Dear Cadence, Part Fifteen: Find Your Chosen Family

This is the latest installment in my memoir project, written as a series of letters to my future daughter. Here are the previous entries: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, and Part Fourteen

Ever since I was little, I wanted to be in a band.

Sounds familiar, right?

After the disaster that was Dethklok, I wasn’t sure I even wanted a band ever again. It didn’t seem worth it to make music with other people if they were just going to hurt me. I was content to just do things alone from now on, if I was even going to keep making music for myself at all. I was back in the music therapy program, and that was enough, right? But deep down inside, I knew I needed more. I kept writing songs and still had that lifelong itch to be a performer. I loved being onstage, and a tiny part of me wished I could share that with someone else.

I met Wally through my new church, a rare queer-affirming church I found in my new old stomping grounds of Ann Arbor, the larger college town that neighbored my smaller college town of Ypsilanti. Wally was an older guy, a little younger than your grandpa was but definitely still old enough to be my dad. He was a quirky fellow with a wife and eight kids and even more keyboards. He was basically a straighter, slightly less flamboyant Elton John who played in a band called Unkle Laylee’s Moonshine All-Stars Band with an old stoner dude named Gray and his aptly named son, Grayson. And when I came to this new church, he took me under his wing and promptly added me to the lineup. I was now Wally’s unofficial bonus daughter/bandmate, but Wally had an official daughter who secretly wished she was in a band as well.

Enter Hailey.

Hailey was a tiny blonde cheerleader who hid a knack for songwriting that rivaled my own. During one practice, she came down and showed us one of her originals, which gave Wally an idea. Unkle Laylee wasn’t really his vibe, and it wasn’t mine either, so we started our own project right then and there. Our little trio would form the basis of a brand new creation. We couldn’t agree on a name, so we stole the name of my former solo project, Wake Up Jamie, which came from a misheard lyric from an old song no one remembers.

At first, we frequented local bars and coffee shops, playing to anyone who’d listen. Those were some of the most memorable shows I’d ever play, even if they seemed small and insignificant in the moment. Every weekend or so, we’d meet up and plan our next moves, the three of us. And as our repertoire grew, we realized the project was getting to be too big for only three of us. Wally moved to a position of manager and eventually phased himself out in preparation for a move out-of-state, while we brought on board three new members.

The first was Jerry, an old collaborator of mine I knew from my time in the local music scene. We’d played briefly together in a band called Fate’s Redemption, which I’d left in order to join Dethklok (bad idea). But despite my betrayal, we remained friends, and when I mentioned needing a drummer for the revised Wake Up Jamie, he jumped on the opportunity. The second was an old friend named Chris, a guitarist who I met in music school who could play circles around me. Originally, he was supposed to play bass, but we realized we were squandering his skills as a guitar player by keeping him on bass.

Now Pippa was a cute girl who was active in the music scene and had been following Wake Up Jamie for a minute. We met at a gig and drunkenly made out. Word got out that she was learning bass, so I swept her up and taught her the songs. Was it originally an attempt to get to know her better because I had a massive crush on her? Possibly. But even after our short-lived romantic relationship ended, I found I very much enjoyed her company as a friend, and now as a bandmate.

Wake Up Jamie had reached its final form — me, Hailey, Jerry, Chris, and Pippa.

The band itself went on to play some of the biggest shows in Michigan — Arts, Beats, and Eats, Detroit Pride, and even a radio show. As of writing, we haven’t “made it” in the sense that we can make a living off our music, but that doesn’t matter to me. Wake Up Jamie has never been about getting rich or famous. The band is my honorary family, the people I trust with my life.

I still remember when one of the members had an emotional breakdown at practice, and we all halted our activities to talk them down and make sure they were okay. We then sat outside during the reminder of practice just sharing our mental health struggles. It was a difficult conversation, but I felt so comfortable sharing my heart with these people, and it was such a warm feeling to know they trusted me enough to share their hearts as well. It was like night and day compared to Dethklok, who was just as mentally ill as a group but chose to address their problems with vitriol and drama. Wake Up Jamie all legitimately care for one another, and I feel like that comes through in our music.

Blood family is important, but your found family is just as sacred. I hope and pray you find your people someday.

When You Can No Longer Turn a Blind Eye to Hate

Sometimes, I get the no-reason sads. Usually, the logical side of me (the part I’d like to imagine is bigger) will chalk it up to a chemical imbalance., just some muddled up brain slush not doing its job. This most recent sad, I could have easily brushed off as me not having my Wellbutrin for the last few weeks. But there was something more to this particular sad, and I could feel it.

The sad was not a typical no-reason sad. It was a scared sad, and it came with a realization.

I’m going to be living my entire life in fear for the women I love more than anything in this world.

I fear for my wife, who is black in a world that turns a blind eye toward violence against people of color. I fear for my girlfriend, who is transgender in a world that tells trans women to kill themselves, if the world doesn’t murder them first. I have so many fears about my future family and whether or not we’ll be safe in this country I love, the country I’ve called home my entire life.

