need i remind you...

...I'm still Straight Edge.

It's been 6 years.
I claimed when i was 15 to rise above the worship of a plant and a liquid.
I am now 21.
21...the holy golden gateway to bar culture and being the man at underage parties.

Fuck that.
I said it 6 years ago
and I'm still saying it today.

I find it really funny actually. My life with Straight Edge that is. You see, a lot of us got into the hardcore scene and found out about straight edge once there. Not so much for Whitey and I. Being AFI fans for years, we were analyzing the music video for the leaving song pt. 2 when we saw kids "x'ing up" in the so called "pit."

I had no idea what this was all about so i checked it out.
I discovered Ian Mackaye and his musical and philosophical adventures, got the album Soldiers by Embrace Today, and found out that members of some of my favorite bands at the time (Reversal Of Man, Refused) were straight edge also.

At the time i was making all these landmark discoveries, Whitey and I were also dealing with losing a lot of our childhood friends to drugs and alcohol.

And then one day we woke up and all the friendships we once had were gone. And all we had was in one another.
All because we refused to worship a liquid.

Needless to say it made the following years hard. It gave us scars, it gave us tears, and it gave us a bond that could never be broken.

We started going to shows and meeting others like us. Throughout the years, i meet more and more straight edge kids. And more and more throughout the years i realized how different our upbringings were.

You look at me and you will see a tall skinny awkward kid with straight legs, some punk band's t-shirt and probably some shitty haircut to hide my bulb like hair growth. I listen to a vast collage of musical genres and have a large population of friends who drink and smoke and whatever else.

Does that make me less Straight Edge than anyone else? No.

It seems to me that the reason that "we" are all in the punk and hardcore community is because we were sick of the comments about our dark clothing, taste in "music with yelling", and lack of substance worship. This is something i believe to be the uniting bond between anyone in the scene who went to a public high school and got ridiculed for not fitting the status quo.

But on a daily basis i see my peers judge, bully, look down on, practice intolerance and generally do the same things that were done onto us in our younger years to those who are new or different to the scene. Acceptance and tolerance are the only things that can truly unite people.

As far as myself and my other Straight Edge peers are concerned, we have a similar passion. We despise to see youth, at its peek of activity, creative power, and mental sharpness, waste it's time, money, passion, and overall interest in commercialized and romanticized articles of self destruction.

But for us to judge them for their choices and criticize them makes us no better than the kids in high school who made us feel like shit and cast us out because of our choices.

I have pride. I have pride because i know in my heart that i am doing something that betters MY life. I am Straight Edge for me. And for no one else.