Only Children by Monica Joy

This album spans my first two years of high school, an extremely eventful time in my life when I dealt with a wide range of emotional periods. The first week of freshman year, I was hit with a sudden and severe combination of rare intestinal disorders. It was really difficult to balance a chronic medical condition with the struggles that teenagers already go through during this time, and my path towards independence was put on hold. My situation did, however, have its benefits. Given that I had to leave campus and was in the home/hospital program my entire freshman year, I had a lot of time to develop my songwriting. I wrote “Time Stands Still,” one of my personal favorites, not about a person as one might think, but about missing home when I was in the hospital for an extended period of time. “Rachel” is about a friend of mine whom I met in the hospital, basically my long-lost twin, sharing not only interests but almost identical rare medical conditions. “Only Children” was a song I wrote in my hospital bed about the many complex emotions I was feeling at the time, issues of growing up and life moving on, issues that can mean so many different things to so many people.

Not only was I in and out of hospitals for over two years, I was also in and out of a couple relationships. It was during my first real relationship that I wrote “Awkward,” loving how we were exploring what it was like to be in a real, lasting relationship and the awkwardness that comes with it. That was a very fun time, but it eventually ended, my illness somewhat in the way, making room for another relationship that was almost a polar opposite. By this time, I was writing songs around the clock, and this new relationship was so emotional for me it was really all that I wrote about through the entirety of the relationship, and I am still writing a lot on how it ended and the feelings that come with heartbreak. “Fallin’ Hard” and “One More Night/Angel” were both about that relationship and how it feels to be in love for the first time.

With all of my songs and with all of my music, I want to touch people’s emotions and I want to bring people together. To that end, I have created a not-for-profit called www.InvisibleIllness.org. All proceeds from my music will be used to help children with rare medical conditions by bringing people together to fund medical research aimed at furthering the diagnosis and treatment of rare illnesses that, like mine, cannot be seen from the outside.

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