I want to start a family with my two favorite people so badly, but I can’t shake this fear that something will go horribly wrong. Growing up, I never felt that kind of existential fear. I was a white, straight-and-cisgender-passing Christian. I never had to worry about systemic oppression or the ignorant prejudices of other people. I was able to exist peacefully and apolitically. But you can’t exist apolitically in a society that vilifies your loved ones and actively seeks to harm them. I used to be able to overlook oppression, but now I see racism and homophobia and transphobia in the world and it’s fucking personal.

My mom once told me that my writing has the power to change the world, and I hope it does. This was a hard post to write, but it’s so important to put out there. I want to live in a world that allows my future daughter to grow up without fear, without the nagging feeling that someone’s going to hurt her moms. No one should have to bear this kind of anxiety, ever, and I pray someday we’ll live in a society that lets us simply exist.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Dear Cadence, Part Fourteen: Marry Your Best Friend

Fun fact! When your Mama Crass first met me, she hated me. Like, a lot.

We met because she was dating another girl in the program. I latched onto them while they were walking to grab some books, since I too needed books and had no sense of self-awareness. I figured it was college, I was hot now and everyone wanted to hang out with me anyways, and they could use the company, right? Had I been more self-aware, I would have noticed how your mother’s eyes were daggers the entire walk there and back.

I didn’t see her much freshman year, after I had invited myself on her and her girlfriend’s excursion to the bookstore. The next time we actually talked was the Best Day Ever.

I was outside in the quaint courtyard between our two dorms, playing harp like a little angel, when Mama Crass passed me on the way to her room. She was having a terrible day, probably the worst day ever. But I recognized her from the bookstore trip and knew she worked at the newspaper as well, so I interrupted my playing to yell out a “hi!” And to my surprise, she came over and talked to me. I guess she figured her day couldn’t get any worse, so might as well see what the weirdo with the harp had to say.

“There’s a festival thing over at the Student Center,” I said. “Wanna check it out?”

And her saying yes to my spontaneous adventure was the catalyst for many, many years of friendship. We were inseparable from that evening forward. I’d never had a best friend I clicked with like her. She was my other half, to the point where people became concerned if one of us was somewhere without the other. Me, her, and eventually your aunt Mel (who was a nerdy meerkat of a human and not the badass confident woman you know now) became something of a power trio. We went on vacations together, stayed up late studying (and smoking a certain herb) together, we even ran the newspaper together. We had our inside jokes and knowing glances and for the first time ever, I felt completely, wholeheartedly loved by someone who wasn’t my parents.

One night, Mel was asleep next to us. I felt your mom brush her hand against my thigh. Normally, I wouldn’t do this kind of thing, not the good little Christian girl who’d had the whole “homosexuality is evil” thing hammered into her brain from a young age. But something came over me that night. I figured girls experiment in college all the time. When in Rome, do gay shit, right? I’ll spare you the details, but everything changed from then on. In all but name, Mama Crass was my girlfriend. I’d just never admit it.

(And yes, that happened next to Aunt Mel. No, she hasn’t let us live it down.)

I had my boyfriends, but none of them stuck, and she was there the whole time, trying to figure out what my confused bisexual ass was thinking. I even got married, and she was the maid of honor, naturally. She didn’t look all that maidenly at the wedding — she was really leaning into the more butch look at the time, with her cropped hair and suit and tie. There exist pictures of us at this wedding, and you’ll probably flip if I ever show them to you. I probably won’t, because I looked equally awful at the time, having cut all my hair off in an attempt to pull off a flapper bob. But I digress. This was a bad time for both of us, as evidenced by the questionable haircuts.

At some point when I was married to Josh, I came to this striking realization — whenever I was hanging out with him, why did I wish I was hanging out with her instead? And that was the moment I knew this marriage wasn’t going to work. I mentioned earlier that I moved out to Ypsilanti to be closer to my school and job, but I didn’t mention all the BS that came with that.

At the time, all I could afford was a room in these shitty apartments where someone got murdered almost yearly. The apartment complex operated similarly to a dorm, where tenants were matched with each other based on interests and roomed together. Unfortunately, the system was not foolproof, and I got stuck with a pair of evil lesbians (pro tip: not all queer folks are cool, sadly). They didn’t like me or my cat, Krubby, so they tried to get rid of us the only way they knew how — by calling animal control.

On Christmas Eve.

To get Krubby taken away.

(I told you they were evil.)

Needless to say, the animal control worker came in, inspected the apartment, and saw no reason to take Krubby. But I was furious. In fact, I’d never been more furious. And so was your mom. So much so that she left the safety of her parents’ house, where she’d taken refuge after graduation, and came to stay with me and Krubby until we could break the lease and leave.

And only then did I realize what I was missing. Why I didn’t want a family with Josh. It was your mother all along. I saw how loving and maternal and warm and protective she was with Krubby, and I knew she was the one I wanted to mother my children someday.

