This is Not Okay

So this morning, I left the B&B my wife and I are staying in at the moment to grab some snacks. I was prepping for my karaoke gig as well as a very delayed Pride festival, so I put on my favorite pleather bustier and a flowy slit-leg skirt I got from a hippie store in St. Louis, and I started walking to the gas station on the corner. En route, I encountered a man on the sidewalk. As I passed him, the wind blew, and this man was definitely staring at my ass, because he remarked, entirely unwarranted:

“Nice purple panties!”

I didn’t know what to say. Perhaps I should have yelled “They’re actually pink and fuck you for looking in the first place,” but I was damn near paralyzed. So I muttered “No comment” and picked up the pace until I reached the gas station. I didn’t even look at the man. I don’t know what he looks like. All I know is suddenly I felt like I needed a fucking bath.

Crass and I met a kind woman who was living in a residential apartment in the 19th century mansion we’re staying in for a few nights. She was a mother, and when we first encountered her, she had her pink-onsied little one with her. Her name, too, was Christine, funnily enough, as that’s my wife’s government name, and she and her baby had also made national headlines, like Crass. She’d lost her home in a fire and the baby was rescued when a cop caught her out of a window. Needless to say, this woman had been through it, and I ran into her when I was coming back to the place.

She was going for a walk. I had to warn her. There was a creep nearby.

Christine shook her head. She, like me, had been a victim of rape. Massive trigger warning on that link, by the way, and probably for this entire post. We stood in the doorway and commiserated for a solid five minutes about the horrors of being a woman in our society. Because, as I told her, I hardly know a single woman who doesn’t have a similar story.

We have a fucking rape epidemic. Nearly one in five women in our country have experienced it, and that’s just the numbers we know about. That’s not even counting less intense forms of sexual harassment, which has a staggering 81 percent of women reporting having experienced it (as well as nearly half of the men surveyed — more on that in a second). How is it that so many women have gone through this? It makes me nervous to think about. If there’s that many victims, where the hell are all the abusers?

And that’s the sad, scary part. They walk among us. You might even know one. Do you know how often this shit goes unreported? Many cases never reach authorities. My rapist is still a free man as far as I know, with a daughter no less. It kills me to think about.

This world is not safe for women. Christine and I talked at length about how dangerous it is just to trust a random man. Sure, there are no shortage of great, stand-up dudes who actually care about women, like my late father and my boyfriend and my best guy friend. But if you have a bowl of M&Ms and one of them is laced with cyanide, would you still chance the M&Ms? That’s how it feels to be around men — any men! — in our current zeitgeist. Men are getting even more aggressive and misogynistic thanks to the influence of the “manosphere.” It sucks because it colors every man with the same broad paintbrush, even the objectively good ones. And surprise, men are also hurt by the patriarchy and our societal insistence that men are supposed to be mighty and emotionless and women are weak little babymakers. Men get raped too, and they seldom get taken seriously because they’re expected to be strong enough to fight back.

I hate that this is the reality we live in. I wish I had a happy resolution to this post, but until we find a way to topple our tower of patriarchal norms, we’re not going to be out of the woods, and while we’re there, we’re still picking the bear. We need to start doing the work of teaching proper consent and holding people accountable when violations happen. We need to teach boys to respect the girls in their lives instead of constantly reinforcing the notion that they’re somehow superior. I hope we get to a place where we can experience true gender equality and the forces that teach that rape is acceptable are finally silenced. I don’t want to be terrified around random dudes on the street. I don’t want any woman to feel that way.

Sadly, there’s nothing I can do on my own except write this blog post bringing attention to the issue. But I pray a change happens soon. We can’t keep living in fear. This is not okay.

Rejection as Redirection: When You Have to Pivot to Your True Calling

It happened again. I was let go from the autism center.

It felt like a flashback to the fateful meeting with my music therapy internship supervisors back when I was in Fort Wayne. I went into the meeting expecting a completely different turn of events. I loved the job. I wanted to ask about how to advance. I wanted to see what kinds of degrees I could get to dive even deeper into the field. I had a whole plan to rework the field of autism therapy into something better for neurodivergent folks like me eventually. Even my boss wasn’t expecting her boss to tell her to let me go. But the writing was on the wall. I wasn’t advancing as quickly as they needed me to, and that was that.

