The Kids From Yesterday
”I myself, am strange and unusual,” is probably some bullshit phrase (sorry, Winona) I used to describe myself when I was 13. Despite being a little bright-eyed redhead who wore Aeropostale on the outside, I reveled in my own self-perceived uniqueness and treated Tim Burton like some sort of God-genius hybrid. I was a bit of an enigma… or so I thought. Maybe I was just a normal middle schooler. I loved lipgloss and glitter and the color pink, and everything about me screamed “preppy.” I wasn’t necessarily unpopular, but I was a weird girl. I wasn’t what you would call emo, but I wasn’t exactly a poser either. Truth be told, I didn’t even know enough about the subculture to even pretend to be in it. That’s not really important. This story doesn’t start with “emo” or even New Jersey rock band My Chemical Romance. They come later.
It really started in 8th grade, Fall 2012. I was in English class, and I looked across the room to a tan girl with light brown hair and glasses. Icy blue eyes. That was Eva. I thought she was beautiful. And when she opened her mouth, I realized something way more important. She was also weird like me. We became friends. The first time I went over to her house we watched weird British TV and ate Nutella out of the jar like the little Tumblr freaks we were. We weren’t that close back then, but I always felt she understood me in a way that, up until that point, no one I had met in person ever had.
Spring 2013. New Jersey rock band My Chemical Romance breaks up. This wasn’t an integral part of the story when it first happened. March 22, 2013: I could honestly care less. The real emo kids were crying, while I was reading up on the band just enough so that I could make online jokes worth maybe a few reblogs. I was an opportunist when it came to the internet fame I so desired as a teenager. That’s not the point. Whatever.
A blur of a few years… High school’s in full swing. Eva does this weird homeschooling hybrid program, and our shared love for the outcasts and misfits of the world grows together. We are starting to become better friends. She becomes, even more so, someone who understands my brain. She gets me well. I tell her all my dreams and fantasies that I didn’t know would actually come true one day. Sometimes I wish she were still around to see them unfold.
Sophomore year, 2014. At this point, we’re very close friends. And finally, at age 15, I realized the catharsis of screaming “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” in my suburban bedroom while being mad at some boy from high school. Eva discovered the band through her older sister years ago, but it was becoming something we actively bonded over. Both of us now loved My Chemical Romance. We loved Gerard Way. For some reason other than just being the frontman, Gerard is everything to us. He’s not only our favorite member. He’s symbolism, he’s art, he’s everything.
Junior year, Fall 2015. My father (and mother) took us into the city to see Gerard’s band. Not My Chem — they were still broken up at the time. His touring band, in support of his solo album, Hesitant Alien. To us, this felt as close as we were ever going to get to seeing the glory of the New Jersey four-piece. It wasn’t the same, but we’d take what we could get. And this journey downtown, to the San Diego House of Blues, felt exhilarating.
“Where there’s a will there’s a (Gerard) Way.” This is the title of a journal entry I wrote on October 24th, 2015, the night of the Hesitant Alien concert. This late-night entry, scribbled into a spiral notebook in purple pen, ended up morphing into a series of essays that eventually got me through college, and maybe life as a whole. Here’s what it said in its original form:
10/24/2015
Eva and I went downtown tonight. And we saw Gerard Way. I’m still not really sure how it happened, but it was amazing. We didn’t have tickets to see his sold out show, but we wanted to try and meet him afterwards. We drove down there early, blasting My Chemical Romance songs the whole way. Once we got to the House Of Blues, there was a line around the block. Tons of fans dressed in dark colors, MCR t-shirts, black marching jackets, and face paint. We walked around them again and again, just to kill time.
When the doors opened, we sat in the restaurant in the back, drank Pepsi, and listened to the sounds of the opening band. When we heard a crowd scream and the electric guitars pick up, I told Eva to follow me to the front doors. We slowly walked around the entrance, trying to look casual, like we were totally not loitering. I guess our handmade Gerard Way shirts and thick black eyeliner gave us away, because this huge, scary-looking security guard looks right at us, and we were sure we were busted. We thought he was going to get mad and tell us to leave. But instead, he goes inside, comes back with two tickets and wristbands, and asks us if we want to see the show. Now, this part is still blurry for the both of us, Eva was speechless, and I said something for the both of us along the lines of “Holy shit, really??? Thank you!!” and he slapped our wristbands on and we literally ran inside.
