HOME | DD

Description
"He said, 'Son, when you grow up / would you be the savior of the broken / the beaten, and the damned?' He said, 'Will you defeat them / your demons and all the non-believers / the plans that they have made?'" Hearing these words, thoughts of a Christ-like figure, a Mother Theresa, someone that millions around the world look up to float through the mind.  Nobody would ever project the image of an introverted singer in a band that most would call "emo".  Lead singer of the band My Chemical Romance and one of the inventors of "Welcome to the Black Parade", the song of which the lyrics belong to, Gerard Way became my role model, inspirer, savior through the simple method of songs and reaching out to his fans.  Had he not had the dedication and will to connect with his fans on an extremely personal and vulnerable level, I would not have acquired the tools that I needed to develop myself as an individual.

I discovered My Chemical Romance in the first year of my high school career, a time when I attempted to belong in a new school with new people in a new county.  I dressed in perky, bright colours like others, talked about subjects, such as the latest dramatic break-up or fight, that bored me to death, and shrunk the true me deeper and deeper inside.  During that time period, I did not have the motivation to do anything like write or read, activities I had enjoyed immensely during junior high, due to the mask I had created; instead I fell deeper into a depression I had created all on my own.  My friend then sent a link to a song on Youtube, a song called "Thank You for the Venom", repeatedly telling me that it would make me feel better.  Finally he had talked me into listening and the moment the song started, I knew that he had been right.  I could not understand a single word said during the entire song, but it did not matter because I could still hear the inner message.  The beat, the guitars, the raw voice, it all just sank in and I instantly felt better about myself and life in general.  I listened to the song three or four times before deciding to look up the lyrics to understand specifically what this tortured soul sang.  "Love it or leave it / you can't understand / a pretty face but you do so carry on."  These words immediately caught my attention because I felt like his raw voice spoke only to me.  I just carried on, attempting to conform to everyone else's standards.  I put on that pretty face that this singer spoke about, and the realization of this fact hit me like a train; unlike anyone else, he willingly spoke of my major flaw, and instead of it feeling painful, it felt like a blessing, like a heavy load escaped my shoulders and instead put on his.  "So give me all your poison and give me all your pills / give me all your hopeless hearts and make me ill."  When the chorus started, as I read the lyrics, everything fell into place for me; "Thank You for the Venom" made me feel like a real human being again and I could not help but sing along with the man who had taken a piece of his soul and revealed it to the world.  I felt like Gerard Way actually took away my pain and my fake identity, revealing the true nature I had been hiding from the sun.  For days afterwards, this song continuously spilled from my lips and into my ears.

Eventually, my friend gave me another link to listen to because it had never even occurred to me that other songs just like "Thank You for the Venom" would exist.  I feared that that precious song did not have a sister, that the rest of their songs would not connect the same.  However, when I listened to the next song, "The Sharpest Lives", I jumped upon the dark parade float of hope, a central theme to the album The Black Parade, which My Chemical Romance created.   "If it looks like I'm laughing, I'm really just asking to leave."  After Googling the lyrics to the song, this particular phrase struck me like a spike through my heart.  I portrayed a fake and a grotesque happy person on the outside, but hid a secretly miserable individual in the inside.  I did not even realize that all that I had locked away and practically thrown away the key to my individuality until I had heard these songs, and it made me want to see the face of the man that spoke personally to me.
What I had come across, however, shocked and startled me.  I had felt the pain the man had felt, I had heard his raw voice soothing my soul, yet I had never expected to see what I did.  I expected an average group of men who dressed, acted, and overall looked like the people I saw at school everyday. I did not expect to see a band, dressed all in black, majority with dark hair.  One photo really caught my eye; the singer, Gerard Way, with his shoulder-length black hair, vampiric white skin, one of the phases that he had gone through, dark eyes in a glare, reaching out for the viewer.  As I continued to look at this photo, shivers crept through my body and I felt a real fear; the possibility that he would appear in such a manner had never occurred because I never believed I would connect to such an individual who dressed in that manner.  Gerard Way, who had called me out through songs, the man I felt had started to save me, dressed like the people I had been told behaved strangely and that I should avoid at all costs.  Seeing all of these photos turned me against Gerard Way and My Chemical Romance and instead brought me further back into the cave I had begun to call my home while I continued to flaunt my mask.  Only when I received their third album, The Black Parade, for Christmas I really began my transformation.

