I, JediJoy grew up in Placerville, California. I was raised a Christian. My mom was a youth pastor. When I was a junior in high school the World Trade Center had two planes fly into them on TV. My mom watched the news everyday. I was getting ready for school. She said Joy, a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center. My mom was from New York. She was immediately so upset. As we watched what we thought was an accident turn into horror when another plane crashed into the other building on Live TV.

I was 17 years old. I was so confused. Why would someone attack America? I could not fathom what we could have done to provoke this. Little, did I know that America has done more than provoke other countries. We flat out declare war and bomb other countries. How quickly we forget that Americans, yes Americans dropped two bombs and killed 129,000–226,000 people, most of whom were civilians in 1945. Then we continue to attack other countries all in the name of protection. Protection my ass. We are bullies. Americans go out and attack other countries and are shocked when we get attacked.

I knew none of this as a seventeen year old. All I knew was the country I loved got attacked. I knew my mom was so upset because she was obsessed with New York. All I ever heard my whole life was how much better New York was at everything than California. My mom swore by her New York Pie as she referred to pizza or her favorite Nathan’s hot dogs from Coney Island. She was deeply disturbed by all this. We all became super patriotic.

I decided I wanted to join the Air Force because I wanted to become a pilot and serve my country after this tragedy. My parents had each served one term when they were young. That is where they met and got married. Later got divorced, but that is a whole other story. They were never super fond of the military. My mom did not recommend that I join when I had been younger. After 9/11, she understood why I wanted to join. I still had another year of high school left.

I was an honor student in high school. I was a cheerleader and ran track. I was involved in so many activities and clubs including yearbook, student council, honor roll, teacher’s aide and I was an assistant to the athletic director and the attendance director. What that means is I was the one you came to if you needed to get a pass for being late to school. I also had a perfect 4.0 GPA.

I had already received a couple of scholarship offers. Why I say all this, is I was a perfectionist. Also during these times I struggled with eating disorders as a lot of perfectionist young girls do.

After 9/11 happened, I was not as interested in silly school activities. We watched the news for at least two solid weeks at my school. They did not teach, we came to school and they turned on the news and that is all we watched. I had the fortune to go to a brand new school in my town. They had just built it when I was a freshman. Every class had a brand new TV in the classroom. We watched the tragedy all day long for two weeks straight.

I wanted to help, so I decided to finish high school through a charter program since I only had two classes left in order to graduate as a junior. This would be a year earlier than all my peers. I was supposed to graduate in 2003. I was already flying on the AWACS while my friends were playing senior pranks. My nickname in the Air Force was Junior since I graduated high school as a junior. I joined the Air Force at 17 years old. My mom and dad had to sign for me to join, since I was so young.

I joined September 23, 2002, a little over a year after 9/11. I immediately excelled in the Air Force. I was honor graduate in Basic training. My drill sergeant had not given out the honor to anyone in the years he had been in the military. What that means is he was super tough.

People will think now that I gave people sexual favors while I was in the military. Please know that is so far from the truth. I was such a prude back then. You all would laugh if you saw the old Joy. Every sexual joke flew right over my head. I was very unaware of my sexuality. I was a seventeen year old virgin when I joined the Air Force. I had kissed one boy before I went in. All the honors I received in the Air Force were from extremely hard work on my part. I was always the overachiever back then.

I was a flyer on the AWACS surveillance plane which is the Airborne Warning and Control Systems E-3 Sentry. It was an honor to be on that plane. I went from being a beginner to an Instructor in 4 years. My job title was an Airborne Surveillance Instructor. What I did was monitor that air spaces. The civilian job that would be easiest to compare it to, is an air traffic controller in the sky.

We would survey the air space and relay where the friendly and enemies vessels were. I was involved in counter drug operations in Ecuador in 2004. I also did missions for protection of the President’s air space during his flights on Air Force One. These would be top secret missions. You would find out where you were going minutes before the flight.

The security of the president is always paramount. Especially during this time, everyone was on high alert. This is right after 9/11 during the time President George W. Bush was in office. I took my job extremely seriously. While I was in the Air Force, I became Senior Airmen Below the Zone which means I ranked earlier than my peers. I was airmen of the year. I received numerous other honors and accolades for the short time I was in the military.

I was on the fast track to go to the high rankings and retire as early as 37 years old from the military. I could have received money for the rest of my life at 37 years old, since I joined so young. I could be receiving money from the military right now, because I lost half my hearing.