But I wasn’t as devastated as I should have been, weirdly enough. And I think it’s because the universe has been trying to tell me something for years, and now maybe is the time to listen.

There’s a great quote that’s commonly (incorrectly) attributed to Albert Einstein that amounts to “if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its entire life thinking it’s stupid.” Even if Mr. Einstein himself never spoke these words, I feel there is a truth to them.

I have always wanted to be a healer of some sort, but I never really knew what that meant for me. I’ve spent my whole existence being told that because I’m compassionate and intelligent, I belong in a clinical setting. It made the most sense logically, especially if I wanted to actually make money with whatever I ended up doing for a living. I had every intention of getting into pre-med until my parents talked me into music therapy instead.

And…yeah, that didn’t exactly go well.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a sad post.

You see, the autism center wasn’t my only form of employment. I moonlight as a music bingo and karaoke host, and the gig has not only been the longest job I’ve ever stuck with, but also the best job I’ve ever had by far. It’s creative. It’s engaging. It involves music and extroverting. And for the first time in a long time, I’m doing something I’m good at. It’s funny, I remember the strange dichotomy between the ways my bosses in various fields would speak to me. When I worked in healthcare or similar clinical settings, it was always “Jess, why can’t you keep up with your coworkers?” But then my bosses from the entertainment company would call me and sing my praises. It was like that song I liked in high school, “According to You” by the very underrated guitarist Orianthi. According to the higher-ups at my day jobs, I was stupid and useless and couldn’t do anything right. But according to him (the cool dude who sends me my schedule for music bingo every week), I’m a good enough host to literally send across the country in a big stupid airplane to train up new folks.

Maybe the autism center didn’t work out because that wasn’t my calling.

I love entertaining. I love being a creative. I love being surrounded by music and life and people. Perhaps I’ve been flying in the face of my own favorite piece of advice: never break your own bones to fit into someone else’s box. I don’t belong in a cold, clinical setting. That is not me. I belong on a stage, or on a screen, or even just behind the scenes furiously typing up the script. I was meant to create things that inspire and challenge people. The world needs a voice like mine, and I need to stop being so afraid to use it. That’s my fatal flaw — I’m afraid of damn near everything.

Which is why I’m shocked I’m not more worried about my current less-employed status. I have faith that things will work out somehow. I want to do the research on how to get my writing published properly. I might get back into streaming video games again with my wife and roommate. I want to lean into my work as a KJ and music bingo host and bring music and fun into the everyday lives of everyday people. Most importantly, I want to figure out how to make a living doing what I love instead of desperately trying to shove myself into a niche that isn’t mine. I’m no longer interested in pretending to be something I’m not.

And if I have to carve my own path, that’s what I’ll do.

The Last Post I Will Ever Make About Music Therapy (Probably)

It’s not exactly a secret that for a majority of my adult life, music therapy was my life.

My initial plan was premed, as I felt a calling to heal folks in some form or another, but I had to be born to the only parents in the history of human civilization to convince their child to drop out in favor of music. They knew where my true passion lies, and it was not in slinging pills or performing open heart surgery. But my parents weren’t stupid — they also knew I needed college if I ever wanted to escape the dull working class existence I’d been born into. Higher education was very much still in the cards for me, and so they brought up an alternative, something I could study that involved both music and healing.

Music therapy.

And from then on, everything in my world revolved around this one thing. I immersed myself in the literature and journals. My fingertips seldom left the fretboard of my guitar as I practiced all the pop standards every client loves. (Wanna hear “Stand By Me”?) I became close with my professors and cohorts and did everything I could to learn from them. There were a lot of uncertainties in the world for me, but I knew in my heart of hearts that I would one day become Jess J. Salisbury, MT-BC.

(Yes, Jessa Joyce is not my government name.)

It was more than a major or a career path to me. Music therapy was my entire identity for upwards of twelve years. Even when I wasn’t in school actively pursuing it, I had designs on getting back into the program when whatever thing I was actively going through was over. It was my Plan A, B, and C. And I got so close to the finish line too. I remember the look of pride on my now-deceased father’s face at the graduation ceremony when I’d completed the necessary coursework. I’d never been more proud of myself. And I was fresh on the heels of winning one of the most prestigious awards at the university I was attending, so everyone was watching in anticipation of what I was going to do next.

