2008.04.03
Being Emo
Nowadays people use the word emo completely out of context. Sure the word "emo" wasn't originally used to refer to people who cut themselves for no reason (but I'm not going to get into a history lesson here) - but what was once a word used to label people who are sad for no reason but living in perfect comfortable homes in the suburbs is now just a word used for anyone who shows even one bit of sadness. In that sense it's sad to see a group of people calling another person emo because their mother died. Emo for crying that their mother died? Did you not just hear that right? THEIR MOTHER DIED. There's reason to cry. Not only that, emo refers to anything and everyone with black hair and people wearing black clothes. You could be in a heavy metal band and someone will just randomly call you emo. (I'm sure there's people out there who'd consider Nathan Explosion emo.) It really sucks for me because of my Eurasian appearance. I have natural long black hair and I normally just wear black clothes to dodge the attention of those "homey playboys" and I get called fucking emo. I also like Victorian clothes - that also makes me emo.
What the hell.
I will say though that THERE WAS A TIME that I truly was emo.
Oh the whole emo situation started back when I moved to Japan when I was 12. A year before that I was living in Las Vegas pretty much batshit poor. There was a time that we were so poor I couldn't even sneak in a candy bar in the cart when we went grocery shopping. If we could it'd be like "Hey Mika! If you want you can sneak in a candy bar!" because it was a rare event. When I was offered to do so I didn't - because I knew that 45 cents might be needed later. This was also back then when Whoppers were 99 cents (now it's only Whopper Jr's that are a dollar) - I ate that shit everyday. But I don't recall ever being angry at my situation. I didn't even really mind that I had to wear the same five outfits for the whole school year of 6th grade. None of that really affected me. I accepted that I was one broke ass bitch and I didn't have the money to be buying luxurious shit.
When I moved to Japan however I got an inflated ego out of nowhere. The day before when I was living in the states I was my usual self. I don't know how - but I became another person the moment my feet hit Japanese soil. The thing that hit me most is how I was a foreigner. BUT I'VE BEEN PLAYING JAPANESE GAMES AND WATCHING JAPANESE ANIME SO MANY YEARS BEFORE! I KNOW WHAT JAPAN IS LIKE AND PEOPLE SHOULDN'T TREAT ME LIKE A SMELLY GAIJIN! is what I thought. Most of all I tried to hide my identity, I tried to act like I was born and raised in Japan. I tried to act like I spoke Japanese when I didn't even know how to read it much less speak it. I gained a "holier than thou" attitude and did everything I could to act like I was Japanese. It was so bad that when I finally enrolled in a military school on a Navy base there I went as far to act like I was born and raised in Japan. Obviously I wasn't - which I realized later even after I learned enough Japanese that even native Japanese people thought I lived there all my life - that no matter what I'll always be a foreigner in Japan and I'll always be American.
So being the new kid I didn't really have any awkward moments there. As usual I made a cool impression, people thought I looked cool and shit, didn't get the geek treatment. A lot of people opened their arms out to me. I recall this one girl even wrote a note and left it for me on my desk talking about how cool I am and how we should be friends. With my "I don't give a fuck" attitude and instant slashing back with witty comments every time someone tried to criticize me I even gained the affection of a guy any woman would want. Man he was one fucking meat mountain. You have got to be shitting me, there was no way that guy was thirteen at the time. There was also that time where I hit some kid in the stomach and made my eternal rival at that school but even that was still in character. (Scroll down this article to know more about him.) I was just that fucking awesome. But my personality wasn't. No, my new personality was fucking terrible. So how did I react to all those situations where I was already easily accepted by everyone?
Oh, you know that girl that sent me that note? I wrote a long fucking note back to her about how we couldn't be friends. I do not remember what the fuck I wrote but I know it was all bullshit. I apologized about that shit a year after and she forgave me. I really didn't know what the fuck was wrong with me. At least we really did become friends and even when I had some emotional streaks she ALWAYS had my back. I didn't know how difficult it'd be to find friendships like that, especially after I moved to Guam. Even now back in the states I still don't have any friends like that.
