Today I'd like to touch on a personal topic for a bit, one that's very close to myself and many of my friends, as well as to many of you readers, I'm sure.

We've all heard the saying "______ saved my life" referencing a band, an artist, something emotional that hit you hard. Well, in my case, and the case of many, the lifesaving came in the form of a band I hold very dear. I'm sure you can guess by now: My Chemical Romance.

I got the opportunity to talk to a few MCR fans who claim that My Chemical Romance saved their life, we shared stories and camraderie, felt each others pain and empathized with each other, a bond that many My Chemical Romance fans tend to have with each other.

I suppose the way to start this off is to open up and just let the words come out, but those of you who have ever tried to publically say things such as this know just how difficult it can be. For that, I applaud and admire the people I spoke with for opening up for us.

My story starts a long, long time ago, but I won't bore you with prissy details, the long and short of it was that I had a pretty rough upraising that stemmed a whole steaming load of psychosis and left me with an abnormal amount of issues. I was raised by my mother and Step-father, my biological father in the wings, popping his head in from time to time to check in on his confused, angry son and daughter.

By late 2001 I was so wound up in social ineptitude and anxiety, self-hatred and self-harm all mixed in with generic High-School beatdowns in a world that had just been shattered by 9/11. Fear mongering controled every aspect of American life, and being different from the majority was cause for suspicion at best, fatal at worst. But I have never been that person that was the same as the rest, I never really thought about, or cared about what (By High School Scene-law) I was supposed to be, or listen to, or wear. I didn't have the money for the fancy clothes from the mall, so my wardrobe was ratty Thrift Store rags, DIY bags and hand-me-down band shirts from people much older than I. My hair was a ragged curly mess with absolutely no hope of being stylish, so it was chopped off and dyed stupid colours, I was raised on punk rock and classic rock music, so my walkman blasted Pink Floyd and Placebo instead of Britney and Backstreet Boys.

It was about that time that I discovered a lowly Jersey band with a name just about as strange as it's frontman, My Chemical Romance. They were out of tune, out of their minds, and unintelligable, but they played with such passion, hit every single (seriously flat) note with such conviction that they made you believe in something. God only knows what, but it was something so powerful, and so all-consuming that it felt as if you could only stand there and bask in that feeling, that nothing could ever hurt you, or beat you down any longer. It was the anthems for the outcasted and the strange, the shoved around and twisted, and it was loud and angry and beautiful at the same time... and I was completely hooked after the first song.

The band got me through high school, kept me sane and gave me confidence enough to stand up for myself, not get shoved around so much, and when I left for college, it was an entirely new world. There were people like me everywhere, my circles of friends were accepting and we were alike, had everything in common, and my life got fantastic... except for one rather large arena. I was stuck in a miserable career path that I hated and that sucked the soul and life out of me. I was an Interior Design student headed straight down the path to corporate cubicle-dom, and I hated myself for it. I wanted out, I wanted to scream how miserable I was, but I desperately didn't want to let down the one person who had always stood by my side, my mother.

So to hide how miserable I was, to sweep it under the rug and pretend like it wasn't there, I started to drink heavily. I went out every night with my friends, living it up like I was the happy-go-lucky girl they knew, drinking all night, working into the morning hours still drunk, and heading to classes barely able to hold my head up. From there it got worse, the classes got more intense, the work load was heavier, and I no longer went out nightly with my friends, I stayed in, my blueprints and fabrics spread around me, and a bottle of vodka in a chill bucket to get me through it. I was the kind of person I had always feared turning into: a raging alcoholic. And worse than that, a suicidal alcoholic.

This carried on for a year and a half, a miserable, stressed out, sickly and drunken haze. I existed solely to get through the day, only to do everything the same the next day. I went to school drunk, I went to work drunk, weak from blood-loss and I stayed up all night, working and drinking, I would go until physical exhaustion set in and I passed out, then wake up and do it again. I was failing classes and losing friends left and right, I stopped calling my mother... it was a severe downward spiral.

All the while, I listened to My Chemical Romance, followed their tour schedule, hoping to see the Chicago tour date pop up on the list, I would go to the shows when they were around.. I loved it. And then the fallout happened. Gerard Way, alcoholic. I remember watching him stumbling around on stage, incoherently speaking to the amplifier, looking like a wreck, and it hit me hard. Was this was I was like? Certainly I don't have as much influence over people as a man like Gerard Way, but did people see me like this? My colleagues, my peers, worse... my younger sisters?

It was just about the same time that Gerard Way bottomed out, and declared his strive for sobriety, and I remember sitting in my apartment, looking around at the mess of design supplies, paint chips and fabric swatches and the bottle of vodka, and then and there I made the same decision. If Gerard Way could get through his alocholism, make himself a better person, and a better role model, then certainly I could too. I would use him as inspiration, watch his progress, watch him become a healthier person, a better entertainer, more coherent, and I would become the same.

I am beyond certain that I would have self-destructed shortly going down the path I was on, and had it not been for the inspiring image of Gerard Way sobering up, I probably wouldn't have sobered myself up. I fully attribute my ability to clean up my life to the band, and I'm so happy that they chose to make their issues public and show people that it is possible to come back from the depths of hell.

I spoke with a MCR fan, Lee, who told a similar story, tragedy and downfall with alcohol and drugs and self deprivation to the point of harm, to be brought back up with the inspiration of My Chemical Romance.

Another fan, Elena told me her story as well, she said:



The thing that I like the most about My Chemical Romance is the fact that they are so easy to relate to. No matter what kind of problem you have, it's like they're sitting on your CD shelf, waiting to help you through it. Alcoholism, death of a friend, general dissatisfaction with life... it's what makes My Chemical Romance fans so bonded together, and gives us the sense that no matter what happens in this crazy place, we're not alone in it, there are five dudes in a band just as f*cked up as we are.


Check out MCR as our Band of the Month to see more on what we think of them here.

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