Embarrassing things you’ll remember if you were a mid-2000s emo kid

There was time when no one really got you. Do you remember it? People would stare at you in the street, in your black clothes with your razor-sharp hair and your studded wristbands, not understanding why you were doing what you were doing.

They just didn’t understand the emo lifestyle, and they never will. It wasn’t a phase, mom. It was our lives.

If you were one of the privileged few to identify as an emo, an Emotionally Massacred Orphan, a high-ranking member of the Black Parade, you’ll remember some of the trials and tribulations you had to go through. These are just a handful.

The smell of burning hair

Not in a serial killer way – it’s just the scent you became accustomed to as you singed and seared your bangs every morning with your Conair straightener because your mom wouldn’t get you a Chi like all of your friends.

Still, at least it gave your bangs that impeccable Cute Is What We Aim For feathering that everyone in your friendship group lusted over.

Only ever being able to see out of one eye

Of course having perfectly arranged bangs meant sacrificing the vision in one of your eyes, but who needs depth perception when you look that good?

Begging your dad to take you to a local venue for shows

It was always the shittiest, most dilapidated building downtown and it was filled with predatory just-graduated older dudes checking out the up-and-coming talent.

You and you friends politely pushed to the front row while the opening acts warmed up, trying to hide to embarrassing Xs on the back of your hands that told the entire world you were children.

Trying to get the perfect volume on your backcomb

It was almost like there was a parallel line drawn horizontally across your scalp. In front of it, everything sleek and shiny and straight; behind it, carnage.

You took your teasing brush from Sally’s Beauty Supply and went to town backcombing the shit out of your poof, spraying the very back layers and arranging them to they formed some weird cotton candy-shaped whirlwind with some pieces artfully sticking straight out. Casual.

You’re still not sure if the noxious fumes from the bottles upon bottles of hairspray have caused lasting damage to your lungs.

Never being brave enough to get full-on raccoon hair

But mostly because your mom wouldn’t allow it.

Not for me thanks

Guyliner

If you didn’t quite have the testicular fortitude to wear eyeliner on a day-to-day basis, you’d actively seek out fancy dress costumes for parties which allowed you to slather it on thick.

Guess I’ll go as Jack Sparrow again!

Eyeliner

So much of it, in so many layers, that you could barely lift your eyelids from the sheer inky weight of it all.

Not being allowed the tattoos or piercings you wanted

Those star tattoos that were really in style? Your parents vetoed that one. Gauges in your ears? Not if your school had anything to say about it. And those Sonny Moore double lip piercings? Yeah, no chance.

Maybe it was for the best, though, because you’d definitely chicken out on snakebites even if your parents gave you the green light.

rawr XD

Owning Jack Skellington merchandise

Jack Skellington was like Christ for the style-conscious emo kid, so you were bound to have him on your bag or your pencil case or the clip-on earrings you bought for $4 from Claire’s .

Skinny jeans which were pulled the sit halfway down your ass

Completely defeating the point of a) the jeans being so skinny and b) you wearing three separate bedazzled belts to hold them up.

This trend existed solely to showcase whichever brightly-colored pair of American Apparel boxers you were wearing at the time. It would be a crime to hide that under black denim.

Of course it meant you had to spend your days waddling around like an angsty penguin, struggling to climb stairs or expend yourself aerobically at all. Thank God sports were for the preps.

Being madly in love with either Pete Wentz or Hayley Williams

Unless you were one of the kids who found them too mainstream and decided to like Patrick Stump or Tay from We Are the In Crowd.

I’ll take either

Having an enviable collection of studded belts from Hot Topic or Black Fly

You had chessboard belts, neon checkerboard belts, belts with flat metal studs and circular metal studs and metal studs so pointy and extreme you probably could’ve taken a waist-level kid’s eye out.

All of your band shirts had to be tight as hell so the belt would always be visible.

Spending hours perfecting your Myspace page

You’d have a name like ..::{{ashleyanarchy}}::.. and Miss Murder by AFI would be your profile song.

There’d be bats bouncing around the purple background, every one of your top friends would have a variation of the same towering neon haircut and your profile picture would be painstakingly filtered to look gothic way before Instagram existed.

Every so often you’d post a bulletin, in which you’d say you were feeling “sad” or “down” or “dark” while filling it with RAWRs and XDs and Dashboard Confessional lyrics.

PC 4 PC?