I lost my hearing from walking on the flight lines to and from the planes. When I was going through the honorable discharge paperwork they informed me that I could receive disability for my ear. I had been very careless in wearing hearing protection while I was on the flight lines. I even got written up one time. I do not like putting things in my ears. I decided the American public did not need to pay for my ears, since I was the one that did not wear my earplugs on every flight.

I flew a lot. I was an instructor, so I flew at least every other day. Sometimes back to back, but they can only allow you to fly back to back for a short time. You are required to have a certain amount of time to rest between flights. When you are in the air every hour is equivalent to two hours on the ground.

When you fly a 20 hour mission like we did, that is equivalent to 40 hours of work on the ground. Needless to say, I served and worked hard for my country. I refused free disability. I have free health benefits that I have used 3 times in the last 13 years.

Why am I not in the military now? In October 2005, while I was 20 years old, my mom got really depressed. This is why I always talk about depression. She had been depressed when I was younger but it had been about 15 good years since she had a bad bout of depression.

​When I was 5 years old, my mom was so depressed that she was going to have me and her commit suicide together. I still remember it like it was yesterday as she crushed the pills. I was unable to swallow pills at the time. She promised that everything would be okay. She said me and you are going to Heaven tonight. I was worried about my dad and sister. They had left for the evening somewhere. My mom said they will be fine. She fortunately at the last minute changed her mind and flushed all the pills down the garbage disposal.

My dad ended up leaving about a year later. My mom had her ups and downs but never bad like that again until I was 20 years old. I was having the best time in the military. I had so many friends. It was the happiest I had ever been up until that time. I had a great boyfriend, I was doing so well at work. I was ranking fast, I was having a blast. I lived in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base. My mom had moved to the Oregon coast. The cold weather, poor diet, lack of sun all became to much for my mom. I started to get these horrible emails from my mom.

She would say really mean things to me. I would receive these while I was at work. I did not understand why she was being so mean and hard on me. I had made her mad because I accidentally overdrew my account like a young person does and the overdraft protection went to her credit card. I promised I would pay her back. That was not enough for her. She proceeded to berate me daily over email. I would come into work before my flights and check my email. I would start crying at work, because she sent these to my professional email. It was a new habit, so it kept catching me off guard.

This went on for about a month. Then the emails stopped. I had been trying to call her for a couple weeks. She had stopped taking my calls after the overdraft protection debacle. I thought it seemed a little extreme to be this upset over a couple thousand dollars. I could pay her back in two months. She was not having it. She stopped returning my phone calls. I left so many messages. My mom and I had been so close my whole life. Prior to this, we talked on the phone daily.

My mom wrote me emails and letters daily. She was still someone that believed in writing letters even though she enjoyed emails as well. So you would receive the same story on the phone, then in an email and then by the time the letter arrived, the news was old. She was funny like that. My mom was the best woman I have ever known. We were best friends. I had called my mom my best friend my whole life and I had no embarrassment on saying that even saying that in high school.

I have never embarrassed easily. My mom would make me wear this teddy bear dress when I was 12 years old. It was covered in teddy bears. I was obsessed with teddy bears, but wearing them to grade school all over your long dress gets a lot of harassment and teasing from your peers. I also grew up poor. Every piece of clothing I owned started used. One of my mom’s third jobs was working at Goodwill. That is where we did back to school clothes shopping.

Back to the Air Force. One day at work, my cell phone rang and it said mom. This was about a month after she had been ignoring me. I was ecstatic. I was immediately met with disappointment when I heard my step dad’s voice on the other end. He said Joy can you take time off work? I said now? He said yes. I said I do not think so. You have to get approval months in advance for leave. He said this is not for a vacation, this is an emergency. Your mom is seriously sick from depression. You need to come home, I do not know what to do. You might be the only one that can help her. She loves you more than anyone. If anyone can get her out of the dumps, it is you.

I got the permission to go. I left the next day. I had to fly to my dad’s since there was no airport where she lived. She moved to the Gold Beach on the Oregon coast. My dad had moved to Vancouver, Washington. Both my parents moved states, while I was in the Air Force. My dad said I could fly into Portland, Oregon, take his car and drive it the 6 hours to Gold Beach. So that is exactly what I did.

