Maybe I should hate you for this

Wow. Remember Taking Back Sunday? Do you, though? I sure do.

I saw a meme on instagram that showed a bar setup with the words “I just wanna break you down so badly.” If there was ever a meme for a 36 year old woman who was an emo kid who grew up to be a bartender and 20 years later is scrolling instagram for relatable content… there it was.

Anyways, it made me go into Spotify and find that original Taking Back Sunday record that we were all obsessed with. My god were we obsessed.

You know, I never realized that the whole emo thing was a really specifically midwest thing. I can’t talk about it at all to Michael. His was a different experience out here in California. But for those of us in the rust belt when we were 15-16 years old, this record was everything. For those of us who lived in the gray skies, blistering winds, digging our cars out of the snow, our parents were still poor even though they both worked full time jobs. My foster mom was an X ray tech, and my foster dad was a … fuck what was he? An electrician or something. Something that sucks the life out of your body so when you come home all you can do is sit in your recliner while your teenage kids run rampant. But it was the same story for all of us in that Detroit suburb. We were all painfully unsupervised. We split into two groups, the emo kids and the jugglos in about 2001.

I’ll never forget when my friend Stacy first told me about Insane Clown Posse. She was so excited. It was Halloween in 9th grade. She said she went to a show where everyone sprayed Fargo and painted their faces like clowns and I was like.. yeah I… no. It’s a no from me, there. But we stayed friends. I was friends with a lot of jugglos actually. Mostly because they were misunderstood from what I saw. They were poor kids from broken homes looking for something just like I was. So I went the hardcore kid-emo direction. It was more sensitive and artistic, in my opinion. There’s an intellectualism missing from the ICP-twiztid thing. Anyways, I’m literally from the same town as ICP, so no one can tell me shit about it. I literally lived it. I saw it emerge from the shadows.

Anyway, I remember Mitch Wojcik–what a cool name–he really smashed this record into our brains. He brought a silver burned CD with big black marker boy-writing on it.

I miss that basement. So smokey, so dark, so perfect. We all loved each other and accepted each other back then.

Whoa.

Something weird just happened.

I feel the living death, but it’s warm.

Yeah. There was something about the togetherness back then. Everything was so bleak. No jobs. No homes. Gray sky. Crumbling skyscrapers. Feet and feet of white and brown snow. Our cars were old pieces of shit that smelled like grandpa’s cigarettes, but they took us places, by god, and they took us places together. We would cram in the back seats 5 at a time, giggling. And we didn’t have much, but Mitch brought over a burned CD for us all. Do you know what I mean? It’s such a hard thing to explain. There were no police. There was no money. Our parents were burnt. But we really had each other. We made something out of nothing. We organized our own shows. We were autonomous. Jakefest. VFW halls. Paper fliers on neon colored paper. So many cigarettes. Handmade screen printed shirts. All you needed was a ride and $5.

For a few hours it felt like what Christmas should feel like. We forgot it was cold outside. We all recognized each other from the different townships, like distant cousins. No phones. No instagram. No bullying. Just pure fuckin’ kids doing art for other kids because we had nothing else. Truly nothing else.