It wasn’t easy — despite having come out as pansexual, I’d never actually dated a woman before, so the social transition to outwardly queer was uncomfortable at times. Some members of my own family have distanced themselves from me. But the ones who matter have stuck around. My dad called me up in this serious tone shortly after getting together with your mother officially, saying he needed to talk to us about something important. So he took us to a Coney Island and sat us down and basically said “Fuck what the rest of the family says, I love and support you no matter what.” And my mom, after years of denying the fact that I was probably some kind of gay, came to terms with it. “Now I get two daughters,” she said.

We married in a tiny ceremony with both my parents present by the Detroit River on Valentine’s Day. I was never really a romantic, at least not until I met your other mom, but standing there in our casual but pretty dresses on that windy winter’s day, I felt like I finally believed in true love. I felt like happy ever afters not only really existed, but I could have one. I had a love story, a truly marvelous, one-of-a-kind love story, and it was hers and mine.

Marriage is a beautiful thing, and it’s even more beautiful when the person you marry is your best friend. It’s not all rainbows and roses, but when you’re fighting side-by-side with your favorite person, everything seems to come together. I pray you find someone (or multiple someones) who make you feel the way your Mama Crass makes me feel, because the people you spend your life with make everything worth it.

Dear Cadence, Part Twelve: Don’t Rush Growing Up

By 2016 I was still reeling from the band breakup, Jacob Liepshutz breaking my heart again, and the crushing weight of not immediately becoming a roaring success of a writer after graduation, as I had planned, among a multitude of other things that were heavy on my mind. I fled to Florida for a few months, then reconvened back in Michigan, where I decided I needed something different.

I needed Jesus.

I figured where better to find Him than at the church of my youth? So I went back to the church I’d attended as a teenager and weaseled my way into the young adult group. And that’s where I met Josh.

Josh was a scrawny kid no taller than me, with large brown eyes and a big nose that suited his face surprisingly well. He had longish hair that brushed his shoulders and dressed in skinny jeans and band tees like I liked on a man at the time. We’d known each other in high school, but we became close friends after I joined the worship team, where he played bass. We gravitate toward each other because we were the odd ones out — everyone on the team was stereotypically attractive and “cool,” and we were kind of the dweebs of the group.

I quickly learned that Josh had never had a girlfriend before, and something about that was oddly refreshing to me. A man with no baggage. No expectations. I was growing disillusioned with the dating scene, and Josh was a breath of fresh air. So when he meekly asked me to be his girlfriend, I had to accept.

Dating Josh was a whole different world. You see, his family was very strict and conservative, something I was not used to. They prayed before meals and didn’t listen to rock music and voted Republican because they were against abortion. Josh was a little less uppity, but he was a virgin and was waiting until marriage. I couldn’t live with him or even sleep in the same bed until we were married. It was charming at first, but it got grating quickly. I really did like Josh, a lot, but I wanted an adult relationship with him. I was sick of dating like a teenager while I was well into my 20s. So when he asked me to marry him a mere six months into our relationship, I said yes.

The wedding itself was far from my dream wedding. It was rushed, just like everything else in the relationship. I hastily chose decor and cakes and all that, and my dress was a pastry-shaped hand-me-down from Josh’s sister, who was way too skinny for it to fit her well. The reception was less than ideal — I couldn’t even dance at my own party because we held it at Josh’s family’s church, and they were the villains from Footloose and prohibited such sinful acts. So I bawled my eyes out and definitely came off as a bridezilla.

(I think I was justified.)

We bought a little condo in my hometown, a relatively nice two-story home with wood paneling like I liked, and plenty of storage space. That’s when I fell into a nice little routine. Go to work at the pharmacy I’d found a job at, maybe attend a church event, come home and clean (usually while sneaking a bottle of wine that Josh didn’t approve of), and go to bed, only to do it all again the next day.

I put on my shiniest, happiest face, like I was actually enjoying the life I’d made for myself, but I wasn’t actually happy. Even the kitten Josh bought me didn’t bring me enough joy to justify my sad existence. Every day I’d go to work and drive across the Detroit River, and every day I’d be half-tempted to drive my car off the damn bridge. It wasn’t anything Josh was doing wrong, to be fair. It was me. The problem was always me. I was making myself miserable by forcing myself into a box I didn’t feel comfortable in. I wasn’t a good little church wife, and I knew it.

I felt like I was stagnating, so I fought my depression the only way I knew how — by throwing myself into academics. I signed up for music therapy classes for the second time. What was the other option, have a baby? All my friends were getting married and making babies, but I couldn’t see myself having a family with Josh. As much as I loved him, I didn’t like him like that. And I finally admitted that to myself one day while I was walking across campus. I called my mom, who encouraged me to call my brother, who immediately swept me up and took me for a ride, just to talk.

Your Uncle Jason is not a saint. We don’t even talk any more. But I have to credit him for saving my life that day, because he’s the one who talked me down from throwing myself into that river.

I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t even sure how people get divorced. But I wrote a letter to Josh, a painful one that hurt me to write. I knew I’d made a mistake in rushing into marriage with him, though. I left it for him, and went to stay with my parents for the night.