And that manly meat mountain guy holy shit he could've definitely been a Street Fighter character or some shit - I rejected him and gave him the "EWW" face. To add insult to injury I insulted the living shit out of him. But he was such a man that he never said anything to me back. Throughout that year he was still nice to me. Did I make amends with him the next year? No, unfortunately I was not so lucky with him. I wanted to make amends with him like I did with that girl. And it did seem that I'd be able to. In eighth grade we did have the same Japanese class again, the same class he confessed to me last year. The second day of class our teacher assigned our seats and it would've been perfect to apologize for my dumbass behavior. The desks were split in four and we were assigned to be sitting across from each other, face to face. I waited for him to come. I wanted nothing more than to apologize for my shitty behavior. He never came. Instead he made sure to instantly switch out of that class and we never ever had the same class again. And throughout the next four years he ignored me completely and made sure to never cross my direction. He did speak foul of me at times but never in a completely disrespectful manner. I recall him even warning guys about me, about that past self. They didn't know what the fuck he was talking about and I assume no one else did except his close friends. Because his close friends sure did treat me like shit even when I was trying to be nice to them. This was a good example about how you can't change a first impression and no matter how much you change you can't shed that impression from some people. Me never getting to apologize to him is still one of my deepest regrets.
His mother was also a substitute for school and I got along perfectly fine with her. I just felt bad that I no longer got along with her son (thank you emoness you sure fucked up that relationship - hell we probably could've still been friends till this day.) Come ninth grade I wrote an apology note, but I didn't give it to him. I knew it was too late. There was no way I could mend that wound. Come tenth grade, our science classes (different levels but all taught by the same teacher) went on a field trip. The group of friends I was hanging out with went to this expensive Japanese restaurant and no one could order shit because the waiters of course didn't understand English. Of course that's where my 1337 skills came into play. A friend of mine kept telling that manly guy's party to come and seek my help but they just walked off ignoring him. They knew he was talking but they didn't want anything to do with me. Man I wounded a guy THAT BAD. And I felt bad about it. Damn, I still do feel bad about it.
Anyway, as far as being emo goes - everyone opened their arms out to me. I shot them all down for no reason. I was just as bad as Suzuka but everyone had a brain unlike Yamato and knew that I was bad news. Another random event? Well on the first day of school these girls came up to talk to me and wanted to befriend me and asked if I was new. What did I do? I complained about how I wanted to live in Tokyo and how I hated the country side of Japan I was living in. What the fuck? I should've just been grateful I was living in Japan period. For one thing I at least was still living in the main land. And I later came to like the country side I was living in. (Hell, what was I bitching over? I could've been living in Okinawa or some shit. O_O No, Okinawa isn't terrible, but it's pretty much the equivalent of living in Guam when you could be living in Hawaii.)
Next thing I knew I was a loner. I brought it all on myself. Just because I had an inflated ego over nothing and thought I was special. Since I was going along trying to be as Japanese as I could I'd buy school girl-like outfits and try to wear them everyday. I was fine as myself but I continued to try altering myself into someone I wasn't. Worst of all was when I cut my hair into some stupid Japanese hair style. It worked on a lot of Japanese girls because they had thin hair. I had thick ass hair and I just looked like a retard.
Since people pity others easily and when worst came to worst, I even got the Japanese janitors pitying me. One even pitied me enough to buy me a Christmas card. I thought it was sweet, yet thanks to the language barrier they had no idea why I was being alienated. It was my own damn fault for turning into someone who was living in their own world thinking: "OMG NO ONE CAN UNDERSTAND ME." I recall even an upperclassman reached his hand out to me. I burned that fucking bridge too. I told him that I didn't need friends. Of course not even he would bother talking to my reborn self. Sometimes you can't alter a bad impression no matter how much you try to shake it off.
