Transformation, Rebirth, and Constant Screaming: Understanding the Message of the Cicada

A few days back, I got a bit of a fright when I sat out on the back patio to chat with some friends back home on the phone. I noticed a freaking enormous bug just chilling on one of the support columns. My first assumption was a massive dreaded horsefly, which I am (rightfully) terrified of. But he wasn’t moving, so I eyeballed him a bit closer to figure out what he was.

He was a cicada! Or rather, his shell. The real little dude had long since moved on and left part of himself behind.

I left it there in the moment, not thinking much of it, but something later on prompted me to revisit it. I kept thinking about the shell sitting out there on the patio all day.

Going out to retrieve the shells that night, I felt an odd kinship to Satoshi Tajiri, a certain Japanese little boy with autism whose passion for bug collecting would, in adulthood, lead to his masterwork, the Pokémon universe. Who woulda thunk my lifelong obsession with collecting little digital critters would come in handy someday? When I finally reached the patio, I noticed a second one on the other side of the column. Bonus! I snagged both and placed them in a little bowl, careful not to damage the delicate exoskeletons.

When I brought the two shells inside, my girlfriend disclosed to me that as a child, she was petrified of the enormous insects. To quell her anxiety around them, her mother made up a silly song about them: “I’m gonna get some brand new skin/And I’m gonna fly away.”

And it hit me. I’m in my cicada era. Because this is the part of my life where I need to shed my skin and begin anew.

I consider my religious views deeply rooted in the Christian tradition I grew up in, but I also dabble in witchcraft and related spiritual arts. The two are surprisingly compatible. I had this crazy realization that the Abrahamic faiths’ blanket ban on all things witchy is more or less rooted in the fact that the big dudes who’ve always run those faiths get real squirrelly about a woman taking spirituality into her own hands. Don’t you need a pope or a priest or a pastor or a husband to tell you what to believe? I’ve discovered the answer is a huge “hell no,” and that’s the difference between orthodox Christianity and my personal belief system. God didn’t stop moving after the events of the Bible. I believe He is still speaking. And when He wants to tell you something, who’s to say He can’t speak through tarot or meditation or signs from nature?

Like finding two cicada shells.

Speaking of tarot, when my best friend/frequent collaborator, Luke, and I decided to be roomies, I did a reading for us using a deck I’d gifted him forever ago. I’m not superstitious, but I am a little “-stitious.” I had a feeling if we did a reading, something important would jump out at us. Well…

When Luke first got the deck, he pulled exactly one card — the Eight of Wands. It’s funny because before doing this reading, I shuffled the everloving fuck out of the deck and had both of us split it. And wouldn’t you know, the very first card was the Eight of Wands again. It feels significant, and it is. It’s the card of rapid change and new adventures. When I do my favorite reading, the first card is usually something to embrace. The second is something to release, though. The Ten of Cups was sobering. The happy family card. I’ve always wanted to be a mother, but as I’ve begun to realize, perhaps by letting go of my dream of having literal children, I can step into my role as the mother of a great new movement of some sort, even if that’s just starting a creative collective with my friends and helping them find their voices. The third card, a message from God or the universe or whatever higher power you choose to believe in, was the Five of Pentacles. Things will be difficult for a while, especially financially, but we’ll get by with a little help from our friends. The message of that card is to remember that folks are there to pick you up when you fall.

The left two cards were incredibly interesting. I like to flip the very next card in the deck is to see “what’s next” in life. The High Priestess. The only major arcana card I pulled. Divine feminine energy. She’s considered something of a “femme pope,” to the point where some decks call her the “Popess.” She’s a guru of spiritual wisdom and intuition. I don’t know what that means for us, but it feels right. My immediate thought was of Hildegard von Bingen, the medieval nun who also happened to be the first named composer in the canon of Western music. I feel a deep kinship to her, both spiritually and creatively. She is proof to me that these things are not incompatible, especially after having grown up in the evangelical church, where your sense of creativity tends to get stifled. While modern American Christianity has devolved into Skillet and Forrest Frank, Hildy was busy laying the architecture for music as we know it. And she was, like me, a deeply spiritual person with strong convictions.

Then, I usually check the bottom card as a way to see what’s behind me, what problems I no longer need to contend with. Seven of Cups. Illusion, distraction, wishful thinking. Those things are in the past. The time has come to take action. If we can dream it, we can make it happen. Being roommates, getting this podcast off the ground, making a difference in our community and in the world — that’s what we need to be doing. This tarot reading was all the confirmation I needed. Me, Luke, and all our friends here in Kalamazoo are the creative dream team I’ve longed for since I was a kid, when I just wanted to be in some kind of band or similar collective. I was never the child who played team sports, but I longed for connection and for a group to lean on. I finally found that here.

But I digress! This post is about cicadas, right? After I collected the shells, I did my due diligence reading about what they symbolized. I couldn’t believe the things I was seeing on my screen. Cicadas represented everything I needed to embrace in order to move on from all of the things that have been weighing me down. They are a beacon of change and transformation, and perhaps most appropriately, they are the patron insect of musicians and singers, as their song is the soundtrack to late summer. They reminded me that, as I’ve said before, if I can scream, I still have a voice. The cicada is a sign that I need to use that voice and be loud, even though it’s scary at times. I have important things to say to this dark world, and I will be heard. We will be heard.

I gathered a few special objects to make an apartment-warming gift for Luke and I. I found a cheap wooden picture frame and hot-glued a few dried catalpa leaves and Luke’s amethyst to it. The catalpa leaves, aside from being my favorite tree, are a symbol of uniqueness and creativity. The amethyst is for spiritual strength and wisdom. In the frame, I put a print-out of our tarot reading from the day we decided to become roommates. And as a finishing touch, I affixed the two shells I found to the frame. It felt serendipitous, finding a second shell. I wasn’t meant to go it alone. I have an ally in Luke. He and I are just two little bugs trying to transform ourselves and the world by screaming into the void.

Maybe we’ll change the world for the better someday. Maybe we’ll crash and burn. But we have to try, while we still have a voice. That’s what cicadas do best.

If you enjoyed what you read, please consider donating to my GoFundMe! I’m trying to restart my life with my kitty, Krubby, but we still need so much to get back on our feet. Even a little helps!

A Different Kind of Motherhood: Learning to Nurture Your Passions, Community, and Self

Once again, I was given a surprisingly relevant prompt for what I already had planned to write about. It’s funny how this thing knows me.