The divorce process was somber, as expected, and way more drawn out than it should have been. He chased me down and tried his hardest to win me back, which only made things hurt more in the long run, both for him and for me. He even recorded a CD full of him playing songs for me, a desperate serenade in hopes I’d stop the process and come back to him. But my heart was never in the marriage in the first place. I was in a hurry to grow up and have that adult relationship I wanted, and he happened to be in the crosshairs of my own recklessness.

Finally, the dust settled and I moved out to Ypsilanti to be closer to my school and job. I’d thankfully started working in Ann Arbor a little bit before everything went down. I think I started planning my escape long before I consciously decided to divorce Josh. My heart wasn’t with Josh, or in that church, or in my hometown. I left my heart behind in the music therapy program at Eastern, and that’s where I needed to be.

I guess the moral of this story is to not be in such a hurry to grow up. When you try to rush things, you hurt people and lose sight of what you really want out of life. I regret marrying Josh, not because I never loved him, but because I did love him, and I hated having to hurt him the way I did. I’m big enough to admit I was the bad guy, and he didn’t deserve what I did to him. But I had to do what was right for me. You only live one time, and life’s too short to be stuck somewhere you don’t truly want to be.

As of writing, I never did get that dream wedding to someone I actually want to be with forever, but I’m praying that changes. And if that time ever comes, I’m going to dance my damn heart out.

Dear Cadence, Part Eleven: You Will Get Hurt, and You Will Hurt Others

Ever since I was little, I wanted to be in a band.

It wasn’t enough to play music. I wanted a band.

I wanted the family, the ups and downs, the VH1 Behind the Music where we all talk about how much we love each other even after struggling through five overdoses and the guitarist cheating on his wife with the drummer’s wife. I wanted the full experience.

And what I got was Dethklok.

Dethklok was not the real name of this band, but to protect the identities of the innocent (and the guilty), I’ve changed all the names to the members of the protagonists of the show Metalocalypse. In fact, for this chapter and this chapter only, I am Toki Wartooth. You can imagine me with a mustache if it helps.

I met the band when I opened for them at their album release party. It was the biggest show I’d played to date, and even with just me and my acoustic guitar. I got the crowd going, rather impressing the Dethklok guys (I say guys, but there were female members. But for the sake of consistency, we were all guys.)

I played for them a second time at another venue, this one with a private green room. After my performance, they cornered me in the green room bathroom.

“We want you to join Dethklok as our second guitarist and go on tour with us,” they said — no, demanded. And who was I to refuse such an offer!

It was all rainbows and roses at the start. I befriended the other members of the band pretty quickly. There was Nathan Explosion and Skisgaar Skwigelf, the lead vocalist and guitarist, respectively, who were dating. William Murderface was the bassist, a certifiable weirdo, but a charming one. And Pickles the Drummer was just kind of…there. He had red hair.

Learning the songs was easy for me, so much so that the rest of the band was beyond impressed. To be fair, they were basic four chord pop-punk songs for the most part, save for one relatively heavy post-hardcore number where Nathan Explosion would scream and Skwisgaar and I would “chug chugga chug” on the guitar. One of these days I’ll show you one of our old songs. They were definitely songs.

The band was becoming something of a family to me. We’d eat together, play games together, and just generally do life together. And what’s more, people liked us! We had a ton of fans, something I wasn’t used to. There were fanfictions written about us, even. It was surreal.

The fall tour would be the true test of our bonds, though. And as we got ready for the first of our two regional tours, I found myself daydreaming about Murderface more and more. We were the two carnivores of the group — the rest of the band was vegan — and we both dealt with a lot of mental health issues (that we actually acknowledged, since the entire band was incredibly mentally ill and incredibly unmedicated). Was I falling for him? Fans were already shipping Toki and Murderface. Were we a match made in pop-punk heaven? We spent several nights together just hanging out and listening to John Frusciante’s solo material, and after some time, he gave me his grandmother’s ruby ring and asked if someday, I’d marry him. Lost in the fantasy, the rock and roll fairytale I was living in, I accepted.

But that first tour was an absolute whirlwind. We traveled much of the East Coast and Midwest playing tiny clubs and bars. Most of the shows weren’t that big — just a couple of local bands and us — but it was exhilarating to be able to play to new faces every night. I felt like a true rock star, even if we were sleeping in our drummer’s mom van and random people’s houses and not a luxurious tour bus. Even if we all smelled horrible by the end of the tour and we had to mask our natural musks with copious amounts of perfume and cologne. It was an adventure unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

There were arguments now and then, mostly between Nathan Explosion and Skwisgaar. A few times, I was dragged into a conflict, such as the time Skwisgaar and Pickles made me and Murderface cry for not being vegans. (They were all like “What if someone ate your dog?” And I cried, being the damn Pisces I am.) We were a tight knit group, but the threads began to unravel as the fights became more and more frequent. Suddenly, I was seeing how mentally unstable we all were, myself included. Still, these people were becoming my best friends, even more so than your mom and Aunt Mel. I trusted them with my life. It was a toxic, codependent five-way relationship.