At first I didn't like all the attention I got. I was stupid, I wanted to be someone everyone didn't like just to have a sob story. For what reason? I have no fucking clue. And I finally got what I wanted. No one wanted to be around me. Only people that pitied me did. I recall this girl who was popular (LMFAO - "popularity") in seventh grade invited me to eat lunch with her group. At first I didn't know that she was doing it out of pity. I came to eat with her group three other times. The majority of her group would run off to eat elsewhere and she seemed embarrassed. I was emo at the time but my pride was also something that couldn't be fucked with so I went back to being a loner. I really don't know why I wanted to go down that path so much because I realized how much it sucks being alone.
Long story short after turning into such a horrible person I became completely what I wanted in the past. Pretty much everyone disliked me. Summer of 99' was one shitty ass summer. That was depression at it's greatest. I realized all my wrongs and wished I could erase them. I wished I could go back in time, back to a time when I wasn't some emo piece of shit. I had every damn thing in the world, especially in comparison to the year before that when I was bat shit poor. But I just wanted to be sad over nothing. Most of all I blamed every single problem I had on other people when I knew damn well it was all my fault. I became suicidal and thought of nothing more than to kill myself since I hated what I had become. No one was there to help me and there was no one I could talk to. I even wrote a suicide note and thought of many ways to kill myself. There was a time when everyone in my house was gone. That day I planned to do the deed. I thought of jumping out the window from the 2nd story head first (it was pretty damn high) or stabbing myself in the gut. (Well let me just say that there's A LOT MORE reason why I wanted to kill myself back then but I won't get into it - I'll leave that part to myself) But then I looked at the calender and saw that I'd be back in school in another week. I thought that instead of killing myself physically I could just kill that old self and start over again.
When it came to the next year, eighth grade, I saw all the wrongs I did in seventh grade. I made that year terrible myself. No other person could've made it bad but me. I handled every single situation in the worst way possible. I made all my positive situations bad. I made everyone my own enemy for no reason. Realizing my wrongs I went as far as to try to make a new identity for myself. I even wanted people to call me Hsien-Ko from now on to adapt to my Chinese roots. (Obviously that didn't happen, there was no way in hell anyone was calling me Hsien-Ko. That would've been as bad as changing my name to Chun-Li.) When I switched back to my old self in eight grade, it ended up being one of the greatest years of my life. If only I could've been positive earlier and not angry over nothing.
But that's not to say that I didn't have anymore emo outbursts later on in life. I recall there was a time that I'd cry on cue just to get people to feel sorry for me. I once again saw how wrong I was when I moved to Guam.
I'd say I finally rid myself of my emo outbursts in 2005. But something I wish I could've done earlier was to become more responsible instead of locking myself in my room and having emo bitchfits at age 18-19. It impresses me to see younger people that have drive - especially the ones that work two-three jobs just to pay for their own schooling. I grew up with allowance and that's probably one of the worst things you can do to your kids. I got allowance up until I was 20. And it wasn't until I stopped getting allowance that I finally got off my ass and finally worked for myself. Yes, sad as it is I didn't get my first job till I was 20. And I realized how fucked you'd be for waiting too long to get a job. No job experience and worst of all is when younger people are your superiors. But when I got my first paycheck I felt great that I was earning my own money.
Sadly (but honestly) back then I'd be throwing bitchfits if I couldn't use my parent's credit card and their own money (my allowance) to buy stupid shit on the internet. I'd then go write angry entries in livejournal about how "OMG MOMMY/DADDY WON'T LET ME USE THEIR CREDIT CARD!" Expecting some kind of pity. Often times I'd wish I could go back and beat down that past self.
As far as being emo goes - I was the true definition of an emo kid. A well off kid who grew up sheltered but tried to act all big and tough. There is no fucking way possible that you can be ghetto and in the military. People often strive for what they don't have. The worst is when well off kids try to become bad and create their own stories to be emo about. Quit crying emo bitches. Get your ass up and pull your own goddamn weight. I was another one of those whiny sons of bitches yet having everything served to me on a silver platter when there's plenty of kids in 3rd world countries who don't have the luxury to even be thinking about that kind of shit. And worst of all is that I brought this upon myself trying to rely on others too long and for blaming all my problems on other people. Now I'm having a hard ass time trying to be independent because I spent too much time crying like a bitch over useless shit.