It’s been a little over a year since I wrote my New Beginnings post, so this is a brief update of where I am. Physically, I’m still near Dallas, Texas with my mom, which is where I have been for about the past two weeks. In pretty much every other way, I’ve been fucking emo lately. That’s not fucking as in, like, it sucks. It’s fucking as in fuck yeah! Blogs are good for expressing ideas, but I’m quickly noticing that body language in this situation would be very helpful. Maybe that’s a future direction to take, but for now I feel much more comfortable with this format.

Sooo… emo… let me talk about it a bit. Or if you don’t let me I don’t care. In my mind, it has gotten some pretty unfair treatment in the collective mind and it was a term that I never wanted to be associated with. In fact, the main thing that comes to mind when I envision emo is this classic video from middle school that you might remember. If you don’t, it’s hilarious so watch it anyway!

Middle and high school are annoying enough as they are, so why would anybody in their right mind want to make it more difficult on themselves by voluntarily associating themselves with this stereotype. Brooding, moody, self harm, isolating, perceived as desperately seeking attention… It’s no fun! Youth is supposed to be about fun right? Why bother thinking about those things that are so negative and dark if they just make you depressed? That just make you want to crawl in a hole and die? I guess the dark side does have cookies if they help you drown your pitiful sorrows in empty calories at 1 in the morning.

As much as my high school self would have hated to admit it, deep down inside I was emo. I still am emo. Nothing has really changed other than my own acceptance of a part of me that was dying to be brought to the light. A part of me that I strongly resonate with and that I gave up on holding back. Spending some time at my mom’s house again was especially enlightening because on some level I was re-experiencing several fundamental chunks of my younger existence that I had forgotten about.

Re-experiencing is key. It’s long been accepted that confronting old thought patterns and emotions can be therapeutic. Even though it is guaranteed to be painful at times, which is mainly why people don’t do it, I think it must be done. You can abstractly think about past experiences. You can reminisce with rose colored glasses about whatever you did or whatever happened to you. All that does is repress the actualities of your own self that can die if left in the closet for too long.

Sooo yeah dude. I’m emo. Fuck it. I still listen to Greenday, Sum 41, Avril Lavigne, Smashing Pumpkins, Anberlin, Saosin, Fall Out Boy, and many others that may have been misunderstood back in the day. The best way I can envision honoring the therapeutic value and artistic merit of this rock tradition is to indulge in it to the fullest extent possible, taking in both the happy and the sad. The light and the dark. The “emo-ness” of this lifestyle that is one hell of a ride. One that I don’t want to get off of any time soon. Thank God.

Oh and for those that don’t know I’m not pursuing graduate studies anymore lol. Wheeeee