by K.L. Cain

Created on: January 13, 2010

I have two confessions to make: 1.) I used to be emo/goth. I still have some of the clothes. I still wear them. 2.) Right now, I'm listening to "Lovesong" by the Cure. I am quite fond of that song, which is unusual for a metalhead. I like a lot of unusual things, though. Emo is not one of them. Emo became popular around five years ago, just after I had adopted it as a style. But it's not just what you wear that makes you emo. I'm wearing gray, worn-out skinny jeans, a bunch of those rubber bracelets, a black choker, and a metal t-shirt. I lave a vertical labret on the right side of my lip, and I have a pair of black Chucks with acid green shoelaces. I am not what would be called emo. My hair is too long (for a girl) and bright red. I retired the vampire makeup a year ago. I retired the "emo poetry" three years ago.

I didn't know emo was a style until I'd been that way for oh, maybe six months. I just thought I was goth, and then people started calling me "emo". I asked what it was, and nobody ever told me it was "emotive" or "emotional". They simply said it was "kids who wanted to be goth-punks but their parents wouldn't let them go all the way". That sounded about right to me. But I wasn't completely goth for more reasons than that. I was in an abusive household and my grandmother, who took care of me for most of my life, had just passed away. I dyed my hair purple, wore solid black for the next two years, and combed my bangs over my face so people couldn't see me cry about what had gone on at home. Did I cut myself? Yes. Did I write dark confessional poetry? Yes. Did I wear thick-rimmed glasses? I still have them, although now I prefer wearing contacts. Was I gloomy and pessimistic? You bet. Did I listen to Hawthorne Heights and My Chemical Romance? Yes indeed.

When Fallout Boy and Panic! came out, I was already mostly metal but I still clung some to the old emo loyalties. But then suddenly it became "cool" to be emo and I was infuriated. I was emo because it was my only catharsis for grief and verbal abuse. When MCR sang "I'm not O-f*cking-Kay" I empathized because I wasn't either. So when people commercialized something my friends and I had held deep within ourselves just a couple of years ago we were pissed. That's when I started hating emo the trend, and emo the shallow music. The deeper I got into metal, though, the more I came to rather dislike emo in general. Metal was about moving past your drama and accepting yourself, working to better your situation

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