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Recently, I overheard a conversation of 3 women talking about a heartbreak another friend of theirs had experienced, and she wasn’t even there. They were calling her all different names, but one name got me pissed off: “Fucking emo kid!!”
People keep calling them “emo” like it’s some sort of disease, like having a working heart is a flaw they should be embarrassed about. They say it the way someone might say pathetic or dramatic, as if feeling anything deeply is some kind of malfunction. As if a human heart is supposed to stay quiet and obedient, never loud, never real.
What makes it worse is how the people throwing the word around pretend to preach compassion. They post quotes about kindness, mental health awareness, remind everyone to “check on your friends.” But the moment someone actually shows real emotion, real anger, real grief, real fear — suddenly they want silence. Suddenly it’s “stop overreacting,” “they’re so emo,” “they need to get over it.”
Do you know what that makes them?
Hypocrites wrapped in human skin.
People mock what scares them.
And emotions scare them because emotions reflect back everything they avoid, their own unhealed wounds, their own buried pain, their own silence pretending to be strength.
They call that person emo because they tore down posters in a moment they couldn’t contain everything inside anymore, as if a single crack defines an entire life. As if anyone gets through the world without wanting to rip something apart just to breathe again.
Let them talk. Let them laugh from behind the safety of their numb little shells.
Because yes — that person feels too much.
They face their storms instead of pretending the sky is always clear. If that makes them “emo,” then let the word become armor instead of insult. The alternative is becoming like the ones who mocked them: bottled-up, hollow, untouched by anything that truly matters.
At least their heart still works.
And maybe it’s the others who should check whether theirs is even beating.