If your future self could send you one sentence, what do you hope it would say?

I guess the sentence I’d most want to hear from Future Jessa right now would be “It all turns out okay,” but that doesn’t narrow things down, as there are a lot of potential “its” in my situation. There’s my uncertain living situation, which I’ve written about a bit already. There’s that matter of me still not knowing what I want to do with my life as a now thirtysomething, since music therapy didn’t pan out. And of course, there’s that nagging feeling that I’m trapped in the burning house that is America, and as the walls are crumbling, who the hell knows what rights I’ll have left as a queer woman. I would love a future version of me to tell me I get some semblance of a happy ending out of all of this. I’d love a crumb of reassurance that the story I’m living through every day still has many pages of bliss left to write, and relatively little hardship. I want to know that the worst is behind me now. And when all is said and done, I want to leave behind something — or someone — to carry on my legacy.

I always thought my mark on this world would come in two forms — through the things I create, and through the people I will eventually create. I wanted to be an artist, but I also wanted to be a mother. Well, maybe not always. The idea of making a baby with most of the guys I went to school with was absolutely nauseating, even if lizard-brain still wanted to get laid. I would eventually get married and have sex (in that order, I believed, because I was a good girl), but not a damn soul was coming outta this uterus. That thing was closed for business.

Then I met and dated this guy in college who already had a daughter. I loved this dude, whom I still speak with now and then to this day, but I freaking adored this little girl. I fell into the role of stepmom-lite with a surprising amount of ease for a girl who’d previously believed she had the maternal instincts of a football. I remember going to Burger King to fetch her some nuggets and eating them together on the stairs, with her cuddled up next to me. It was the weirdest feeling, this twinge of motherly love toward a tiny person. And wouldn’t you know it, my ovaries started tingling real bad.

But I couldn’t have kids of my own. Not then. I wasn’t stable enough. We’d both end up on the streets.

Time went by, I got married twice, and still, over the course of both relationships, we could never quite achieve the amount of stability required to safely bring a child into this world. I’ve worked with children many times throughout my life, but I’ve never had the chance to raise one myself, and it breaks my heart. I’m approaching my mid-thirties, and while I know women have given birth well into their thirties and even forties, a part of me wonders if it’ll ever be my turn.

Always a caregiver, never a mom.

Maybe its just a side-effect of the barrage of pro-natalist propaganda coming to us from the government, but part of me feels like I’ve failed as a freaking biological lifeform if I can’t even reproduce. Even dumb seagulls are better at spreading their genetic material. And it’s a damn shame because I’d like to think I have some freaking good genes to pass on. Thanks, Mom.

Lately, though, I’ve been re-evaluating what motherhood even means to me. Is it really so important that I be a mother in order to matter? Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett, and Debbie Harry are all famously childfree, and yet their names will still go down in history. Another classic rock queen, singer and guitarist Bonnie Raitt, once said, “I feel that my job is to mother the causes that I’m involved in.” And then it kind of hit me. I’m already the mother of something, in a way.

I studied Arabic a little in college. I’ve always been fascinated by the language, having grown up near Dearborn (which is not the scary place conservatives think it is, unless you think swanky-ass hookah bars are scary). I remember a really interesting concept where, after someone has a child, their name changes to reflect their status as a parent of that child. This name is called a kunya. In a way, its the reverse of how we in the West approach names. Theoretically, if a guy named Gray had a son, his son’s name would be Grayson, as in “Gray’s son.” (I am using a real life example, as I truly used to know a friendly uke-wielding hippie dude named Gray and his aptly named son, Grayson.) That’s basically how many of our last names evolved. But Arabic is entirely different. Let’s say, for example, I finally had my little girl and I named her Cadence. If I spoke Arabic, my new name would essentially be “Cadence’s Mother.”

But what if you never actually have children? Can you still get the lofty title of “umm.” In Arabic, that answer is a resounding yes! The word is also used metaphorically to reflect distinctive traits people may have. One may be the “mother of the cats” if they’re a cat mom, or even the “mother of the chubby face” if they’ve just got cute pinchable cheeks.

Maybe I need to look at motherhood more like that. Maybe we’re all mothering something in a strange way, even if we don’t immediately realize it.

In my last post, I mentioned the joke rap comedy group I started with my two favorite men on this planet and whoever else is unfortunate enough to be in the room with us at the time. What I didn’t mention was the massive multiplayer 12-minute monster of a megasong we were all working on. It started life as a stupid TikTok video that up until recently was my most viewed ’Tok. I was messing around with the synths and drum machines in my DAW and trying to make a Thriller/Ghostbusters-type beat from memory, with disastrous results. Then, I showed Luke and David, and they ran with it. Soon, the number of rappers on the song somehow doubled as more and more folks wanted in on the project. Before we knew it, the song had ballooned to an absolute behemoth, comprising well over 100 individual tracks as of writing. Pray for my MacBook, please.

But the subject matter of the song was what really surprised me. At first, we started making this entirely unserious song about how, because I’m the shadowy figure who makes all the beats in the background, I am the BEAT MOTHER, this benevolent but fierce goddess of sick beats, bro. It was going to be entirely unserious…until I started realizing how serious my friends were about their love for me. I started tearing up a little as a few of my collaborators recorded their parts because I started to realize just how much my friends care about and respect me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted in life. Music has always been my conduit to the outside world, ever since I was a selectively mute autistic child who could barely utter a world to her peers. I was so lonely, but I couldn’t make friends. Somehow, twenty years later, that little girl still gets overwhelmed when she truly grasps how loved she really is. I’m so lucky to have the chosen family I’ve found through music.

That’s what the whole BEAT MOTHER title came to represent, as absolutely bonkers and silly it was at first. I end the song with a much more introspective and somber tone than it opens with, having intentionally changed the ending to reflect my new realizations. In the final few lines, I say:

“I did it all, and man, I did it loud. To think I did it all to make little Jessie proud.”

Circling back to the question at the very beginning of this post, sometimes I like to imagine the opposite. Sometimes I imagine myself speaking to that scared little kid who couldn’t fit in anywhere if she tried. I’d like to tell her that it will be okay in the end, and that things will be hard, but we are stronger than anything that will come our way. We’re resilient. In a way, I feel like I’m stepping into a motherhood role with my own inner child. As Whitney sang, children are the future, and the greatest love of all is learning to love yourself. I think she was onto something with that song.

