It's the end of 2017 and I’m still upset that My Chemical Romance broke up. Okay, okay, keep laughing. I get it, it's been over 4 years and it’s not 2006 anymore. Why did I even like them in the first place?
Well...
My introduction to rock music was late coming and not on my own doing. My older sister in the prime of her middle school years was experimenting with punk and heavy metal music of the early 2000s. The first song I ever remember her showing me was “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” by Panic! At The Disco, when it was a band made up of more than just Brendon Urie.
It was something cool and something new to my elementary mind. Next thing I knew, I was home sharing the music from her iPod Nano to my iPod shuffle. Woah.
A plethora of new music was at my fingertips as I began to dip my toe in the world of rock music. There was Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, Death Cab for Cutie and, of course, My Chemical Romance.
No matter what kind of rock music my sister and I were interested in during those years, there was no escaping My Chemical Romance. I was easily hooked from “Teenagers” and “Dead!” that there was nothing left for me to do but go down the rabbit hole of My Chemical Romance.
Let’s be real here for a moment. I am around 10 or 12 years old, at the time and it is almost uncool to not be obsessing over a celebrity at this point in life. Some people chose athletes, movie stars, pop or rap singers. I chose My Chemical Romance.
My interest in these four musicians became even stronger as I learned that they were a New Jersey-based band that was well known around the entire globe. It made me proud to be from New Jersey at the same time! You don’t expect a world-famous band to have their origins in New Jersey of all places.
But gloss over the next 6 or 8 years. There was a lot of merchandise purchasing, crying like a baby when they broke up, more merchandise purchasing, more interview reading/watching, more merchandise purchasing, following their solo careers, and a little merchandise purchasing for said solo careers. It’s all a bit ridiculous, I’ll admit, but I would rather say that I spent my middle school years obsessed with a band than having ever gone through a “rawr XD” phase. Much less embarrassing.
And to tell you the truth, I’m not even embarrassed that I spent a number of years absolutely obsessed with this band because middle school is the prime time for puberty. You know what puberty means? Crippling depression.
To gloss over these years, because the Internet is not getting a glance at that part of my life, it was filled with a lot of sadness. I lost people in my family that were important to me, I watched so many of my friends suffer from things far worse than what I went through, and to help keep myself alive, I turned to music like many people do.
And it wasn’t a pop star or a better rock band that saved my life. No, it was this whiny band of four guys from New Jersey who told stories and created worlds that represented what I felt on the inside. Instead of doing things to myself and falling into certain kinds of thoughts, I did my damn best to let them say it for me.
Regardless of how middle school went for me emotionally, I am here. I am alive. I am healthy. And I can thank those four guys from New Jersey who were just as sad as I was. I realize the stigma that comes along when you say you liked, or still like, My Chemical Romance, but I’m not even the least bit ashamed of it.