The album The Black Parade played daily on my iPod and computer.  Demented yet beautiful, twisted and so true, the album brought me to a new state of mind.  "They gonna clean up your looks / with all of the lies in the books / to make a citizen out of you."  Motivational lyrics like the ones in "Teenagers" brought back real emotions to me, revealing that there existed all sorts of different types of people to my narrow mind, and by the second year in high school, I decided to give the band another chance.  I started to look up photo shoots and fan pictures with a more open mind, buying the other two masterpieces the band had created, all of it slowly making me realize that appearances didn't matter.  Gerard Way made me feel whole and pure again.  I began to listen and read interviews, realizing that how a person dressed did not have any correlation to how they acted.  "There are really so many people trying to get control over you on a daily basis and steal your soul in some way, take a part of you", "We're trying to be honest about the world and how dark it is, but then show you there's a light at the end of the tunnel," or "Sometimes you have to kind of die inside in order to rise from your own ashes and believe in yourself and love yourself and become a new person."  I would never have even dreamed that such positive and truthful sayings could come from such a dark and angry person.  With each interview, picture, or music video, each song I listened to, I slowly fell more and more in love with the band, especially with Gerard Way, because I could live as myself when I listened to them.

He really made me see that I did not have to pretend to please others.  I began to dress how I wanted to dress, established friends who understood me, began doing hobbies I enjoyed, and more importantly, I regained inspiration for writing again, something of which I had not had much of since junior high.  It all started because of this one band, this one person who I had never even seen in real life.  "Someone finally understood you.  This is what music is about."

As I finished my transformation, so did Gerard Way.  We started out lost together, muddled around with dead ends, transformed together, and completed our journey together.

Through My Chemical Romance and more specifically Gerard Arthur Way, I discovered and uncovered the real me.  I found someone to look up to for guidance, someone I felt proud to call my role model.  I found someone who challenges me to do my best, someone who says it's okay to live in my own standards.  Without Gerard Way, I would still live in the lifeless empty shell I had started high school as and not in the creative individual I do now.

Description
"He said, 'Son, when you grow up / would you be the savior of the broken / the beaten, and the damned?' He said, 'Will you defeat them / your demons and all the non-believers / the plans that they have made?'" Hearing these words, thoughts of a Christ-like figure, a Mother Theresa, someone that millions around the world look up to float through the mind.  Nobody would ever project the image of an introverted singer in a band that most would call "emo".  Lead singer of the band My Chemical Romance and one of the inventors of "Welcome to the Black Parade", the song of which the lyrics belong to, Gerard Way became my role model, inspirer, savior through the simple method of songs and reaching out to his fans.  Had he not had the dedication and will to connect with his fans on an extremely personal and vulnerable level, I would not have acquired the tools that I needed to develop myself as an individual.

I discovered My Chemical Romance in the first year of my high school career, a time when I attempted to belong in a new school with new people in a new county.  I dressed in perky, bright colours like others, talked about subjects, such as the latest dramatic break-up or fight, that bored me to death, and shrunk the true me deeper and deeper inside.  During that time period, I did not have the motivation to do anything like write or read, activities I had enjoyed immensely during junior high, due to the mask I had created; instead I fell deeper into a depression I had created all on my own.  My friend then sent a link to a song on Youtube, a song called "Thank You for the Venom", repeatedly telling me that it would make me feel better.  Finally he had talked me into listening and the moment the song started, I knew that he had been right.  I could not understand a single word said during the entire song, but it did not matter because I could still hear the inner message.  The beat, the guitars, the raw voice, it all just sank in and I instantly felt better about myself and life in general.  I listened to the song three or four times before deciding to look up the lyrics to understand specifically what this tortured soul sang.  "Love it or leave it / you can't understand / a pretty face but you do so carry on."  These words immediately caught my attention because I felt like his raw voice spoke only to me.  I just carried on, attempting to conform to everyone else's standards.  I put on that pretty face that this singer spoke about, and the realization of this fact hit me like a train; unlike anyone else, he willingly spoke of my major flaw, and instead of it feeling painful, it felt like a blessing, like a heavy load escaped my shoulders and instead put on his.  "So give me all your poison and give me all your pills / give me all your hopeless hearts and make me ill."  When the chorus started, as I read the lyrics, everything fell into place for me; "Thank You for the Venom" made me feel like a real human being again and I could not help but sing along with the man who had taken a piece of his soul and revealed it to the world.  I felt like Gerard Way actually took away my pain and my fake identity, revealing the true nature I had been hiding from the sun.  For days afterwards, this song continuously spilled from my lips and into my ears.