Maybe I won’t be the mother of anything more than a couple of decent songs. But I’m learning to be okay with that. Nurturing my friends’ creativities and passions and helping them make music they can be proud of is something to celebrate too.

Help me relocate with my kitty, Krubby! We’re close to our goal, which will be enough to cover a Uhaul and a nice bed for us! Even just spreading the word is appreciated!

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Things have been admittedly pretty rough lately.

I have a great poker face when I’m going through hardship, but I have to be honest when I say things haven’t been great. Like, worse than they’ve been since me and my ex-husband split nearly ten years ago. So bad, I had to resort to starting a GoFundMe to stay afloat. Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, I’ve been essentially homeless these past few weeks, surviving only due to the kindness of some very sweet folks. Still, this is the first time I’ve truly felt alone in this world, and it’s scary.

But I’m realizing I’m not truly alone. Like Ringo once famously sang, I get by with a little help from my friends.

The living situation with my girlfriend, Olivia, in South Bend wasn’t able to be made permanent after all (all landlords are bastards), so my dear friend Luke offered to take me in while I figure out my next moves. And while I’m disappointed I have to leave my girl and the city I was reluctantly excited to call my new home, part of me was actually a little relieved to be returning to Kalamazoo. After all, I have plenty of unfinished business here. For one, I started a rap group and a podcast, both under the Kalamazooligans brand.

Which is now the official name for a resident of Kalamazoo. You’re welcome.

I’m excited to revive these projects and hopefully finally get them out into this world. It’s been a long time coming. Both the podcast and the rap group evolved out of my need to collaborate with friends. The idea for the podcast came shortly after meeting a fellow writer named Luke, who came to be one of my most truest friends in the city. We wanted a vehicle with which we could spread joy and whimsy (sound familiar?). The podcast realm is overrun with bigoted fuckheads and terrible takes, so why not do our part to turn the tides in the other direction, you know? The rap group was started by myself with one of my closest male partners, David, as well as Luke and whoever else was in the room with us at time of recording. That project grew when I realized I work better with other people around me instead of in isolation, so when I wanted to work on music, I schlepped my equipment over to David’s or Luke’s. They’d inevitably get curious about how it all worked, and I’d end up creating little beats for them to rap over. From there, it snowballed into something even bigger.

I might be the brains behind the Kalamazooligans, and David is the obviously the voice. But Luke has always been the heart of the project. He’s been there since the genesis of the group, which is basically me, him, David, and, like I said, whoever is in the room with us. Now that I’ll be living in the area again and literally rooming with my main collaborator, the podcast and the musical endeavors are going to be back in full swing.

But there was one small problem. The apartment I’ll be sharing with Luke was a freaking biohazard as it stood. Which, I can’t blame him for. When you live alone and need to spend every waking hour working to afford rent, it’s easy to let shit slip. I can’t fault anyone for neglecting such duties in the current economy. Still though, the place was far from the veritable (wo)man cave it deserved to be. This was to become the Kzoo HQ, and we deserved better.

The problem is I’m not naturally much of a cleaner either. My ADHD makes executive dysfunction nearly insurmountable and I can’t even get started. But something happens when you put another person in the room with me. Suddenly, I feel this weird inclination to clean and tidy things up. It’s a phenomenon called body doubling, and a lot of neurodivergent folks swear by it as a tactic for overcoming that strange paralysis that keeps us from work. And it works! In fact, remember how I said the Kalamazooligans rap project started because I couldn’t work alone? There’s another example right there.

So Olivia and I drove up to my soon-to-be apartment, cleaning supplies in hand. Together, me, her, and Luke tackled the entire place, our shared ADHD be damned. We made quick work of ridding the place of trash, sweeping and mopping the floors, and scrubbing the toilet to perfection. We made it fun. Luke and Olivia showed each other chiptune songs they like, I named the dustpan Dustin, and we sang “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” to the trash as it gradually disappeared from the domicile. Suddenly, the place began to transform before our eyes.

A lot has already been said in our culture about the power of friendship. Lauren Faust developed a whole show/thirty minute toy advertisement featuring colorful ponies about how friendship is literally magic. Look at any children’s film and the climax usually comes when the protagonist’s besties come back to rescue his dumb ass. In fact, my favorite book of ~~emo poetry~~ the Bible, Ecclesiastes, talks about strength in numbers as well. (Am I actually a Christian, or do I just really like the book of Ecclesiastes?) In Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, King Solomon is said to have written these words:

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

This isn’t the only time the Bible discusses teamwork. Even in the New Testament, in Matthew 18:20, Jesus says:

For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.

The orthodox Christian reading of this scripture usually points to church gatherings and prayer groups, but I’m nothing if not unorthodox in much of my beliefs, including religious ones. I think the Good Book is trying to tell us something even bigger than just “Go to church and pray in a group.” Remember that Jesus is considered part of God, and somehow also is God, and that God is love. If those things are true, then anywhere people are gathered in the name of love are gathered in the name of Christ, even if they’re entirely unaware of it. I see more of Jesus at Pride festivals and in the wildly supportive and friendly karaoke group I frequent than I ever did at my old evangelical megachurch, where I never quite fit in (wonder why?).

The truth of the matter is that as human beings, we need each other. I swear I’m going to make it my life’s work to make people realize that we’re all in this together. And I’m not just talking about the Christians. I’m talking everyone of every faith and creed and background. It’s not a secret that nearly every major faith system in the world has a version of the Golden Rule: just be a good person and love people. We try to add all these stipulations and conditions, but it’s really that simple. The answer is love. The answer has always been love. That love may look like scrubbing your best friend’s toilet to perfection and cheering him on as he throws out old socks.

I’ll end with one final note. As I mentioned, I started a GoFundMe to help alleviate some of the financial stress of having to relocate once again. It was a last ditch effort to keep my life from spiraling out of control. I needed yet another Uhaul to get my stuff that I’d taken to South Bend back to Kalamazoo, and I needed a bed, and I still hadn’t even paid my car and credit card payments for the month. I felt absolutely hopeless, and the fundraiser was basically me screaming into the void for help. I was no longer “too proud.” I knew I wasn’t getting by on my own.

I expected crickets.

