I remember when "emo" first came into popularity. I was thirteen years old, and sitting in English class. Mrs. Porter had gone off on some random tangent about fads, trends, and the carelessness of young whippersnappers. She started to talk about her teenage son and his newfangled shenanigans. It's funny how little you understand or even really care about at age thirteen. Mrs. Porter wasn't a real human being as far as I was concerned. She didn't have a life separate from teaching. She didn't have feelings. She just had a closet full of really ugly tshirts that said stuff like "la vie de Parisian," "Life is better lived with love" and "Diamond in the rough." Of course, these shirts were also sprinkled with rhinestones and "distressed" to look unconvincingly vintage. So anyway, Mrs. Porter started telling us about her son's style of dress which he endearingly called "emo." He would wear very small jackets and skinny jeans. He was also in a band called "Medicine for Women." I didn't get it at the time, but a few years down the line, I chuckled to myself, wherever I was.
I didn't know that a year later, I would buy into this trend with surprising fervor. Hair dye, sad AOL screen names like "watchmedierightnow" and "cyanidekisses", ripped t-shirts, tight pants, and gratuitous amounts of black kohl eyeliner. . . yep. And looking back, I could see why the trend was so appealing to me. I'm an emotional person, and being "emo" made it okay . . . it even made it cool for a while. But that was then, and since then I've been growing into emotional maturity, right?
Nope. I still jam out to the saddest acoustic ballads on rainy days. I still love it when the protagonist tragically dies in the end. I still love romance and drama and thrill and spectacle. I've known God for six years now, and I realize that my relationship with Him, however intimate, is a good model for how I treat a lot of my relationships. I rely heavily on how I feel. If I feel far from Him, it means that He has either left me or some other grave, life or death situation has happened. I lived perpetually from highs to lows. I loved soaking in worship because it gave me quick, emotional intensity, when really -- did any of those hours of soaking do anything for Him? I've lived a victimized life -- waiting for an argument or offense to happen. I've lived in fear of circumstances outside of my control. Those around me and my environment had an incredible amount of stock into shaping the person that I was and the person that I became.
It's exhausting to live that way.
It's exhausting to remember all your bitterness, unforgiveness, and dwell on the words and slights of others. It's a waste of life. It's possible to be passionate without being emotional. It's possible to be compassionate and full of empathy without being emotional. It's possible to be emotional without wearing incredibly tight pants. It's even possible to condemn yourself to living an emotional life, systematizing it for yourself and telling yourself that it's okay, because that's just the way that you are and how you've always been. However, allowing your emotions to control you and your identity is a crappy way to live, don't you think? Wouldn't you rather bet your life on something a little more stable than that?
I didn't know that a year later, I would buy into this trend with surprising fervor. Hair dye, sad AOL screen names like "watchmedierightnow" and "cyanidekisses", ripped t-shirts, tight pants, and gratuitous amounts of black kohl eyeliner. . . yep. And looking back, I could see why the trend was so appealing to me. I'm an emotional person, and being "emo" made it okay . . . it even made it cool for a while. But that was then, and since then I've been growing into emotional maturity, right?
Nope. I still jam out to the saddest acoustic ballads on rainy days. I still love it when the protagonist tragically dies in the end. I still love romance and drama and thrill and spectacle. I've known God for six years now, and I realize that my relationship with Him, however intimate, is a good model for how I treat a lot of my relationships. I rely heavily on how I feel. If I feel far from Him, it means that He has either left me or some other grave, life or death situation has happened. I lived perpetually from highs to lows. I loved soaking in worship because it gave me quick, emotional intensity, when really -- did any of those hours of soaking do anything for Him? I've lived a victimized life -- waiting for an argument or offense to happen. I've lived in fear of circumstances outside of my control. Those around me and my environment had an incredible amount of stock into shaping the person that I was and the person that I became.
It's exhausting to live that way.
It's exhausting to remember all your bitterness, unforgiveness, and dwell on the words and slights of others. It's a waste of life. It's possible to be passionate without being emotional. It's possible to be compassionate and full of empathy without being emotional. It's possible to be emotional without wearing incredibly tight pants. It's even possible to condemn yourself to living an emotional life, systematizing it for yourself and telling yourself that it's okay, because that's just the way that you are and how you've always been. However, allowing your emotions to control you and your identity is a crappy way to live, don't you think? Wouldn't you rather bet your life on something a little more stable than that?
Indeed, many teenagers today, though not emo, are so emotional that their relations are crumbling apart so easily. It seems thay they enjoy feeling melancholic in order to give themselves some kind of "hype" feeling (I know somebody who was like that :S ), but then it becomes heavy to live like that.
ReplyDeleteHope you are fine Tiffany. And soon, I'm sharing a new song with you! God bless :)
I don't know why I didn't read this post until now, but I loved it. You are beautiful in that you feel so intensely, and this post has just shown how much you have grown in that. :)
ReplyDelete