The first couple minutes included: gaping at Gerard, struggling to comprehend that he was real and less than 100 feet away from us, taking tons of videos, smiling so big I thought my face was going to split in two, crying a little, and holding up Eva’s phone because she was too shaky to record. I distinctly remember one moment of the concert, because he said something that really resonated with me. He talked about art. He played Maya The Psychic and said that you don’t need to be good at drawing or whatever to be an artist, he says, “Make your life your art.” I know what he said was one of those things that sticks with you for your whole life. After that, he sings “No Shows,” and the concert’s over. We wait outside for him with a group of fans for over an hour. We watch the roadies pack. Gerard walks out quickly. He can’t sign tonight, but he gives us a nod and a wave as he walks by at 11:11 pm. It’s all I could’ve asked for.
I feel like tonight was about hope. The hope we’d get to meet Gerard that drove us out there in the first place. The hope we’d get to hear his voice through the venue doors. The hope in the form of an incredible opportunity waiting for us inside. The kindness of strangers. Our 5’9” embodiment of hope, Gerard Way. Standing so close to us and pouring his songs out, for us. The hope in the electricity surging through every bone in my body. The hope that kept us out long past nightfall, waiting for a glimpse of him. But most of all, his messages of “There is a place for you in this world” and “Make your life your art” that kept swimming through our heads, something we got to take home, something that will keep us hopeful long after tonight.
There is something else though, that came before the events of that fateful October night. Eva and I are both creative people, and we’ve always wanted to make something bigger than us. So, before taking off on the 163 South towards Downtown, we made something for Gerard, on the off-chance he’d come outside and meet people after the show. We made him this box, what we considered a small thank you for everything he’d done for us. Trivial things stuffed inside a vintage Star Wars lunchbox from Target. A handmade t-shirt that matched ours, a crystal, some art and some poems about how “Famous Last Words” kept us going. Some pictures of us and some Post-It notes to hold together the story of his impact and our friendship. Of course, that night, the box didn’t get to him. But as time passed, the box remained and it continued to grow. I kept it at my parent’s house, in my childhood bedroom. It sat next to my bed every night for the rest of my high school career. Eva and I graduated together, class of 2017. I added a polaroid picture of the two of us in our caps and gowns and attached a little follow-up note to Gerard, just in case. I took the little lunchbox with me to the dorms during my freshman year of college. No updates, just our memories kept safe in a tin square. In 2018, by some twist of fate, Eva and I moved in together. The first of two apartments we both lived in, and many more that we dreamt about and never got to share. The lunchbox sat in my bedroom once again, but this time, it was also in hers. Our room, where the walls were covered in photographs, weird art, and collages we both made over the years.
Time passes, and every so often a milestone occurs. We celebrate. We tell each other, we tell our family, we tell our friends, and of course— we tell Gerard. Our little teen dream fan project evolves into something that becomes more of a representation of us than anything actually meant to be a gift for the frontman of My Chemical Romance. We’re growing up within the confines of a Star Wars lunchbox. Every time something big happens, we print it out, annotate it, and file it away for Gerard. It’s kind of funny, because this thing that he has no idea even exists (he has no idea we even exist — we’ve never met at this point) becomes a constant for me and Eva. A safe place to celebrate our wins and find some hope during tough times. It was nice, the abstract feeling that someone’s always listening.
We kept updating the box regularly until early 2019. I think the last entry came right after we attended the Hollywood premiere of The Umbrella Academy, Gerard’s comic-book-turned-Netflix-series passion project. Once again, neither of us got to meet him that night (although Ray Toro and Mikey Way were incredibly sweet), but it meant the world to us to be able to sit in the same Cinerama Dome as our biggest artistic inspiration and turn to see the look on his face when one of his dreams became a reality on the big screen. We were incredibly, absurdly proud of this man that we really only knew through our own lens of our own existence.