I had no idea it was about to come to a crashing halt in the godforsaken city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, where dreams go to die.

When it was time for me to select an internship, it came down between a hospice in the northern suburbs of Detroit (where I was living at the time) with a woman I’d worked with before and admired, or a small clinic in Fort Wayne that specialized in, among many other diagnoses, autism. The idea of leaving the safety of my home state (but, you know, staying in the relative familiarity of the Midwest) was very enticing, and I was giddy at the thought of finally getting to work with my preferred population after going years in the program without the opportunity. Besides, hospice sounded dreadfully depressing to be immersed in for six long months. So the decision was clear. My wife and I packed everything we could into my tiny ass Chevy, managed to stuff Krubby into a crate that was large enough to accommodate his heft, and headed down to Indiana for what was sure to be a better life.

Was I in for a rude fucking awakening.

The internship was not my dazzling launch into the music therapy world, but an exercise in how many ways I could fail spectacularly in only four months. It seemed like I couldn’t do a damn thing right no matter how much I dedicated myself to the job. Every day, there was a fresh new ugly critique, a new way I was fucking up. The criticism far outweighed the praise I received from my directors, who were some of the most caustic people I’ve ever had the misfortune of working for. I remember how they eventually got frustrated with my futile attempts to keep up with the increasing workload and implemented a truly awful spreadsheet system where I had to document every single activity I did all day down to the five minute increment. It was hell on earth. I remember bawling my goddamn eyes out in the car to my poor therapist nearly every day. I was starting to even experience chronic stress-related health issues, and get this — I got my first freaking gray hair from this ordeal.

The breaking point finally came one session when I was working with a preteen girl whose absolute favorite song in the world was “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction. It made her happier than anything when she got to sing it with me. One particularly rough session, we were about to wrap up with only a few minutes left on the clock. I had time to play one last song with her, and one goal I hadn’t touched on yet — her emotional goal. I was to play an angry song for her and get her to talk about it.

But she was already escalated.

And she asked me, word for word, with the little verbal language skills she had, to play her favorite song.

I couldn’t not do it.

After that client left, my directors sat me down and told me point blank that I was doing more harm than good with my music. And that fucking stung more than anything else I’d ever been told. Getting rejected from American Idol didn’t hurt that bad. Getting told I sucked as a guitarist by my awful old pastor and temporarily barred from their perfect little worship team wasn’t even that brutal (spoiler alert: it was nepotism the whole time). The implication that my music was hurting people broke me in a way that I’d never experienced before.

All I wanted was to heal the world through music. Now, I began to rue the day I first picked up a guitar.

Metaphorical tail between my legs, I put in my two weeks. It was the most painful decision I’ve ever had to make, essentially pulling the plug on a dream that was languishing on life support. We checked out of the mediocre converted garage of an AirBNB we were living out of and checked into a slightly homier one in Niles, Michigan to regroup. We had no direction anymore. Music therapy was to be my lifelong career path and passion. I was going to continue on and earn my masters and eventually a doctorate, and while it wouldn’t make me rich, it would let my wife and I live comfortably with our potential kids. Those dreams faded into oblivion, and I didn’t even know who I was anymore. Who was the future me if not a celebrated academic and practitioner in the music therapy world? Those days in Niles were spent moping along the river, silently mourning the “Dr.” I would never affix to my name.

On a whim, my wife and I decided to take a day trip up to Kalamazoo to see if any apartment complexes would take pity on us. We’d never been evicted, but we had spent nearly half a year living in AirBNBs, which is not a great look to potential landlords. But, to our utter shock, a relatively nice little neighborhood of townhouses took us in, and the rest is history. I left my music therapy dreams far behind me in Fort Wayne, the cursed city I’d once had such high hopes for. Here, in Kalamazoo, I was going to forge my own path forward.

