If you've ever wondered what happened to those long-haired, black-clad teenagers that skulked around the local mall when they grew up, look no further. That's right — we walk among you largely unnoticed. In my transition from mopey adult to semi-functioning adult, I've discovered a few things about life after being emo:

Once you're in the professional world, wearing all black is totally acceptable.

What used to be a marker of the emo kid's status as a special, sad snowflake is now a symbol of power and quite slimming.

All those hours of forcing your face to be devoid of emotion have trained you to be an excellent poker player.

Or maybe it's really just trained you to be able to stand unflinching in the face of the emotional hurricane that is adulthood.

The cover bands at local dive bars know all of your favorites, so your weekends will be often be like a drunken trip down memory lane.

Remember when it was embarrassing and weird to watch your parents jam out to the oldies? That's you now except with Blink-182 instead of the Bee Gees.

You'll never have to admit it, but you end up being thankful that your parents put a halt on your "self expression" before it got too out of hand.

If we all had our way, our school photos would have looked like screen captures from a Tim Burton film.

"It's not a phase" was actually true.

Looking back, it's easy to see that being "emo" was a creative, pretty harmless way of dealing with the hormone battlefield that was middle school. Even though life's problems might seem trivial in retrospect, they can be very real and quite terrifying in the moment. Dealing stress will always be a part of life, and as a former emo kid, you have the skills to know that feeling like an outsider with the world against you isn't a position of weakness, but rather an opportunity to find a community of like-minded individuals willing to take on life's trials together.