July 2019. Another one of my best friends, Taylor, is from New Jersey. So I went to New Jersey, too. We both got our first tattoos together there. She had met Gerard briefly the year before at a convention, and instead of using her short time with him for herself, she thought of me. Even though I was across the country, Taylor asked him to write out a short phrase that means the world to me. Carry on. Lyrics from My Chemical Romance songs such as “Welcome To The Black Parade,” “Thank You For The Venom,” and “Helena,” but also one of the most powerful mantras that can be expressed in seven letters. As soon as she mailed me that little piece of paper with my salvation scrawled on it in Sharpie, I knew it had to be inked onto my ribcage forever. I was branded with hopeful words placed close to my heart alongside one of my favorite people on this planet.
October 2019. I had heard some rumors through the grapevine, but there was screaming confirmation on Halloween Day. My Chemical Romance was back together. Finally, after years of only being able to experience this band through their legacy, there was movement on the horizon. Eva and I were ecstatic. We also tried desperately to secure tickets to the reunion show at the Shrine at the end of the year. We both tried, but only one of us was successful. Eva got her ticket during the bloodbath of the AXS onsale. I did not. That wasn’t going to stop me, though. I congratulated her and moved forward for the next two-ish months knowing I was going to be in that room with her and we’d hear all our most important songs standing right next to each other. There was just no other option.
December 20th, 2019. Eva and I both get dressed in our finest revival looks; long black dresses, flowing hair, and our sharpest eyeliner (similar to our cat-eyed war paint from 2015). She had her ticket in hand. I still did not. However, like I have always said: Where there’s a will, there’s a (Gerard) Way. Through manifestation, sheer determination, some luck, and a friend getting last-minute guestlist from Frank Iero’s team, there was an extra ticket with my name on it. Eva and I were in the building, just like I had always been so sure of. I still consider it the best concert of my whole life.
October 2023. Almost eight years to the day since Eva and I saw Gerard for the first time on the Hesitant Alien Tour, we fell apart. The friendship that had been a constant in both of our lives for over a decade ended. There was a considerable amount of buildup in the months prior, but at the end of the day, we just weren’t right for each other anymore. I couldn’t be the friend that she needed and vice versa. Long, emotional iMessage paragraphs and blocked numbers marked the end of this story, in a way. It at least punctuated the finale of the biggest chapter.
We never met Gerard. He never got, or even knew about the lunchbox. This epic story of adolescent friendship, hope, joy, and sorrow will never reach him. Maybe it’s better that way.
February 2026. I still have the lunchbox. It still sits in my home, which is now an apartment in Studio City. It lays dormant next to the two Gerard Way Funko Pops Eva got me senior year of high school and a ceramic haunted house. In a way, all those memories are haunted too. I don’t think about it much. I don’t think about her much either anymore, to be honest. But something I do keep with me, in my heart, every day of my life, is what I heard Gerard say on October 24th, 2015. Make your life your art. I grew up to be an author, a writer, an artist who tells her story to anyone who will listen. I’d like to think that by doing so, I’ve helped some people along the way.
I saw My Chemical Romance in Mexico City last week. A dream show. A gathering of music and energy in one of the most vibrant cities in the world. Long Live The Black Parade. A remembering and reimagining of one of their most iconic albums, but ironically also a period of time that put immense pressure on them as a band. It was bittersweet. It was beautiful. It was powerful. I wish I could tell Eva all about it.
I looked back today. I cracked open that dusty Star Wars lunchbox and spent time sitting with its contents. Pages and Post-Its, letters and photos and keepsakes and memories of a time that feels so far away now. I found something Eva had written in 2019, and slipped into the box without me knowing. Here it is. I hope she won't be mad that I’m using her words to end this. It is her story too, after all.
2/12/2019
Hey Gerard,
I’ve just come to the realization that this is a little time capsule of mine and Lexy’s lives. We’ve been doing this since we were 16, we turn 20 this year. A lot has changed since 16. We’re basically just giving you little glimpses into our lives for some reason. I hope you don’t think this is too weird, that’s really not what we intended it to be. This started as a little gift of a lunchbox, but now it’s kind of this big, really personal thing. Giving you this will be bittersweet. You’ll finally have it, and we will have achieved our goal, but these little snippets will be done. There won’t be any more updates. Whenever you get this, our stories will end to you. I wonder if you’ll care about these at all. Will these interest you? Do we expect it to interest you? Or are we really just doing it for ourselves at this point? I suppose we won’t ever know. It makes me feel strange. Honestly, you really don’t need to know all this, but I felt compelled to tell you. I just hope that you’re happy.
Signed,
The Kids From Yesterday.
