Gidget

My Chemical Romance was the first band of my time I fell in love with. I was in middle school, playing Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge on my walkman anytime I felt anxious. By high school, I was jumping on my bed, singing into a hairbrush like I was on stage.

I once saw an interview where Mikey and Gerard said they decided to start a band after seeing Smashing Pumpkins at MSG—that feeling of “that’ll be us one day.” That’s exactly how I felt watching MCR. My mom always said, “I’ll take you to shows because music is important,” and she did. From age 13 on, she drove me to every MCR concert—Chicago, Indiana, Wisconsin—hanging back while my friends and I fought our way through the pit to the front. After one show, I turned to her and said, “That’s going to be me one day.” I even climbed on stage once in Indiana to hand Gerard a letter during Helena because that’s the song they always closed with.

We used to joke that I’d cry all the way home after their concerts because I never wanted them to end. Over the years, I set their music down like a childhood toy and didn’t listen for almost a decade. But when Gerard sang the first note at the show Friday, I broke down—sobbing like one of those Beatles documentaries. I was surprised by how much it hit me. As an adult, I’ve trained myself to suppress emotion, to not feel too much, be too much. But that night was a wave of nostalgia, melancholy, and a poignant longing of the person I was before the world tried to turn me into someone else.

Anyway—I love them. And I made this jacket the night before the show, which I think turned out pretty cool.