2nd Manifesto
My winged unicorn

I am not a murderer or a suicide-author. I am just a 16-year old girl who has been kicked around by life. I have never killed anyone and I obviously haven't killed myself, I'm very much alive. I live through music, I live through a band that to me represents so much more than just sounds and lyrics. I listen to a band that sings about death and loneliness, I die a little inside and after a while I arise from my own ashes and so I'm alive again.

I should be a society's darling: pretty, controlled and quiet. I close my eyes and listen to a band with a singer who sings and screams his heart out, everything he is: nothing more nor nothing less. I am not society's darling. I am not pretty, controlled and quiet. For everyone else I'm wrong, but for this band I'm always right. When I say I want to fly with an unicorn everyone around me is telling me it's not possible. I put Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge on my record-player and it's screaming it believes in me. "Fly." When I say 'dream' it says 'reality'. When I say 'wish', it screams 'possibility'. It makes me complite. It makes me what I want to be. I'm flying with my unicorn.

My life doesn't depend on this band, but I do. I'm not assuming that this band is going to make my life easy or give me any of the answers I'm craving for. I'm not assuming that this band is going to reveal me the fucking secret of life. This band is only giving me the tools to do that myself. It gives wings to my unicorn and when I understand I am who I am and that's okay, I am able to fly with it.

"One person can't change a thing is the most fucking useless thought I've ever heard in my entire life. Life may control us but we control the world. I can't fight life but I can control my actions: I can be the one who doesn't buy a gun, who doesn't download music, who doesn't judge by looks, who does one good thing a day, who makes the world just a little bit more a better place. I can do remarkable things.

And once... Once I was stupid enough to think that I'm just one person who can't change a thing. I put on my record-player fly with my unicorn and I'm a person who can change the world.

My environment is changing, my schools are changing, my mom is getting older, my friends are changing and I am changing. My life is changing but this band doesn't leave my side. I'm a fetus, I'm still standing on the starting line: I have the right to not to know everything, I don't need to be okay. I am who I am, I'm living my life and if no-one's going to understand me, I'm still going to fucking live it.

The way this music runs through my spine and veins makes me accept myself the way I am. I know whenever I feel alone, I can put on Three Cheers and with my unicorn, I gallop to the air from the airstrip called My Chemical Romance.

Joanna, 2008