while working on this page, ive been all but assaulted by this question over and over. looking at the pages of others as well. when i was a kid i wanted to be emo so bad. i looked up to my friend valeries brother nathan so much -- i was six, and he was about fourteen or so, and he skateboarded and dyed his hair pink. he had a waterbed and a panic! at the disco poster. he loved jeffree star. he wore a pair of high heels on halloween. i figured that when i grew up id be like him.

emo died out in the interim between kindergarten and eighth grade, which was the year that i finally became a human being. i had briefly tried being scene in fifth grade, but i was chubby and had curly hair, so it didnt work out well. besides, once i got to eighth grade, id mostly exhausted my enthusiasm for the pop punk that characterized the mainstream view of emo in my childhood. i was already becoming embarrassed of my love of my chemical romance, so i stopped listening to them.

nowadays im constantly frustrated with labels. people would call me an art hoe, a hipster, indie, emo, 'aesthetic', whatever other meaningless phrases they came up with to fit me into a box they could easily understand. a few keywords to describe a condensed version of my self-expression and personality. i like to think im genuinely different from the people who actually can be simplified into one word, and people i know have confirmed that belief -- but still, who am i? i wish sometimes i could figure out what i am with a cute turn of phrase.

some of the profiles ive seen on here seem so confident in their knowledge of themselves. they freely label themselves emo or scene. im not sure i have the right. i listen to all kinds of emo music, from the 2000s emo pop i gave up in eighth grade but always find myself returning to when i want to escape the stresses of life four years later to an obsession with a band formed in new hampshire that samples malcolm in the middle, sonic, street fighter, akira, and tim allen movies. is it the media i consume that i use to identify myself? it is, a lot of the time. when asked to come up with facts about myself for ice breakers i usually resort to listing favorite bands and films. i think sometimes that other people have already said everything i could ever think to say. and, i mean, at least i read books. at least ive read the catcher in the rye.

i dont dress in the style of any particular subculture. im f***ing broke, for one thing, so i dont exactly have the funds to change out my entire wardrobe often to go along with trends. nor do i have the funds to buy every piece from hot topic, and especially not from some obscure, edgy brand online. i tend to wear one of two or three pairs of thrifted blue jeans or shorts every day, with a t-shirt advertising a band i like on top and converse or birkenstocks on bottom. my hair is still as curly and brown as it was in fifth grade when i lamented not being able to properly tease my hair into a perfectly swooped side bang. still, most people seem to think im pretty alternative just from my clothes, as plain as they usually are. is it enough? am i 'emo'? am i a 'hipster'? is it cool and trendy that i dont have the money to buy from somewhere other than goodwill? i suppose so. people tell me a lot that its cool. i see a lot of pictures of people on this website who look like the dictionary definition of an emo kid -- would i look like a poser to them? does it matter?

it might surprise the people who know me that i have no sense of identity. that i constantly worry about being a fraud. they know im a slacker with perfect grades (overachieving underachiever, underachieving overachiever) and an artist (i scribble over half the drawings with sharpie) and an individual (i talk out of turn in class and make people mad). yet the normal kids dont like me because im too weird, and the weird kids think im not weird enough when im really... still too weird.

where does the real me lie? in my inner thoughts? in my sketchbook? in the clothes i wear? in the music i listen to? the words of the books i read and reread? is it reflected back in the mirror? the reflection in the mirror is intangible. its just a reflection.

being emo in 2019 is hard.