But I was absolutely blown away by the cascade of support I got from my loved ones. And while the fundraiser stands at $420 (heh) as of writing, I’ve received an even more valuable gift in reconnecting with people I’d long lost touch with. Folks I haven’t heard from in a decade or more reached out to assist in any way they could. An old flame offered me a spare room at his parents’ home if Kalamazoo fell through, and a sweet fellow from a band I adored back in college said he was willing to lend me his truck for the move. People from every corner of my life, from my old piano teacher to my high school besties, checked in to make sure I was okay. Even my uncle, whom I hadn’t seen since early childhood, told my mom he reads my writing and is rooting for me. I hadn’t felt this cared for in a long time, and it made me realize things would maybe be alright in the end. My village is there for me.

From a stale fortune cookie I found at Luke’s.

Nobody is meant to go it alone. Together, we’re unbreakable.

Please consider helping with my fresh start by clicking this link! For every donation, I’ll draw a Krubby!

Finding Joy and Embracing Whimsy in the Face of Terror

Sometimes I seriously wonder why I subject myself to the internet.

If I’m honest, my fears regarding technology are nothing new. In fact, in college, my tech aversion got so bad, I’d have to ask my mom to check my email for me at times, and this was when I ran a freaking newspaper. I was never as bad as my dear late father, who died without ever having an email address. Don’t assume I’m a total troglodyte — I have fond memories of painstakingly editing my MySpace profile to reflect my perfect mix of prep and scene, with a touch of emo.

These days, I still loathe the World Wide Web of Lies and Secrets, but it’s a slightly more manageable loathing. I guess I’ve come to accept that most of the planet is only accessible through it, and by shutting myself off from it, I’m limiting my opportunities. That being said, it feels like a very necessary evil. There’s a lot of dark and shit that happens online, and much like the Grinch, I would not like to touch any of it with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole. People feel tempted to drop their masks on here, and it gets ugly. Take, for example, this exchange of pleasantries on the slightly better X Twitter, Threads.

I was tempted to leave the dude’s name uncensored, since he clearly wanted attention.

I’m not upset at the guy, but like, bro, why? It was just unnecessarily mean for no reason. This was not on any of my numerous political or religious posts, mind you, which left me extra confused. I give right-wingers a lot of material to work with, being a mentally ill polyamorous pansexual, so you’d assume I’d be getting a lot more hate for that. Nope, just a stupid video of me fucking up on mandolin.

I initially brushed off his dumbassery. Trolls are gonna troll, and feeding them only screws you over in the end. After a while, though, part of me wondered why I still subject myself to this. Why do I open myself up to be hated on a platform that is openly hostile to women, queer people, and — let’s be honest — anyone who wouldn’t look out of place in His Orange Highness’s golf buddy group? Was I just doing this all for “content,” whatever the hell that even means? Why do I make anything I make? Why do I even write this stupid blog? (I already answered that question, but bear with me.)

Sometimes I feel like I am screaming into a void. But then I remember that if I’m screaming, it means I still have a voice. And much like how Anne Frank immortalized and humanized herself through her work, I hope the things I’m putting into the world do the same for me and my loved ones. It’s not a secret that the world is a very twisted and dangerous place right now, and the future looks bleak at times. Sometimes I feel like posting little whimsical whatnots like making up dumb songs or silly attempts at playing the mandolin aren’t consequential at all in a world that wants to crush all whimsy and creativity. I’ve realized this world is full of joy terrorists, and terrorists are called terrorists for a reason: they want you to live in terror. But in a way, spreading joy and whimsy and art and fun is a quiet act of rebellion. They want us to live in fear. They want us to be quiet. Don’t let them win.

Back in January, I had the incredible opportunity to go on an emo cruise (which I will never financially recover from). There was adventure. There was romance. There was music. There was me meeting the frontman of Dance Gavin Dance and not realizing who the fuck he was. (In my defense, I am faceblind.) I will never forget the amazing experiences I had and the friends I made along the way.

And meanwhile, back home in the Midwest, another white queer woman just like me was murdered by the government.

The entire time, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I felt so guilty, this horrible, grating sense of survivors guilt, of “it should have been me, not her,” of “what if it is me next?” I was experiencing this strange cognitive dissonance of everything being amazing immediately around me, but on fire everywhere else. And there was a part of me that just wanted to refuse the fun that was being served to me out of principle. How could I, Jessa, have fun, when people are dying? It felt wildly insensitive.

But joy has a way of finding you even in the midst of darkness. Funnily enough, the ship’s freakin’ name was Joy. And it hit me that I don’t need to take on all of the pain of the earth at once. I can lighten up and enjoy the good things I have while I still have them, because tomorrow isn’t promised. Renee didn’t know it was her last day when she dropped her child off at school that morning. Everything I have can be taken from me at any moment, so I’m going to live it up while I can. Even my favorite book of emo poetry, Ecclesiastes, has this to say:

“So I say a man should enjoy himself. For there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and drink and be happy.”

Life is hard, but life is good. Two things can be true, and I’m learning every day to wrestle with that. I don’t know how much longer I will have on this little planet, but while still have a voice, I will use it to spread joy, and I will revel in that joy myself. That’s what it means to be alive. That’s what it means to be human.

Living Out Loud: The Power of Being Yourself

As a burgeoning bisexual, I didn’t really have any bicons to look up to.

Like, I loved Freddie Mercury, but growing up, his story was so sanitized, I really didn’t have a clear idea of his queerness. The most any of the adults would tell me was that he was “a little fruity.”

“Yeah, I can totally see him rocking that hat. What’s the issue?”

Needless to say, having roots in the evangelical church, I didn’t embrace my own identity for a long time. I realized I was bi when I got weird feelings from both the covers of Heart’s Dreamboat Annie and Peter Frampton’s I’m in You (yes, I’m probably the only Millennial who can credit classic rock with her sexual awakening). And I’d publicly come out after the conversion therapy controversy at my old church. Still, it was only after watching the biographical film Bohemian Rhapsody did I get the full picture, and it changed everything.

Freddie loved men. He very much enjoyed the company of men. He really liked banging men. He even fell for a man. Hard.

But he was also madly in love with a woman.

At the time, bisexuality was not really understood, so his female lover was essentially like “Dude, you’re gay, what are you doing?”

But he absolutely, one hundred percent, without a doubt loved her too.

Watching the way Freddie owned his sexuality even in a time when it was widely frowned upon lit something up inside me.

Sometimes the bravest thing you can be is yourself.

It’s a scary time to be queer. Politicians are making laws at breakneck speed trying to outlaw our very existence. I’d link to all the recent developments, but it’s honestly too depressing to even search right now. I’ll just let this terrifying map speak for itself. Everything the blue touches is our kingdom. But that shadowy red place? Don’t fucking go there, Simba.

