Page 106 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

90 Identity, Lifestyle, and Subculture

despair and unhappiness, the feeling many young people have of “ not

fitting in ” or of being alienated from their contemporaries. They feel deeply
a sense of unhappiness at not being recognized or accepted, celebrated, or
cherished. Adolescence is famous for being one of the most diffi cult pas-
sages in life; not surprisingly, some people kill themselves before reaching
the end of the passage. Emo kids are sometimes into cutting, taking razors
to their own skin in a version of the despair that gets expressed in suicide.
Such despair arises out of a sense that one somehow does not count. Here
is one account by an Emo kid of his reasons for cutting:

[I]t sucks so much i finaley stopped took me a year my parents thout i had

stoped but i just cut farther up my arm so they couldnt see but rubber bands
are helpfull and i cut becouse my parents would fight constently and my sis

would say how much of a loser i was and my friends stoped talking to me
and my grandpa had open heart surgery almost whent rong he is a big part
of my life so i was scared of loosing him. nothing has changed other than
my grandpa my whole family sucks my parents think im crazy now but yep
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i dont care any more.
After being told to get help, he replied,

HELP only HELPS if you ’ re able to get help. and no, i don ’ t mean that it is
physically impossible for me to get help … it ’ s more complex than that. I
want help … NEED help, but help means having to tell someone i ’ m not
sure i trust. reason for the lack of trust: telling them would result in them
informing people i REALLY don ’ t want to know (ie. my grandma, sister,
mom … ) because i care about said people too much to have them worried
about ME. I don ’ t want people to worry about me. … A false sense of
“ happiness ” is better than a genuine sense of sadness when it comes to
OTHER people. I ’ m NOT playing a martyr. I just SERIOUSLY don ’ t like
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it when people worry about a piece of worthless fi lth like myself.
One can see why favorite Emo posters contain slogans such as “ Pain
doesn ’ t hurt when it ’ s all you ’ ve ever felt, ” “ Lost in a world of hate, ” and

“ I don ’ t need sex; life fucks me whenever it can. ” Or why a favorite Emo
song might be called “ Beautiful Sadness. ” Or why a typical Emo poem
might be called “ Fragile ” :

Some people say your pathetic sitting in the corner on your own
When all you want is time to refl ect and be alone …
Why is it that people put you down and make you feel so weak