I drove 6 hours to Gold Beach and those 2 weeks, I spent are some of the saddest and hardest moments of my life to look back on. These are the last moments I ever saw my mom. I was 20 years old. I did not know what to do. I walked into the living room after driving 6 hours and was horrified at the look of my mom. She had always been so strong and cheerful at greetings. She would have been at the end of street waiting for me in the past. This time, I walked into see the most fragile lady. I said hi mom and ran to her on the couch for a hug. She jerked away from me so hard and scowled at me as if she had never seen me before. She even shrieked in horror.

I was so taken back. It was way worse than I thought. She had completely shut down. I spent two weeks and I think she probably said 20 words to me the entire time. I kept asking her how she felt. I wanted to understand. She would just say its a black hole, darkness, black. She would barely eat or sleep. We had to bathe her. She was a living zombie, her eyes were like black holes even though she has blue eyes. I had never seen anything like it. I took her one day to the beach and the grocery store. I thought that would cheer her up. She loved the beach and she loved going to the grocery store. She always chatted up with all the cashiers.

This turned out to be the worst nightmare. I did not realize all the people knew her at the particular place I took her to. I had never been there before. I had grown up in Placerville, California. My mom had just moved to Gold Beach a couple months prior. Well the ladies were taken back when my mom scowled at them when they said hi. They were like Laura where have you been? My mom was one of those people that everyone loved. I quickly tried to explain that she was very sick. The ladies could not understand why she refused to talk.

My step dad had taken her to the doctor several times. He was at his wits end. He did not know how to help her get better. The only time she would snap out of it, was if she took sleeping pills. Then she would be euphoric instead of depressed. She would talk all night long. So the sleeping pills kept her up talking all night, while during the day she refused to say anything. I would hear from the guest room, the Pyscho babble. It made no sense at the time. She appeared to just be high off the sleeping pills. I am sure she was having some sort of clarity that her ending was approaching.

My mom had been a youth pastor. She read the Bible everyday and prayed. I thought, I would read to her while I was there. When I started to look through her notebook, I saw a drafted suicide note. I said mom are you thinking of killing yourself? She nodded. I got a real answer. I said please mom. Do not do this. I love you. I need you. I am only 20 years old. She had written that no one ever loved her or needed her. I said mom. I do. Please do not kill yourself. I cannot go on without you. She half nodded. I only had another day or so left before I had to go back to the Air Force. I pleaded with her for the next couple days. I would hold her, bathe and feed her and tell her how much I loved her.

I still remember the last time I saw her. My step dad had convinced her to get off the couch to come see me off. She was very reluctant, but finally got up. The two of them stood on the porch as I drove off. My step dad lifted her arm to wave. She still had that same look as when I arrived. She looked at me as if she had no idea who was driving away. She looked at me with no recollection of being her daughter. I cried for hours on the 6 hour drive back to my dads and then the 8 hours of flights back to Oklahoma. That was the last time I saw or talked to my mom. This was end of October 2005.

On the Friday evening of November 18, 2005, I received a phone call from my step dad. For a moment I thought maybe she was finally feeling better. We had, had a couple of false alarms where she seemed to feel better for a day, then immediately back to the depression in the morning. This time, my step dad through tears says I’m with the police and the firemen, we cannot find your mom. She is missing. I said what? Where could she be? She will come back right, she probably just wondered off.

He said no Joy, she left a note and took my gun. I said took your gun. You are the only one that has access to your guns. My mom never wanted the combination. She was very anti weapons in the house. She was horrified that my step dad had guns. She told him she did not want to know the combination and she did not like to see them. He kept them in the garage. I said how did she get your gun? Why did you give a depressed person a gun? He was like I did not know. She had gotten better for a couple days. I thought it was over. I had not called you yet, because I did not want to get you too excited yet. She was feeling better than ever.

I still to this day will never understand why my step dad gave her that gun. The gun is irrelevant, because she would have done it another way most likely. Although pills you can often survive a shot to your heart is a guaranteed suicide. My step dad told me he would call me once they found her. I received the call the next day while I was driving my car. He said we found her down by the river. She shot herself, I thought he was going to say she was in the hospital. I said how is she? Is she okay. He said no Joy, she is dead.

From the minute I heard those words I lost it. I was driving my car. I could barley see the road in front of me through the tears. I had to get home. I ran into my apartment in a hysterical frenzy, my neighbors were concerned. My roommate was concerned. I ran into my room and balled hysterically for hours. My roommate was a male Air Force crew member. He thought I had broken up with my boyfriend. Later her apologized for judging me. He thought I was being a drama queen. After around 2 hours, I was able to catch my breath. I felt as if all the air and life had been sucked out of my soul.