By the time our winter tour rolled around, things came to a head. The arguments were so frequent, we were bickering more than we were talking music, or anything else for that matter. Nathan Explosion and Skwisgaar broke up, and Murderface and I were on the rocks too, as I’d recently reconnected with Jacob from earlier and I wanted things to finally go somewhere with him (spoiler alert: it went nowhere). So I was far away from home surrounded by people who all hated each other, and at our homecoming show, Skwisgaar slammed his guitar on the ground in a fit of rage. The next day, we unanimously decided to split up. It was an ugly breakup, uglier than all of my romantic breakups combined. Harsh words were spoken. Threats were made. I finally made the decision to cut them all out of my life, once and for all. And I’m so glad I did.

Healing was rough, but I managed. Your mom and Aunt Mel were the rocks I needed to lean on, and they gave me all the support I needed as I found my way again. I learned my lesson not to trust just anyone, and not to get swept off my feet by whatever shiny opportunity presents itself, because the truth is, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. People will hurt you, but the right people will own up to it. And you will hurt people too, and it’s your responsibility to own up to it as well. I got stabbed in the back by folks I considered friends, but I wasn’t innocent either. In the end, we were all very mentally ill and very unmedicated.

I’m sure you’re wondering whatever happened to Dethklok. I wondered myself, after several years had passed. So I reached out to my old bandmates to apologize for how things ended and make peace with the pas. Murderface and I became friends again through the local art scene, and Pickles went off on his own and never really spoke to me again. Nathan Explosion didn’t want anything to do with me, and in fact blocked me on all social media. I guess I don’t blame him. The funniest thing happened when I cold-messaged Skwisgaar, though.

“I wanted to apologize if I ever did anything to hurt you,” I wrote. “You were like a big brother to me.”

“You mean sister — I’m trans. And there’s no hard feelings. I know I was an ass too.”

And that, my child, is how I became friends with your Aunt Tegan. Funny how life works itself out.

Sunday Morning Coffee: Love and Fear

It’s been three days since my last argument with a Facebook asshole about LGBTQ stuff, and I’m still simmering from it. I think I let things like that affect me way more than I should. Maybe I really am a bleeding heart hippie.

Can’t we all just sing “Kum-Ba-Yah” together?

It’s not easy for me to sit back and just take it when randos are slinging homophobic/transphobic slurs, suicide jokes, and even pedophilia accusations against you and your favorite people. Why are some folks so eager to say disgusting, slanderous things about entire groups of people they don’t even know? It literally baffles me — I can’t wrap my mind around it. I wouldn’t say things remotely as heinous against strangers I simply don’t agree with. My momma raised me better than that.

I’m tempted to call these people evil, but I won’t. I will call it as I see it — their actions are evil —-but to borrow a phrase so often weaponized against the queer community, “love the sinner, hate the sin.” You see, the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s fear. And these people are lashing out like scared dogs at things they don’t understand.

The Bible itself says “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). When you don’t understand something, the human tendency is to fear it. And often, that fear becomes hate. When I was a kid, I was afraid of the dark because I didn’t know what was hiding in it. I hated being in the dark for that reason. But the dark was never bad — I just didn’t understand it.

I think these people who blindly hate those who are unlike them simply don’t know love. I understand that many people didn’t have a lot of love growing up — maybe their families were abusive, or perhaps they were bullied. That will lead to a life of fear, and a life of fear is a life of hate. The antidote is love.

Whenever I see transphobic memes online, I think of my girlfriend Olivia. I can’t wrap my mind around how anyone could possibly hate her. But they don’t know her like I know her, because to know her is to love her. I wish everyone had an Olivia to show them what love means.

So instead of letting fear win, let love in. Show love wildly, recklessly, with no remorse. Love your enemies. Love the people who persecute you. Love the people who call you names or make nasty accusations or tell you to kill yourself.

Love like Jesus did.

Confessions of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl

I was scrolling through a certain accursed social media app when once again, I saw some bullshit. Which is how most of my posts on here begin, in all fairness. I’m starting to think I just love self-sabotage.

Anyways, the incel BS of the day is this meme:

My first instinct was the kneejerk “Oh, this is some ‘girls just wanna be independent blue-haired sluts nowadays instead of perfect blonde housewives and babymakers’ trad nonsense.” That community tends to have a low opinion of blue-haired girls in particular for some reason. Probably because they’re all gay and want nothing to do with you. Kind of like a certain formerly blue-haired blogger I know.

Pictured: gay and wants nothing to do with you

But what if that’s not the intention of this meme? What if there is some valid criticism to the Ramona Flowers archetype?

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a character that appears in film and other media to shake up the life of a (usually awkward and dweeby) everyman protagonist. She’s energetic, bubbly, kind of awkward but in a more charming way than the everyman protagonist, and her entire purpose in the narrative is to get said protagonist out of his shell. You know the type. I could put a picture of Zooey Deschanel here…

…and you’d know exactly who I’m talking about.

