happy one.

This is a song I recently composed called “WTF.” The title perfectly encapsulates how I feel about the condition of the world right now, but it has a double meaning:

Darling, you’re Worth The Fight

Even if I don’t make it out alive

For you I’m ready to die

A girl like you is Worth The Fight

I was hesitant to put this song out into the world for a number of reasons. For one, it was unfortunately made from lyrics I hand-wrote and stupidly fed into an AI software, which I’m not proud of, but I feel like I’ve altered the melody and structure of the song enough to be my own original material at this point. And I’ve wrestled with this song for months now, trying to find some way to salvage it because of how personal the words are to me.

Because this song isn’t just any old song. It’s about how I’m absolutely willing to die for my girlfriend, and I mean every word of it.

And it’s all because of one peculiar Jewish carpenter who walked the planet 2000 years ago.

For better or worse, growing up, I attended church. My parents weren’t very religious, but my mom wanted me to have a basic understanding of the Christian faith because she felt it was important for me to have that spiritual experience as a kid. And I mean, what child doesn’t love vacation Bible school?

I was baptized at 14, mostly because I wanted to impress the really cute good little church boy I was madly in love with. To be honest, a lot of me attending church as a youngin’ was because I desperately wanted to fit in with my friends, who were mostly from evangelical families. But as I got older, I started making my faith my own. In my teen years, my OCD really started beating me down, and I felt really scared and alone in the world, but all of that disappeared when I was standing in the crowd at youth group screaming along to “How He Loves” (the “sloppy wet kiss” version, natch). I could feel the presence of Jesus in the music — I think that’s one of the reasons music feels so sacred to me. I always call music my first language as a shy autistic little girl who didn’t know how to talk to people, but it wasn’t just my way of communicating with my peers. It was also my way of communing with the Divine, and it made my relationship with Christ that much more personal to me.

I stopped going to church for many reasons, both personal and practical, but I still find myself going back to the holy scriptures and seeking comfort in the words of my Savior from time to time. And this morning was one such time, because it hit me.

If the world keeps progressing (or rather, regressing) the way it is, my time on this planet could be cut alarmingly short.

I don’t want to be a martyr, but I’m becoming increasingly afraid that might be my fate. I don’t want to go quietly into a world where my girlfriend has to move across the planet to get away from those who persecute her. And that is something that’s on the table, as she recently told me she can get Italian citizenship from her grandmother. But I don’t want to live in a world where she’s so casually and cruelly ripped away from me by the fucko from The Apprentice of all people.

I wish I knew how to protest in a way that means something, but I’m paralyzed by my fear of dying. There are literally people setting themselves on fire to take a stand, and I sincerely wish that was something I’m capable of, but I don’t think I’m that brave. I’ve considered staging a non-fatal hunger strike a la Gandhi and many brave suffragettes, but I’m also scared of being snatched up for being a political dissident and sent to El Salvador to have God knows what happen to me. To be honest, I’m almost too much of a coward to post this, as it’s probably the most personal and desperate thing I’ve ever written on here.

But with Christ, all things are possible, right?

I’m at a point where I don’t want things to escalate to the point where I feel the need to starve myself on the steps of the White House, but if that day ever came, I trust the Lord to guide me. I don’t want to die young. I want to get old. I want to be a grandmother someday. I want to live in a cute little nursing home with a bunch of other old people like the one I work at. I hope those are the cards I’m dealt eventually. I don’t want my last days on Earth to be uncomfortable and painful and scary.

That being said, if my time here really is to be cut short due to political violence, I don’t want my life to be in vain. I want my life to have meaning. I want my life to be marked by the kind of sacrificial love I learned from my Savior. In John 15:13, Jesus is quoted as saying:

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

That’s the kind of love I want to be remembered for someday.

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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