Maybe ten years ago, it was fun and trendy and “yay rainbows!” to be queer, but the time for merriment has passed. We have more battles to fight. And if they’re going to try to silence us, that just means we have to be louder. Silence is letting them win.

Now is the time to live out loud.

When you live authentically, it gives the people around you a pass to be themselves, and from there, it just envelopes more and more folks. Once that first match is lit, everything around it catches fire. And that fire has the power to make real, tangible change in our world. What if Marsha P. Johnson hadn’t had the courage to be herself or stand up to her oppressors? We owe it to our queer forefathers (and mothers, and nonbinary parents) to stand in the freedom they bought for us with their bravery, and in some cases, their lives. Never forget the tragedy that was Alan Turing’s story. A celebrated scientist who set the foundations for modern computing and helped the good guys win WWII, he took his own life after the humiliating and inhumane way he was treated by the British government. All for the terrible sin of loving another man. Like, we fought like hell so that shit never happens again, and in the year 2026, I feel like we often take for granted how far we’ve come as a community.

And we better not lose sight of that, because now more than ever, we risk losing all of the progress we’ve made as a society.

I’ll end this with a story from about a week ago. I was in South Bend with my beautiful girlfriend, Olivia, and we were itching to do some karaoke. My schedule is wonky, so I had to come down on a weird night, and the only bar offering karaoke was a sketchy little dive bar on the decidedly less-gay side of town. My girlfriend is a trans woman, although you wouldn’t automatically assume this when meeting her. I hate the whole “passing” thing and I know a lot of my trans friends understandably do too — you don’t “owe” it to anyone to look “girly” enough to pass as cis, and there’s no right or wrong way to be a woman anyways.

Well, I can think of a *few* wrong ways to be a woman.

But still, I get why passing is a concern, especially in a red state like Indiana. It comes down to safety, and if some bigoted fucker deems her just a little too tall to be a cis girl, it becomes a very real threat. She didn’t want to bring too much attention to herself, lest the wrong transphobic fuckwad be there.

In short, she was not performing.

So, content to settle into her seat for the night and just watch me sing, we went to this little bar together. We get there, dude starts singing Kid Rock, all around not good vibes. I have it in my mind to sing one song, finish my nonalcoholic beer I’d already committed to, then get the Chicken McFuck outta there before anybody noticed the awkward lesbos in the corner.

I get offstage after a half-assed Bonnie Raitt tune and this gray-haired man with kind eyes approaches me, hand extended, telling me I did wonderful. I smile, say thanks, and start heading back over to where Olivia was seated. Then, he says something else:

“My name’s Randy, and this is my husband.”

With that one simple sentence, the floodgates opened. I smiled and introduced myself and my girlfriend, no longer worried we’d get hate-crimed in this bar, because now, we had friends. We had folks we knew were on our side. They assured us they had a “rainbow family” — many of their close relatives were also members of the LGBTQ community, and they’d cultivated a loving and supportive environment. They also mentioned that it hadn’t always been that way, and that when they’d first come out, some of the older kinfolk weren’t as accepting. But through living and loving authentically, they were able to change the entire vibe of their family.

I signed up for a selection from Rent with Randy, and Olivia finally felt the courage to sign up for one of the like two Caroline Polachek songs Karafun actually has. What started as a night of uncertainty became a night of celebration. That’s the power of living your truth. That’s the power of living out loud.

I’m Sailing Awaaaaaaay

So, I’m going on a cruise in a few short days.

Mind you, I have never been on a cruise, and I kind of always assumed I’d never even have the chance. I vaguely remember my much-older sister saying she’d take me on a cruise when I got my high school diploma, but after graduation, it changed to after I got my bachelor’s, and after that, it was my master’s. So I just assumed that was a nice thing she told me so I’d stay in school and not run away to join a rock band or the circus.

Both options are *very* within the realm of possibility, for what it’s worth.

But last year, I was playing in a band with a truly cool frontperson who, despite us not being close anymore, is still someone I respect greatly. They told me about the cruise and how it’s great for networking because you’re basically trapped on a boat with music industry folks and fans who care enough about music to drop a cool few grand to see their favorite bands. That was enough to convince me to exercise my poor credit card and join the excitement. I bought my ticket and a flight down to Miami, where we’ll be sailing off to Mexico, a place I have not ever been to and, again, was never expecting to actually see.

But if playground rhymes taught me anything, it’s that there are REALLY HOT GUYS AT THE DOOR DOOR DOOR.

I’ll be honest, I came close to attempting to recoup what money I could and bailing on the trip many times. My friend who inspired me to buy the ticket and I had a falling out, which made me question why I was even going. Then, rising political tensions made me wonder if it was even safe to travel outside of the country, and I kept getting nightmares that I’d be detained trying to re-enter the country or something. I got as far as posting an ad stating that I’d sell my tickets in the main Facebook group for the cruise, and I almost had a buyer.

Then my dad died. Suddenly, I was standing face-to-face with my own mortality as I watched the single closest person to me fall away into the afterlife. It hit me that I may never have the opportunity to do this kind of thing ever again, and I could hear my dad whispering to just jump in. I remembered his last words of advice to me: be yourself, take care of yourself, and enjoy yourself. He wouldn’t want me to cower and hide away. He’d want me to live in the light. He’d want me to enjoy myself any way I can in this hellhole.

And so that’s why I have my big purple suitcase packed to the brim with all my outfits for the trip and I’m panicking making sure all my reservations are in place. This is certainly the most I will have ever travelled on my own, and while I have some trauma regarding travelling alone (major trigger warning for that link, by the way), I feel much more confident now. Last year, my bosses sent me multiple times to St. Louis, Missouri, to train up some new trivia hosts, and I ended up getting very familiar with the TSA and travel etiquette. So I feel a lot less nervous with that experience under my belt.

Still, it is nerve-wracking, especially since I don’t have any of my partners or friends with me this time, and it’s my first time out of the country in a really meaningful way. I took a train through the mountains of Canada in high school with my family, but that was just a day trip, and I had my parents there the entire time. I’ll know my former bandmate on the cruise, and I’ve been in communication with my cabin-mate, a cute emo dude from California who likes Pokémon too, so there’s that. But I’m trying to view the journey as an opportunity to make new friends. It’s poetic that most of the Warped Tours I attended in my younger years were attended alone, because now I’m very familiar with now to navigate shows and music festivals as a solo audience member. I plan to use my extrovert powers to make a few connections on this trip at least.