I finally told him about what happened. His father had been lost at sea in a shrimp boating accident when he was a boy. He was a shrimp fisherman that never came home one night when Blake was a young boy. He was the best roommate to have at this moment, because he could relate. Most of my other friends, it was tough, because my life was never the same after my mom died. I later found out that she had shot herself in the heart. I still to this day never got the opportunity to see the suicide note. I asked my step dad. He forgot it for the funeral and then lost it apparently. It would have been nice to read her last words.

Why I go into this huge back story, is to explain who I am. JediRich and I are two people that fit well in regular society until we lost our parents. I lost my mom to suicide. JediRich lost his dad to cancer. We have also both lost a brother. JediRich’s brother died when he was a baby. My brother Justin died June 14, 2008 in a motorcycle accident. He was 26 years old. This was less than 2 years after my mom died. I got out of the Air Force because my sister wanted me close to her after my mom died. She wanted me to come back to California. Which I did.

JediRich and I have chosen to live a life different then most due to the things that have occurred in our lives. We could not be fake anymore. We were forced to be real. Death changes you. You realize how there are more important things in life than money, follows or likes or anything other than love. Love is the most important. Once you have that, you really need nothing else. Even if you starved to death with your loved one, it would be worth it. JediRich and I did experience homelessness in 2017-2018. We chose to live in a cave for three months for numerous reasons.

One being, that we had to get away from the chaos after the October 1st 2017 Mandalay Bay tragedy. Another being that we got footage of UFOS flying into Vegas. Check out the footage on the UFOs page on our site. All this made us realize there is more to this Universe then petty things occurring on earth or god forbid social media. We have lost the ability to give a shit about follows and hearts and even money. My mom killed herself. I suffer from depression. I spend every day making art to be happy so that I do not have the same demise as my mom. I already made 3 attempts when I was in my 20s.

Now that I found JediRich, my love, I will never kill myself unless JediRich was already dead. I would not do that to him. I might if he dies before me. I will not make any promises there. Even though suicide is so tragic to the family, I still believe someone has the right to decide to kill oneself if they choose. I do want to help to avoid any more people committing suicide. I hate when I hear that other families have to experience it. I am not going to lie, it is even harder than you would imagine when it happens. The pain is unreal. Everyday you replay the tape, if you had just do one thing different maybe she would still be alive.

I went through that turmoil for over 12 years. The truth is if someone wants to kill themselves they will, and if they do not then they will not. All you can do is help before someone is that far gone. The most important thing that is affecting people right now that is causing depression is sexual repression and the food. The food is so bad now with all the non Organics, GMOS, Gluten, Sugar, Caffeine, Alcohol, Artificial flavorings, fake meats, colors, sweeteners. All these things lead to an overload of insulin in your system. Insulin tells your body to rest and store fat. Years of this adds to depression along with the weight gain, which makes you feel sluggish.

Then on top of the food, people are repressing themselves sexually. In order to avoid depression, you have to be sexually open with yourself. What that means to you is different for everyone. You have to listen to your feelings and make sure you are orgasming often. Whether it be intercourse or masturbation, it is imperative to have a release. Without release, people, even woman get super anxious and stressed. A lot of woman do not realize they need to come because they do not get a hard cock in a sense like the men. Ladies we get turned on just as much, if not more then the men.

We need to all be fucking more. People shriek in horror that I just said fucking. Was it horror because I wrote a fucking bad word? Or was it because I mentioned fucking...naughty. Goodness, its 2019, we should not be such prudes. I live in Las Vegas. I am a openly sexual girl. I am polyamorous, which means I have multiple partners and loves. JediRich is my main man, but he lets me fuck other men and I like that. That makes me feel good. It seems crazy, but sex is the most natural act you could ever do.

So back to reality of the last day. As you can tell from my history, money, follows, clicks, cars, likes and possessions have little meaning to me. I do appreciate the likes or hearts. Only in the sense that someone understood and enjoyed our art. I used to only follow around 20 people on Twitter. I am not about getting tons of follows. Now I chose to follow 69 people, because I think it is funny. I feel that number is a great representation of who I am a a sexual girl. It is also a fantastic position.

JediRich and I make our art because we love it. We have no other incentive other than “WE CARE A LOT!”