Am I bitter about my years ~~wasted~~ spent in music therapy school? Maybe a little. I hold no ill will toward my sweet professors in the field, who did absolutely everything to bend over backwards to push me through the program. In fact, I feel a little guilty for the way I have dragged their lives’ profession through the mud after leaving the field myself. But the field itself is fundamentally flawed, and the abject cruelty of my internship forced me to remove the rose-tinted glasses I’d kept on the entire time. Like many fields, music therapy is gatekept behind an exorbitant amount of red tape, particularly in the way the schooling is almost prohibitively expensive for the working class student. My wife had to drain her life’s savings to keep us afloat during the internship, and I’m probably going to be making $600 monthly payments on the credit card bill I racked up for the rest of my life. That’s on top of the terrifying hole of student debt I’m in. As I mentioned earlier, I literally won that prestigious scholarship I mentioned earlier, and it barely even mattered. And I’m one of the lucky ones. I happened to marry someone who came from a fairly well-off background, so she was able to foot the bill for a while, under the assumption that I’d become the full-time breadwinner after earning that degree. But what if you’re not that fortunate? Unless you win a full ride somewhere, you are going to be swimming in debt for the rest of your life. And the internship? Have fun finding one that pays more than a pathetic one-time stipend. You better have a rich sugar daddy or a rich actual daddy to help you keep a roof over your head, because you are not going to want to balance work and the internship.

I’m lucky I got this far. I guess I should be thankful I got such a good shot at being a music therapist in the first place, even if it ultimately didn’t pan out. But honestly, that thought makes me feel even more guilty. I can’t shake the feeling that I squandered my one chance to enter the field proper, especially when I consider all the less-fortunate folks who maybe want to pursue music therapy professionally but simply don’t have the resources to. And that part infuriates me. How many potentially brilliant music therapists are trapped in poverty?

I appreciate music therapy as an art and a science, but I can’t get behind the ways the field itself is currently locked behind the paywall that is our elitist and exclusionary higher education system. There has to be a way to regulate the field and proliferate its key components without the use of an institution that essentially preys on vulnerable young people and their wallets. Don’t get me wrong — I think college is unbelievably valuable for the experience and knowledge it yields. But in this economy? It’s far more fiscally responsible to hit up the library and take out the “…For Dummies” book on your subject of interest.

It’s crazy to me that more folks from the music therapy world — a world that prides itself on inclusivity and progressive values — have not called out this socioeconomic disparity or tried to rectify it. The closest I’ve ever come to getting in a bar fight happened a few weeks back at my favorite karaoke spot in town, and it was not over politics. It just so happened that this region’s branch of the nationwide music therapy organization was having its annual convention in Kalamazoo of all places that same weekend. I met a friendly group of attendees accompanied by one not-so-friendly attendee. He was a little drunk, and to be fair, I probably did an awful job of hiding my bitterness when I relayed my sob story to him. He wasn’t having it and got offended at my suggestion that maybe requiring a four-year degree and an essentially unpaid internship is classist as hell. This man even agreed with me on many points, but ultimately, he fell into the camp of “If I had to deal with this broken system, so does everyone else.” And that mentality is not helpful at all. I saw the same mentality from other musicians when I called out the sad state of the music industry. We all know it’s seedy and shady and lined with red tape, but we are slaves to the status quo, and sadly, a lot of folks don’t even realize it and actively support the people pushing them (well, us) down. At the end of the day, I see Music Therapy the Field as a business, and it’s to the detriment of the art and science of the subject. Which is a damn shame, but like I said, nobody in the field currently seems to care.

So that leaves us here.

A lot of days, I am still unsure of what my direction in life is without music therapy at its forefront. But as I keep having to remind myself, the best things in life are still free. I remember how my initial goal as a future music therapist was to eventually cultivate a safe space for people of all ages and abilities to create music they can be proud of. And honestly, I’m doing the damn thing my own way now. In my day job, I work with autistic kids, and my bosses have been formulating a way to have me come in and perform for the students sometime. I also work as a music bingo host, bringing music and good clean fun to local bars and restaurants. I see the entire families set aside one night a week to come hang out with me and forget about the stresses of the world for a few hours. I’ve been producing music for some of my friends, many of whom have never tried their hands at songwriting before, and I’m blown away on the regular by all the untapped talent in this little town. And on Saturdays, I’ve been hosting karaoke, which gives everyday folks the chance to step into the shoes of their rock star idols. People truly come alive when they step up to the mic, and even as just the KJ standing in the background manning the equipment, I get a strange sense of fulfillment. This is the life I always dreamed of, and it was waiting for me the entire time — no stupid degree needed.