I met one of my closest friends for coffee this evening, and I showed him the meat and potatoes of this post before I shared it with anyone else. We agreed to meet because we were both world-weary and desperate for the ear of someone who “got it.” After one read-through, he goes back to the part I wrote about what my dad would have said if he were here, his last words of advice to me. He found it reassuring, in a strange way. And I think I get it now. I think that’s the best way I can honor my dad — by living so vivaciously and so fully that the darkness of the world cannot extinguish my light. That’s how he wanted me to live, and that’s how I want to inspire others to live as well.

And if that involves setting sail on a fuck ass boat with a cute emo guy, so be it.

CANCELLED! (Or, Why Society Needs to Embrace Grace)

Chappell Roan is simultaneously living my dream and my nightmare. Imagine being some random ass girl from the Midwest one minute, and in the next, the eyes of the entire world are on you as if you’re Lesbian Jesus. On paper, she has the exact life I’ve fantasized about for decades. She wrote that one hit song (or two…or three) that will immortalize her for generations to come. She gets to wear some of the most extravagant outfits I’ve ever seen on a performer, stuff I’d die for a chance to wear.

Imagine getting to wear *this* in public.

And her infinite coolness has even been acknowledged by my own childhood heroes, the Wilson sisters of Heart. Nancy Wilson accompanied her onstage for a cover of “Barracuda,” and she even got to sit down and talk with Ann Wilson on her podcast. Needless to say, when I wished upon a star all those years ago, I’m pretty sure the wires got crossed somewhere and my wish went to Chappell instead. And let’s be real, the girl deserves it. She does have talent. She’s an incredible performer, and her songs are catchier than anything anyone’s else has been doing in this boring-ass pop music landscape. But there’s one aspect of Chappell’s life I’m so glad I don’t have going for me:

The scrutiny. God, the scrutiny.

So Brigitte Bardot died recently. Don’t reach for your tissues just yet, because she wasn’t really someone worth mourning. She actually kind of sucked. Like, a lot. She was literally so racist that the government of France fined her over it. She basically called the entire #MeToo movement bullshit. She called queer folks “fairground freaks” and blamed the destruction of French culture on the gays (as if French culture isn’t already, by definition, pretty gay). That last point is probably the most important to note, as Ms. Bardot has become something of an unwilling lesbian icon thanks to the aforementioned Chappell Roan.

In the opening lines of her song “Red Wine Supernova,” Chappell croons “She was a playboy, Brigitte Bardot,” paying homage to the cinema legend’s exquisite looks. Obviously, it’s a shallow reference that doesn’t address the fact that Brigitte would flick her nose at the kind of fairground freakiness Chappell gets up to. Nobody really took issue with the throwaway line initially — it was understood that Brigitte’s name was simply used as shorthand for the kind of glamour that only existed in a bygone era. She could easily have used Marilyn Monroe, or Greta Garbo, or Jayne Mansfield, or even Elizabeth Taylor, as a certain other frequently sequined starlet recently did. But “Brigitte Bardot” just fit the rhyme scheme better, and as a bonus, Chappell gets to put on a sexy lil French accent when she says it. Everybody wins!

But then, this happened.

To be fair, Brigitte would *hate* this for herself.

If my Threads and Reddit feeds were anything to judge by, the Pink Ponies (Is that what we’re calling Chappell Roan fans?) were livid at the sight of the tribute, which entirely glossed over Brigitte Bardot’s checkered legacy. To be fair, a little while later, she’d post this:

To a lot of folks I encountered online, though, the damage had been done. Her reputation had already recently taken a hit from partnering with MAC Cosmetics, a company that notably supports Israel, after she famously passed on a White House performance over Palestine. But eulogizing a certifiable asshole was a step too far, and Chappell had been officially…cancelled.

We cancel a lot of people. Taylor Swift, who I alluded to earlier, even wrote a catchy ass villain song about it. Sometimes, the cancellation is justified. For example, Bill Cosby? Pretty fucking justified if you ask me — I can’t see a situation in which it would ever be acceptable to name-drop him as anything other than a predator and creep. Same with guys like Diddy and the absolute monster from Lostprophets. As the intro to that one Law and Order spinoff says, sexually charged crimes are especially heinous and should be weighed as such when considering uncancelling someone. But take, for example, Snoop Dogg, who recently came under fire for some questionable remarks regarding same-sex relationships in media. Is it time we retire “Gin and Juice” as a feel-good anthem forever?

We still got this bluegrass cover!

But here’s the thing — Snoop apologized. And he acknowledged he is still learning. In fact, I’d say his apology was damn near spot-on: “Teach me how to learn,” he said in his statement. “I’m not perfect.”

There’s the difference. That’s what separates the rightfully cancelled from the flawed human beings who sincerely want to do better. It’s right there — that self-awareness that you are imperfect, and that willingness to improve. That the secret. It’s completely understandable to want to hold people accountable. That’s the only way advancements will happen in society. But we can’t keep pushing away potential allies for every transgression. We’ll always stay divided.

I think very few people are beyond redemption. Honestly, if Kanye and Nicki wanted to have a massive heel-face turn and walk away from the right-wing grift, I’d welcome them back with open arms, and not just because I want to listen to the indisputable banger that is “Monster” guilt-free again. But they’d need to show some remorse. Grace should be given freely and abundantly, but the person receiving that grace needs to be legitimately sorry for what they did too. It’s a two-way street.

I think the folks trying to cancel Chappell for her Bardot post don’t realize they’re shooting us in the foot by dividing us further. We already don’t trust each other as a society and we’re falling deeper and deeper into isolation. Community is scarce, and there really is an epidemic of loneliness wreaking havoc on our society. What we need now isn’t some puritanical litmus test. We don’t need a “perfect ally” — we just need folks who are willing to stand up for us, and sometimes those folks aren’t perfect.

It’s funny, just this evening I got into a verbal tussle on that godforsaken social media site we all know and hate over whether or not “rest in power” was an appropriate phrase to say in remembrance of a white person. Never mind that said white person, Renee Good, was oppressed in other ways (being queer and a woman, for example) and was literally killed by her oppressor. This person, who I imagine had good intentions, maintained that the phrase can only be used for people of color. That is the kind of over-the-top policing that hardens hearts. How does that black-and-white mentality make us any different from the conservative evangelicals who dictate that we have to do x, y, and z to be saved?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t call people out for egregious screw-ups, or even smaller transgressions that maybe came across wrong (Chappell’s memorial post is a great example), but there needs to be some grace delivered alongside the message. Otherwise, we’re going to cancel each other into the fucking ground. We need to begin viewing each other as people again — beautiful, deeply flawed, and capable of change.