Sharing these illustrations

And deep, meaningful posts like this

Constantly taking selfies from really high angles so your fringe looked good

Bonus points if you could fit your battered Converse, your Batman symbol belt buckle and your Bullet For My Valentine T-shirt all in the same frame.

Or bent over with your legs further behind so they looked good in your super skinny jeans

Your head would be tilted to one side, lips pouted, glancing your heavily-lined eyes to the side with a facial expression that says “lolz rawr roflcopter I’m not the sort of girl who usually takes photos XD.”

OMG the camera just went off! My dog hit the button with his nose!

Idolizing Myspace celebs with really extreme hair

They all had profile pictures like this.

danidynamite? lauralaceration? kiki kannibal was the queen, of course.

Feeling weirdly possessive over your favorite bands

Everyone but you was a FAKE FAN, especially the preps at your school who just didn’t understand the scene. The urge to ask anyone wearing a Taking Back Sunday shirt, “Oh, you like TBS? Name every song off TAYF” was physically painful to resist.

And god forbid someone have a crush on the same band member you did. You were the only one who truly understood Jesse Lacey, everyone else just liked him because he was famous. If he could just meet you, he’d see for himself….

Pacing the pews in a church corridor when you couldn’t help but to hear an exchanging of words

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WEDDING. This was just one of a selection of song lyrics which really spoke to you. Others included Papa Roach telling you “I tear my heart open just to feel” and that one where the guy is all like “I called her on the phone and she touched herself” and he laughs himself to sleep.

You would file these away in your brain, occasionally rolling one out when you needed to caption a new photo or write something in a card for the crush who kept spurning your advances.

Only listening to music where the lead singer had an insufferably whiny voice

Have you listened to New Found Glory or The Used recently? The singers in every band you used to like sounds like they’ve just been told their childhood dog died after taking a massive huff of helium.

Of course, you tried to copy their vocal affectation — we all still say “voice inside my YED” when singing along to Blink-182.

But not knowing which ones to put in your AIM status

¸.•*¨*• .¸ i KnOw U wElL eNoUgH 2 KNOW u nEvEr L0VeD mE ¸.•*¨*• .¸

Mourning My Chemical Romance, Green Day and 30 Seconds to Mars when they sadly became ‘too mainstream’

For many, MCR’s Teenagers was a seminal moment in emo culture – for you, it was the day you tore down your Gerard Way shrine and shook your fist at the sky as you lamented the loss of the band who made Helena and I’m Not Okay.

Although you still listened to Mama at least once a day for your entire teenage years, and your Jared Leto posters remained suspiciously untouched.

Becoming completely invincible in mosh pits

For a teen who was by all accounts quite weedy and slightly anaemic-looking, you couldn’t half take a beating once you’d thrown yourself into a mosh or a circle pit or even the dreaded Wall of Death.

Probably because you were moshing at a You Me At Six concert. When you went to see Slipknot, your dad made you buy tickets in the seated section.

Checkerboard vans

They were embarrassing fresh out of the box, so you had to purposefully scuff and dirty them to make sure you looked appropriately hardcore.

Song lyrics and tags from your friends (“Kayra lubbs yew :]”) lined white rubber bottoms and you colored in just a single square at the top red.

Ruining family photos since day one

Having issues of Alternative Press scattered all over your room

You could only get it at the cooler CD stores in town or occasionally Hot Topic, but you hoarded every single copy you could. You spent hours pouring over interviews with Frank Iero and Bert McCracken and, of course, being a music journalist was your dream.

And spending hours watching Fuse, because MTV was for fakes and sellouts

MTV 2 might have something decent on like Headbangers Ball, which you pretended to not be afraid of — but it was really all about Fuse. They actually cared about the music, not teen moms and rich kids in California. Of course, you secretly watched all of that but no one could ever know.

Dabbling with crunkcore

Fer sure maybe fer sure not fer sure eh fer sure bomb.

Yep, there was a pretty strange few months where this was your anthem and Brokencyde were your next big thing. You wore a desert scarf and Kanye West shutter glasses.

It was a weird time for you and everyone around you.

Vehemently denying that you were, in fact, emo

You secretly loved it when someone called you emo, because it gave you the chance to display your emo cred by loudly denouncing the term. “Labels are for soup cans,” you MySpace probably said.

Now, you think back on emo like a grizzled war veteran. Your grandkids will get sick of you regaling them with stories about how you defended pop-punk, but it’ll be OK because you don’t need them or this town.