Eventually, my friend gave me another link to listen to because it had never even occurred to me that other songs just like "Thank You for the Venom" would exist.  I feared that that precious song did not have a sister, that the rest of their songs would not connect the same.  However, when I listened to the next song, "The Sharpest Lives", I jumped upon the dark parade float of hope, a central theme to the album The Black Parade, which My Chemical Romance created.   "If it looks like I'm laughing, I'm really just asking to leave."  After Googling the lyrics to the song, this particular phrase struck me like a spike through my heart.  I portrayed a fake and a grotesque happy person on the outside, but hid a secretly miserable individual in the inside.  I did not even realize that all that I had locked away and practically thrown away the key to my individuality until I had heard these songs, and it made me want to see the face of the man that spoke personally to me.
What I had come across, however, shocked and startled me.  I had felt the pain the man had felt, I had heard his raw voice soothing my soul, yet I had never expected to see what I did.  I expected an average group of men who dressed, acted, and overall looked like the people I saw at school everyday. I did not expect to see a band, dressed all in black, majority with dark hair.  One photo really caught my eye; the singer, Gerard Way, with his shoulder-length black hair, vampiric white skin, one of the phases that he had gone through, dark eyes in a glare, reaching out for the viewer.  As I continued to look at this photo, shivers crept through my body and I felt a real fear; the possibility that he would appear in such a manner had never occurred because I never believed I would connect to such an individual who dressed in that manner.  Gerard Way, who had called me out through songs, the man I felt had started to save me, dressed like the people I had been told behaved strangely and that I should avoid at all costs.  Seeing all of these photos turned me against Gerard Way and My Chemical Romance and instead brought me further back into the cave I had begun to call my home while I continued to flaunt my mask.  Only when I received their third album, The Black Parade, for Christmas I really began my transformation.

The album The Black Parade played daily on my iPod and computer.  Demented yet beautiful, twisted and so true, the album brought me to a new state of mind.  "They gonna clean up your looks / with all of the lies in the books / to make a citizen out of you."  Motivational lyrics like the ones in "Teenagers" brought back real emotions to me, revealing that there existed all sorts of different types of people to my narrow mind, and by the second year in high school, I decided to give the band another chance.  I started to look up photo shoots and fan pictures with a more open mind, buying the other two masterpieces the band had created, all of it slowly making me realize that appearances didn't matter.  Gerard Way made me feel whole and pure again.  I began to listen and read interviews, realizing that how a person dressed did not have any correlation to how they acted.  "There are really so many people trying to get control over you on a daily basis and steal your soul in some way, take a part of you", "We're trying to be honest about the world and how dark it is, but then show you there's a light at the end of the tunnel," or "Sometimes you have to kind of die inside in order to rise from your own ashes and believe in yourself and love yourself and become a new person."  I would never have even dreamed that such positive and truthful sayings could come from such a dark and angry person.  With each interview, picture, or music video, each song I listened to, I slowly fell more and more in love with the band, especially with Gerard Way, because I could live as myself when I listened to them.

He really made me see that I did not have to pretend to please others.  I began to dress how I wanted to dress, established friends who understood me, began doing hobbies I enjoyed, and more importantly, I regained inspiration for writing again, something of which I had not had much of since junior high.  It all started because of this one band, this one person who I had never even seen in real life.  "Someone finally understood you.  This is what music is about."

As I finished my transformation, so did Gerard Way.  We started out lost together, muddled around with dead ends, transformed together, and completed our journey together.

Through My Chemical Romance and more specifically Gerard Arthur Way, I discovered and uncovered the real me.  I found someone to look up to for guidance, someone I felt proud to call my role model.  I found someone who challenges me to do my best, someone who says it's okay to live in my own standards.  Without Gerard Way, I would still live in the lifeless empty shell I had started high school as and not in the creative individual I do now.