The Ballad of Old Dog Tavern

What is your favorite place to go in your city?

Alright, let me tell y’all a little story about how I found my voice in a little bar in the heart of Kalamazoo.

We’d just moved to the city not long after my ill-fated music therapy internship crashed and burned. At the time, I was feeling real down and out about my place in the world of music. My lovely wife, knowing I’m so extroverted I will literally die if I don’t get attention for thirty minutes every hour on the hour, suggested karaoke as a solution. And well, it certainly was the solution. We found friends here that are going to last a lifetime. We found a whole ass village out here, all thanks to the wildly supportive karaoke scene. It revitalized my love of music and even gave me some killer collaborators. And ground zero for this karaoke revolution was a little dive bar called Old Dog Tavern.

I don’t know a lot about the lore of the building, except that it definitely used to be something else. Just taking a cursory glance outside (because part of this was written on location, because I’m a weirdo who writes at the bar), it was once part of a paper company. The interior is dark and dingy, but in the way that gives a comforting old dive bar its signature vibe, with largely wooden decor and plenty of mirrors for ambiance. The main entrance opens up into a corridor with an adjacent room set aside for ping pong table shenanigans. But once you enter the main room, that’s where the magic happens. On that stage, everyday civilians transform into rock stars every week.

Where else could I take a picture this cool?

On any given Friday night, Finn will be manning the karaoke machine (well, laptop — it is the 21st century). Ask him for a song and he’ll put you up in his next round. Outside, the regulars are passing around joints and anecdotes, ranging from the heartfelt to the raunchy. A few of us are showing off our newest creations. One occasional regular is a visual artist who brings his materials to work with. Another frequents the open mics as a singer-songwriter and will regale you with stories from the best nights. Under the stars and fairy lights, you can see downtown Kalamazoo bursting with life. The merriment only lasts for a while, because once your name is called, someone yells for you to get your ass to the stage. And that’s when you come alive.

The Old Dog karaoke crowd is the most ridiculously supportive community I’ve ever been a part of, to the point where I often characterize karaoke night as my sort of surrogate “church.” As a recovering evangelical, I yearn for long nights of fellowship and music like I had in the church of my youth, only without the toxicity, nepotism, and homophobia. I feel like I finally found my “spiritual community,” and it’s not even a spiritual community in the traditional sense at all. But we live and love like Jesus did. And let me tell you, I bet Jesus would rather hang out with us than that weird-ass pastor who’d chastise me for voting for Bernie Sanders (when I like, never brought that shit up, yo).

I never even showed him the crocheted Bernie I have displayed on my living room shelf!

This is the kind of community that will cheer you on even if you attempt “You Shook Me All Night Long” and are panting for breath by the end. It’s the kind of community that will shake their asses off while you sing “El tiburón” and make you feel like a freakin’ king. We’ll clap and sing and dance and probably cry if you sing Billie Eilish. We’ll put in requests for our favorites from our friends. Everyone’s got a favorite song they wanna hear from someone else, and everyone’s got their song or artist. David “Karaoke Dad” Parent is known for his Elvis renditions. David “my boyfriend as of last week” Bannon sings the hell out of AC/DC. Mary Emma kills “Never Enough” from The Greatest Showman, and when Steve performs “Minnie the Moocher,” shut it the fuck down. Me, I’m known for Heart and Britney Spears, which probably makes me the only person on the planet who can pull off both Heart and Britney Spears.

You know, I bet Ann Wilson could totally make the snake thing work too.

My point is this place is something magical, and ever since we started going regularly, our lives have improved tenfold. It’s not a secret that we have a loneliness epidemic, to the point where I’m literally seeing the Michigan government putting up billboards that beg folks to just go outside and talk to people. This is the solution, guys. We need more spaces like Old Dog where you can simply go and drop the armor. The bar actually has a little sign up that I managed to snag a picture of, and I really love the sentiment.

It truly is a place where all the misfits and outcasts can be vulnerable and at peace. Every town needs a place like that. I’m glad I’ve found mine.

Bullied by My Girl Scout Troop Leader (And Why It STILL Affects Me)

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

Once upon a time, I was wildly uncool.

I realize I wrote that as if I’m now like, the bastion of coolness or something. I don’t want to pretend I’m like, George Clinton levels of cool or anything.

Now *there’s* a Clinton I want for president.

But although I’m not cool enough to front legendary funk collective Parliament-Funkadelic, I’m significantly cooler than I was as a child, when I had to eat lunch in the library to avoid being pelted with ranch dressing packets. Bullying was a pretty constant factor in my pre-high school years. I went through it all — one guy punched me right in the gut, another in the face, two girls conspired to get me in trouble so I’d lose my class McDonalds trip (those bastards), and most of the kids I went to school with typically followed any utterance of my name with “sucks.” I managed to mitigate a lot of it by avoiding my classmates, but it’s not like I could avoid people forever, you know? I could count the number of friends I had on one hand, and for most of that period, I could count the number of friends I had on one finger. And she went to a different school!

Flash-forward to 2025, and while I’m not where I wanted to be professionally yet, for the most part, my life is looking pretty swell. I have a loving wife and a sweet girlfriend and now even a few casual male partners that may turn into something serious. I have a band — I’ve been in and out of bands for most of my adult life, actually — and the bonds I’ve formed through these projects have mostly changed my life for the better. And perhaps most importantly, I have friends. Like, a lot of them. And it’s awesome!

But sometimes, something will be dragged up out of my memory that puts me right back into the scared little kid mindset I had growing up.

Meet Mrs. Marsack.

She didn’t actually look like this, but it felt like the right image to use.

I think that’s how her last name was spelled. I kind of hope I spelled it wrong because I totally don’t intend to dox this lady. That being said, if anyone deserves awful things, it’s Mrs. Marsack. Because Mrs. Marsack broke my child heart worse than anyone my own age ever could.

When I was in elementary school, I was in Girl Scouts. I don’t wanna shit-talk Girl Scouts because it’s a pretty neat organization as a whole, and everyone knows the cookies go hard. I still grab myself a box of Samoas whenever I encounter a gaggle of entrepreneurial scouts in the wild. That being said, my experience was not all cookies and roses. That’s because I had Mrs. Marsack as a troop leader.