A gajillion think pieces have been written on why the MPDG archetype is problematic. Some people say the trope is misogynistic, implying the MPDG is intended to be “not like other girls.” Others take issue with the idea that these quirky women need to “save” men in these narratives. Even the creator of the term feels the character type is shallow and cliche. But my criticism of the MPDG comes from a unique place.

Because for a long time, I was the MPDG.

I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to come of age right when the archetype was gaining steam in the cultural zeitgeist. Somehow, almost overnight, all the quirks that made me annoying or weird started coming off as oddly charming, and I had a long list of suitors all throughout college. But none of them lasted, because the very quirks that made me attractive became grating as time wore on.

It’s not my place to diagnose, but many of the MPDGs of pop culture show signs of being ADHD or autistic, like me. And while being neurodivergent is freaking awesome most of the time, it does come with its downsides, and one of those downsides is difficulty in relationships. For example, I find subtle social cues hard to decipher, and makes communication difficult sometimes. Or impulsivity, which is a huge problem for me. It’s cute when you want to go to Taco Bell in the middle of the night, but it’s way less cute when you buy a boat you can’t afford. Which is something I have done.

There’s nothing wrong with portraying neurodiverse folks as love interests in film and TV— in fact, I love to see that kind of representation!The problem occurs when you only show the rainbows and butterflies. Relationships are hard, and doubly so for those of us who are neurodivergent. We’re not cute little one-dimensional characters who exist to spice up your life. We’re real humans, with human emotions and flaws.

I know it’s a cliche to say you don’t deserve me at my best if you can’t handle me at my worst, but it’s your reality when you date a neurodivergent person. We can be great friends and even better lovers, but you have to accept all of us — not just the idealized versions you see in media.

Dear Cadence, Part Eight: Just Because It Doesn’t Last, Doesn’t Mean It’s Not Special

I promise this will be the last lovey dovey chapter for a while. And this one — well, this one was different.

I still remember his full name. Jacob Liepshutz. Pronounced “lip-shuts,” not “lip-shits,” but get the giggles out now. He was short, about my height, with a bit of a squeaky voice and tufts of curly dark hair, and with these deep brown eyes that could see your soul. He was the typical nice Jewish boy you’d see in rom coms, the kind you would be happy to take home to your mama, with one important distinction.

He could fucking shred.

The band was called Smiles & Anchors, and their signature song was called “Shark Week.” It was a standard issue metalcore song for the most part, save for the very end, when Jacob would launch into the most captivating, triumphant guitar solo I’d ever heard in my eighteen-or-so years of life. And that’s when he won me over.

It wasn’t a crush I realized I held until the night I stayed with his family in West Bloomfield after a show. We had become decent enough friends for him to have offered to drive me out to see them in a town that was the opposite direction of where I was living. I felt bad for putting him through all the trouble, but he was happy to take me. By the time the bands had all played and he’d finished packing up his gear, it was far too late to make the trek to the other side of the Metro Detroit area. So I crashed with him for the night.

I stayed on the couch in the basement, and about ten minutes into me lying down, Jacob snuck into the room with me.

“Is it okay if I lie down with you?” he asked softly.

I knew what was going to happen if I said yes, but I did anyway. And I never regretted it.

The next morning, he drove me back to my little college town, and I still remember him playing “Shiksa (Girlfriend)” by Say Anything. “I have a girlfriend now, no way, no how,” the song sang as we rolled down the highway, me wrapped in his old varsity jacket. I never felt this kind of…was it love? I couldn’t figure it out. All I know is that entire day, as I went through the motions of my music therapy classes, I still felt his touch on my skin, and every time, I’d get shivers.

For that month, September, we were inseparable. Any chance we both had to be together, we were. I remember the night of Rosh Hashanah, lying on the beanbag chairs in my dorm, studying the freckles in his eyes as if there’d be a test. I remember meeting his parents and his little siblings and how kind they were to me. I remember him taking me to his old high school and showing me around the band room, where he’d spent so much of his time. I told him about how I played in my high school band and how I desperately wanted to make it in music as well.

One night, we sat in a parking lot while listening to the acoustic work of Buckethead, one of his favorite guitarists.

“I have a band too,” I said. “Well, a project. It’s called Wake Up Jamie.”

“Who’s Jamie?”

“Nobody,” I laughed. “It was a misheard lyric from a song I used to like. Where did Smiles & Anchors come from?”

His calloused fingertips interlaced with my own. “I make music because I want to see people smile. I don’t do it for myself. And what you’re doing with music therapy…that’s so admirable to me.”

I breathed a soft “thank you” and leaned into him. Asteroids could have decimated the planet in that very moment and I would have died happy.

Then, one day, it just…stopped. I stopped getting cute texts from him. He didn’t seem to want to hang out. I went to a Halloween show, and he barely acknowledged me. It was like a switch flipped. I was devestated.