I’ll leave you with a story from the karaoke night I hosted last week. A little girl I’d never seen at the establishment before signed up to sing an Ed Sheeran song I hadn’t heard of called “Old Phone.” It was a somber tune all about the ephemeral nature of relationships and special moments, and in a strange, surreal way, I almost felt like my own inner child was singing to me through her somehow. I felt myself begin to tear up, and so I turned away from the girl for most of the performance. I certainly didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t want this poor child to know she’d just inadvertently made the karaoke host sob. She finished the song and went back to her seat.

But she noticed.

She came up to me a bit later and said she’d seen that I’d been crying, and she asked if I was okay. I smiled and told her that her song had just moved me to tears, and she should take it as a high compliment that her performance carried that kind of power.

After all, I said to her, that’s what music is all about.

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.

Stepping Into My Own “Barracuda” Moment

Let’s talk about Friday night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that night was my “Barracuda moment.”

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

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

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

I have more power than I thought.

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

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

What sacrifices have you made in life?

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

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

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

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

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

Oh.

In the immortal words of NSYNC, bi bi bi.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mom Jeans, Ugly Sweater

Earlier today, on the Platform That Shall Not Be Named, I happened stumbled upon this, uh, gem:

It’s not a secret that I grew up in an evangelical environment. Not the fault of my parents, mind you — my mother and father are Christian culturally but otherwise pretty irreligious. It was primarily the influence of my friends, who all grew up with moms and dads who swore by Focus on the Family newsletters and listened to Newsboys for fun. I found myself heavily enveloped in the local megachurch by high school, thanks to these friends. I’m aware that I talk mad shit about that old church (and pastor, who recently asserted I had lost my “mind, soul, and conscious” by becoming a filthy liberal — no hate like Christian love, as they say). But there were good things about it, like the music. And the food. And the people. Some of the people, at least.

But I won’t lie, that church messed me up in a lot of ways. It goes way beyond just the gay stuff, which I’ve already addressed on here before. My body image was pretty fucky wucky for a hot minute, all thanks to the “modest is hottest” rhetoric. Basically, tank tops were verboten for two reasons. Two big reasons.

First and foremost, modesty was to protect the boys, because of course it was. We were taught that looking at a woman lustfully was just as bad as sleeping with her, so instead of, you know, plucking out your eyeball like Jesus said to do, the crux of the responsibility was put on the girls to not be a “stumbling block.” We couldn’t cause the poor innocent boys to sin with our exposed bodies!

But there was a second, almost more sinister reason.

It was to protect us from the boys.

Because boys have no self-control, right?

It’s like putting a steak in front of a dog and expecting him not to eat it. I heard that one in church before. You can’t be dressed “slutty” in front of a guy because if he takes advantage of you, people assume you wanted it. It’s a shitty sentiment for both guys and girls. It’s basically saying all guys are inherent rape machines, ticking time bombs that will assault a woman with no remorse the second he has the opportunity, and I know that’s not correct. I know this because I surround myself with quality men who’d never, ever do that to someone. I’m fact, I’ve been around them dressed in my sluttiest apparel, and never once did I feel unsafe.

The one time I was raped, though?

Mom jeans, ugly sweater.

I still remember the exact sweater. It had chunky stripes of dark blue and purple and white and orange and pink and yellow. The jeans weren’t my typical sexy tight skinny jeans either. Nothing about this outfit was attractive. My hair was also a mess. When it happened, I don’t even think I was wearing makeup. I was literally at my homeliest. My point is, I was giving no signal to the world that I was “asking for it.”

Neither are the countless children who are sexually abused. Or the hijabis who get assaulted despite covering up far more than most women in the western world. A woman could wear a burlap sack over her entire body and still be a victim.

That’s because rape isn’t about the sex. It’s about power.

That’s what “memes” like the one I shared at the beginning of this blog post don’t get. Clothing is irrelevant. Do you think my rapist was deterred by a few buttons? He wanted what he wanted, and it didn’t matter if I was wearing my sexiest lingerie or, ya know, an ugly sweater and mom jeans.

It’s sad that we essentially teach girls that they’re to blame if they get assaulted. That’s what this line of thinking will inevitably lead to. Instead, we should be teaching young men to respect boundaries. Men aren’t all predators, and we need to show boys that they have the choice to be a good man. We need more positive masculinity. We need dudes to be more Mr. Rogers, less Andrew Tate. We need guys who are strong enough to stand up to abusers and gentle enough to not become one.