Mrs. Marsack had a daughter in the program. Her name was like, maybe Abigail or Emily or something. Anyways, she was one of the “cool kids.” Most of the girls in my troop were “cool” to an extent. But not me! I was the little weirdo autistic kid who stimmed by making bird sounds and who wouldn’t shut up about Bon Jovi to literally anyone who’d listen. So needless to say, I had a bad time.

Kids who liked *these* guys were doomed from the start.

But I really did enjoy the activities! So when a huge camping trip was announced, I was absolutely thrilled. I’d never been camping before, and we were about to do it all — swimming, hiking, horseback riding, canoeing, everything a little girl could imagine and more. I almost had my bags packed when Mrs. Marsack called my mom in to “chat.” That’s when she dropped the most devastating news.

All the girls were invited…except me.

Apparently I “wasn’t mature” enough to go on the trip. My mother knew it was a bullshit excuse. I was significantly more mature in all the ways that actually mattered. Mrs. Marsack just didn’t like me.

This is the degree of “fuck you in particular” we’re talking.

So I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for hours. I think my mom had to pry the door open, I was that distraught. I’d always felt ostracised by my peers, but never to the extent that she’d made me feel. That rejection left a scar on my heart that never really healed if I’m entirely honest. Nothing will ever give me that experience back.

These days, I don’t often think about that time in my life. But every now and then, something will jostle that feeling out and I’m once again that scared, sad little kid on the inside. I think that’s why I’m so in touch with my inner child now, as an adult. I never had space to nurture that part of me away from the judgmental eyes of my peers and unsupportive adults like Mrs. Marsack. I think that’s also a small part of why I’m so outwardly outgoing in adulthood. I crave companionship the way a flower craves rain because I was so deprived of that community, that sisterhood. I need to be around people all the time.

It sucks because I had plenty of bullies in my peer group (looking at you, both other Jessica S.‘s in my class), but Mrs. Marsack was the first time an adult showed me not all grown-ups are my friend. I almost feel a little survivorship guilt because this trauma is relatively mild compared to the backstories of many of my friends. Most of their first betrayals by trusted adults were in their own families, and with much, much worse situations. But Mrs. Marsack still left a huge gash in my heart that I still contend with.

So if you’re reading this, let the message be this: be kind to the kids in your life. Especially the weird ones. You never know what kind of influence you might have on them. Don’t be some poor little girl’s Mrs. Marsack.

Between Sorrow and Schadenfreude: A Progressive Christian’s Response to the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

I am so fucking sick of living through major world events.

If you’ve been on some remote retreat in the Himalayan wilderness and haven’t had access to literally any media anywhere, alt-right influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a college event in Utah. I saw the infamous video. It was pretty wild to witness. I’ll confess, a lot of emotions washed over me in that moment, some I’m not proud of. Did I feel a twinge of schadenfreude at the death of man who advocated for me to be put to death for being queer? I’ll admit, maybe a little. Did I feel a bit of relief that he can’t spew any more hateful rhetoric. Absolutely. Let’s get one thing straight — Charlie Kirk was not a good person. If you don’t believe me, I dare you to click that little link up there. He is not someone to idolize or even eulogize, the same way you wouldn’t write a sweet memorial piece for Scar.

“He was a loving uncle and fierce leader for his people.”

All of that being said, I want to make another thing clear: I consider myself a follower of Christ. I feel uneasy using the word “Christian” as of late because of how horrifically perverted American Christianity has become, but my theological beliefs line up most readily with Jesus’s teachings. The real Jesus, not the evangelical one. You know, the wildly subversive pacifistic brown-skinned Palestinian Jewish man who repeatedly preached against tyranny and the wealthy? I’ve always been fascinated by His life and ways, and while some of my personal theology contradicts the established dogma of most denominations, I consider Him to be my spiritual guide and savior.

And that’s what’s making this hard for me. The part of me that’s human wants to dance on the dude’s grave. Yet the part of me that has been redeemed by Christ, that divine inner voice, wants to honor the fact that he was still a person, and he was a child of God too.

Two things can be true at once. Charlie Kirk can be a truly despicable person and the world can be better off without him, and we can also mourn the fact that humanity has devolved to this point. We can mourn the humanity in him, the part he willingly killed in himself years ago for the sake of extremist politics. We can mourn for his kids, who didn’t ask to have him as a father and now have a disturbing core memory to contend with. We can mourn for our trans brothers and sisters, who will inevitably be scapegoated for this. And we can mourn the fact that we’re heading to a very dark place if something doesn’t change quick.

I recently read a post that said that the true test of a Christian isn’t whether or not they love Jesus. It’s whether or not they love Judas. Jesus is easy to love. Judas is much more challenging. And in a lot of ways, Charlie is my Judas. He is proving very, very difficult to show compassion toward. The man got what he had coming to him. To paraphrase the Good Book itself, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. But there’s another relevant verse:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

Matthew 5:43-44

We can’t fall into senseless hate. That’s what Charlie would have wanted. The best way to “honor” his memory is to fight back against everything he stood for, including violence and hatred. This isn’t to say there’s never a time when violence is the answer — we had to kill a lot of Nazis in the 1940s to ultimately save a lot of innocent folks, and even Martin Luther King, Jr. understood why folks lash out violently at times — but we also can’t become desensitized to this shit. This can’t be our new normal.

I’ve been worried about the state of the world all day, and I’m praying this won’t be a Franz Ferdinand situation and WWIII doesn’t spring from it. But I’m scared it’s too late. People have become so brainwashed already. I called out my first boyfriend on Facebook for waxing poetic about the man as if he were a saint, and he responded with some of the most vile, vitriolic, hurtful bullshit I’ve ever had directed at me. It was bizarre. He was such a sweet kid, but it goes to show you how effective these conservative influencers are in manipulating young men. We’re dealing with a lot of propaganda and disturbing messaging in the media.

My heart hurts for the state of the world and for the future. I always dreamed I’d become a rock star and have children and live to be a little old lady like the ones I work with. I don’t want to go to war. I’m a lover, not a fighter. This isn’t the future I want for me, and I hope it’s not the future you want either. I sincerely hope with every fiber of my being that we can turn this around. In the words of the late great Ozzy, maybe it’s not too late to learn how to love and forget how to hate.

Maybe the Prince of Darkness and the Prince of Peace had more in common than you’d think.

All I know is I can’t handle much more of this. I was simply not made for times like these.