It wasn’t until years later that I found out he’d been struggling with depression, much the same as I had been, and just kind of…fell off. He never meant to hurt me. In fact, he didn’t realize I felt so deeply about him. He went on to join another band and sign with a fairly major label, and I went on with my own life. We did eventually reconnect and casually dated again for a week or so, but nothing ever came of it. I was still heartbroken, but by that time, I had a million other things to be heartbroken about as well, like the breakup of my first official band, Dethklok (it’ll make sense later). I had to accept the hard truth that maybe Jacob Liepshutz wasn’t my soulmate after all.

Even still, I have an anchor tattooed on my foot in honor of that time in my life — not symbolizing Jacob himself, but what he taught me about music and about life. Music is great when you make it for yourself, but it becomes beautiful when you release it out into the world and let it affect the people around you. The anchor is a symbol to me to stay humble and remember why I picked up the noble art of music in the first place. Music is how I have always connected with people, and if I can use it to bring a little light into the lives of others, I’ll be happy. Jacob reminded me of that, and for this reason, he’ll always be a part of me.

Sometimes, the relationships you have aren’t meant to last forever, but they existed in that brief glimmer of life to teach you something valuable. And to me, that makes it all worth it.

The Delicate Art of Surrender

So there’s this old song by a band no one remembers called “Happily Ever After.” In it, the singer, Bethany (I don’t know if that’s her name but she sounds like a Bethany), croons about how she hopes God gives her story the ending she desires. “Author of the moment, can you tell me, do I end up happy?”

I’m being informed by Google that her name is actually Rachel and judging by the haircut worn by no straight woman ever, she ended up gay.

It’s been hard lately to surrender to the unknown future, and as of late, the future feels more unknown than ever. I have my music therapy internship interview this upcoming week. My band is starting to get some attention. I’ve been considering a number of additional paths, such as becoming a writer and teaching music full time. And my heart still longs for a child, as stupid as I feel for saying that. I sound like the “my biological clock is ticking” women I made fun of when I was younger.

Every day feels the same, but I know things are slowly changing. The future needs time to cook, and I need to let it simmer for a while. I know logically I can’t rush things, but I want to get to the next stage of life so badly it hurts. I want to know I’ll have my little girl and my unconventional yet happy family and that it’ll be cupcakes and roses for everyone involved. I want to know that my career will be successful, whether it’s music therapy or playing in a rock band or something else entirely that I haven’t figured out yet.

There’s this book I just finished called You Are a Badass by a writer named Jen Sincero. The logical side of my brain considers it a little too foo-foo at times — you’re telling me I can manifest anything by wishing for it hard enough?! — but there’s some value in being thankful to the universe for all of the possibilities it could give to you. She writes of having gratitude toward God or whichever higher power you like the best as if you already have the thing you desire, and then surrendering that thing to the Universe. That’s what I have trouble with I think. The surrendering part. I hold onto things with the tenacity of a particularly angry dog.

THESE ARE MY DREAMS, UNIVERSE. NO TOUCH.

I’m in the best position I’ve ever been in. My band is on the verge of something great, I’m about to finish my degree — finally — and I have not one, but two significant others whom I love with my entire heart. There’s still room for things to go awry, however, and that’s what scares me. What if I don’t get this internship? What if one of my partners gets sick of my bullshit and leaves me? And — the one that hurts the most to think about — what if my little Cadence never comes to be? I don’t know if I could handle that.

I wish life were as easy as it were in The Sims, where I could press a few buttons and enter a cheat code and everything I ever wanted would be right there waiting for me. Maybe it is there, like Sincero said in her book, and I just need to manifest it. I should be grateful for all these possibilities that are coming my way, but it’s so hard to shake the nagging feeling of something will go wrong.

I think the real power comes in trusting that God/the Universe will provide an even cooler alternative if I don’t end up getting what I want, like how He provided a Black Sabbath tribute band after my wedding reception when the fuddy-duddies at the church I got married at didn’t allow dancing at the shindig itself. (There’s a reason that marriage didn’t last, but at least I got to party with Ozzy freakin’ Osbourne.)

The only Prince Charming I needed was the Prince of Darkness himself.

There’s a verse in the Bible that talks about how God works all things together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). That’s what I’ve been meditating on as of late. It hurts to surrender my plans to Him, but I know He’s got my best interest at heart. The Author of the moment knows more about the storyline than I do. I think back to everything I thought I wanted years ago. Had I reached Taylor Swift levels of fame and fortune, for example, I probably would have thrown myself into a meat grinder by now, with all the pressure and scrutiny weighing on my mental health. My desire to be the biggest rock star on the planet wasn’t from God — it was from me — and only in retrospect do I realize that achieving that dream would have been my ruin.

Still, I’m worried about a lot of things. I’m worried I’ll never get my real dream wedding with either of my partners. I’m worried we’ll never have our kid. I’m worried I’ll never get to go to the UK to meet my long-lost cousin/penpal. I’m worried I’ll never get to live in a little home by the lake. I worry a lot more than I let on. But I’m learning to trust that things always seem to work out for the best in the end.