If you’re reading this and are a survivor yourself, please know it wasn’t your fault, no matter what you were wearing at the time. And always remember that you are more than the sum of your trauma. The awful shit that happened to you doesn’t need to define you. Rather, defy it. Live so completely and fully that the bad memories are entirely overwritten with positive ones. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, with quite a bit of success. It’s been nearly seven years and I don’t even recall his name. I recently stumbled upon a picture of him in my phone that I’d saved in case I ever wanted to press charges. It’s odd — the picture didn’t really freak me out as much as I’d thought it would.

But if I’m honest, I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to wear that ugly sweater again.

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

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

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

Well, readers, this was Joyce.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Emotional Bloodletting” (Or, Why This Blog Exists in the First Place)

Why do you blog?

Here’s the short answer: so I don’t lose my freakin’ mind.

The long answer is a bit more complicated.

I started this blog back in 2018 (I think). At the time, I was married to someone I wasn’t truly in love with and stuck in a conservative church that increasingly came to represent everything I didn’t want to stand for. I was still fresh out of college with a journalism degree I knew I was never going to use, but I still had the itch to write something. Anything. So my blog, which at the time was titled “I’m sorry I mean it,” simply became me screaming my displeasure with my current life into the void. “I’m sorry I mean it” was a double meaning — “I’m sorry and I mean it,” and “I’m sorry, but I mean what I’m saying.”

Writing has always been a catharsis for me, though, dating back to elementary school. When I was teased mercilessly and ostracized by nearly everyone, I made up characters to serve as “friends” for me. I didn’t have imaginary friends in the traditional sense of the word — I knew these characters were make-believe — but they were real enough to me to fill a void. My long school days were spent daydreaming about these fictional characters, and eventually, their stories spilled onto paper. I’d hurry up and finish my work for the day, then spend the rest of my time fleshing out these characters in stories I dreamed up, usually inspired by whatever I was into at the time. I had a whole series based around three pets trying to get home and the grand adventures they would go on.

My writing is nothing if not derivative, but it’s cool.

That’s part of why I find it harder to write these days. For the first time, I’m genuinely pretty happy. I don’t have to rely on my inner world to satiate my desire for human interaction. I have two amazing partners, a wildly supportive family, and more friends than I know what to do with. But I still love writing to clear my mind on the bad days. It’s how I handle negative emotions, as evidenced by the everything on this blog. If I couldn’t write about my music therapy journey on here, for example, I probably would have lost my mind. The entire experience was so traumatic, I needed to vent about it somehow. Just the act of hitting “publish” on a blog post gives me a sense of relief. As painful as it is to put these emotions down into words, once it’s over, it’s no longer stuck inside me. In a way, it’s emotional bloodletting.

There are other reasons I write too. I realize I have a unique lived experience as a queer polyamorous Christian woman, and I have a platform where I can tell my side of the story. In a world that’s become increasingly hostile to folks breaking the norm, I feel like my words give a voice to a lot of people who aren’t represented in media. I know this from private messages I’ve received. My blog makes people feel seen, and I love it for that reason. My mom always encouraged me to write about socio-political issues — the pen is mightier than the sword, as she would say.

I *know* I’ve made this joke before, but it bears repeating. It’s what Mom would’ve wanted.

Writing, to me, is my biggest catharsis aside from music, and the two often go hand-in-hand. I’ve written some of my best lyrics as a result of emotional turmoil. “Ladies Don’t Start Fights (But They Can Finish Them)” was written about a feud with a former best friend who betrayed my trust. “Queen” was written during a time when my bipolar swung into a deep depression as a way to lift my own spirits. My newest song, “Fake Nice,” is my way of coping with criticism from my partner’s mother, someone whose opinion of me I valued. If I couldn’t write about the things that bother me, I don’t think I would have made it this far in life.

If you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time, I want to personally thank you for being with me through the highs and lows. It hasn’t been an easy few years, and this blog has seen me through some of my worst days. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to read my words and take them to heart. I do this not just for me, but for you, too! This is my way of screaming to the world, “Hey! You’re not alone!” I just want to be a light on someone else’s darkest times. I want people to read this blog and know that they’re in good company, that things will eventually turn out okay with time.

And that’s why I write.