Dear Cadence, Part Seven: You’ll Look Back and Laugh

So Kyle Kelley didn’t work out, but I wasn’t too heartbroken, and part of that was because I already moved onto the next unattainable crush. And this one was scandalous.

But first, I want you to listen to a song called “Dear John” by Taylor Swift, an artist who is probably doing a nostalgic Vegas residency or farewell tour by the time you read this. To fully understand the situation, you need to put yourself in the shoes of a teenage me, crying on the swingset to this song sometime in 2010. Just like how Taylor had John Mayer (who’s probably dead by now), I had, well, let’s stick with John.

John was the anti-Kyle. He was this tall, dark, and handsome emo kid with long hair, skinny jeans, and a dangerous air about him, despite being a good little church boy on paper. He was one of the members of the worship team at the church I was going to. I remember every Sunday gazing up at him and his alpine white Les Paul hanging near his hips, his hands dancing over the fretboard like I could only dream of doing. I never paid him much mind until the worship team played a cover of “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey for an event. That guitar solo he played took me to another plane of existence. I had to have him.

Because he was technically a leader, it would have been frowned upon for him to pursue me, but that didn’t stop me from daydreaming about him constantly. I’d comb through his pictures on MySpace, where he was a bit of a minor celebrity, and look through all the comments from thirsty girls who wanted him as much as I did. But I was special — I played guitar too, and I loved Jesus too, and I knew I would understand him better than any one of those girls. I just needed to get his attention somehow, but at this point, I was still shy and awkward, despite having blossomed into a somewhat conventionally attractive young woman.

Then the crazy thing happened. He reached out to me!

I don’t remember exactly how it happened. I’m pretty sure he started a conversation with me on MySpace, then asked for my number. I was floored. John had finally noticed me, despite me having barely spoken to him in person (I think I asked him about his pedalboard once). We talked all night about everything — soup, favorite bands, his extensive hair care routine. And to my surprise, he continued to talk to me the next night, and the night after that. I was absolutely floored. Did he feel the same way for me that I felt for him?

Still, he never went as far as to ask me out or even talk to me in person. After this tango continued for several weeks with no moves being made, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I confessed my feelings toward him.

“I do like you a lot—“ he wrote back. “—as a friend.”

I was crushed. John meant everything to me. I’d gotten used to doodling my first name with his last name and imagining what our future children would look like. We were meant to be. I knew it. But I’d been — dare I say — friend-zoned by the love of my life. I realize I sound like an entirely unsympathetic “nice girl” at this point in the story, and John could have easily gotten away with looking like the good guy in this story, had he not done what he did next.

“Let’s play 20 questions,” he texted me one night, sometime around 2 a.m. “You go first.”

I was miraculously awake, despite having to get up in a few hours for school. “Favorite guitarist?”

“Jimmy Page.” Then came the message that changed everything. “Are you a virgin?”

A flutter of hope overtook me. Was he interested after all? “Yes,” I wrote back. “What do you look for in a girl.”

“A good heart and nice tits,” he responded.

It went back and forth like this for a while, getting increasingly steamy. I’m not going to gross you out with the details, but things got spicy, fast. Before I knew it, I had dropped any pretense of innocence and confessed all my filthiest desires to this guy, who had similarly dropped his facade of “respectable church leader.”

This went on for weeks. Every night, I’d fake going to bed and wait for the text from John. And every Sunday, I’d see him on stage, and he’d act as if he hadn’t told me how badly he wanted to touch my boobs the night before. When I did go to talk to him, he’d cut it short and go off to talk to someone else, almost like he didn’t want to be seen with me. It hurt so bad. I felt so close to him every night when he’d text me, yet he felt so far away in person.

Then my mom found out.

I remember her sitting me down to talk about it. She wasn’t mad at me, but at him for taking advantage of me.

“He doesn’t love you,” she told me. “He only wants your body.”

And it hit me like a truckload of hams. Of course he didn’t want to date me or even be seen with me. Socially I was below him — but he wasn’t above telling me all the nasty things he wanted to do to me. To me, he was my dream, my emo John Mayer in skinny jeans, everything I ever wanted. To him, I was little more than a piece of meat he could use when he was awake and horny in the middle of the night.

I left the church when I went off to college, but it wouldn’t be the last I heard of him. We eventually reconnected and had a short-lived fling, and I’d go on to marry someone else, but that never stopped him from continuing to pursue me. And the funniest thing happened. He fell in love with me! He’d tell me how he regretted what happened, how he wished he would have put a ring on it when he had the chance. By that time, though, I’d already long moved on.

As of writing, Taylor Swift just released a re-recorded version of “Dear John,” and it hits differently knowing how it ends. I wish I could go back and tell that heartsick teenager that she’d look back and laugh at the whole situation. Someday, John would realize what he missed out on. Sometimes I visit the Downriver area and drive past the places where I used to cry about him, like that old swingset. He could have had me. But now, I’m shining like fireworks over his sad empty town.