I Hate It When They Call Me Emo

I hate it when they call me emo. They're my lame excuse for best friends, and they call me emo. Then they mime someone slashing their wrists. It hurts when they do that, because I'm not like that. I'm not emo, I'm me. I go to school everyday dressed in black head to toe, eyes covered in black eyeliner, my hair dyed black, and that's just who I am. I'm not pretending to be something I'm not, and I'm not emo. I'm just me. I dress the way I do because I like the darker side of things, I know pain and hate and death, and I don't want to be a person who wears all pink like the world is perfect and their lives are perfect. The day I start wearing a color other than black or a shade of gray is the day the world is free of hate, suffering, loneliness, war, death, pain, and cruelty. I'm not going to change. That's why I hate it when they call me emo.
In their minds, emo is when people wear all black and cut themselves. I've never cut myself, and I never plan to. I've known pain and suffering and death, but I also know that cutting wouldn't make anything better. It would just add to the pain inside of me. So I don't cut. I write poems and do other things to express my pain and anger. Because I write poetry, they think I'm emo. To them, they think all emos do is cry about the pain of the world and write them in horrible poems. They're wrong. I cry everyday, but not because of how "horrible my life is" like every teenager thinks, but because I know how bad life can truly feel. I may be only fourteen years old, but I feel older than my parents with my knowledge. I hit rock bottom a year ago. I don't want to talk about it, just that I'm better now. One of the people that always calls me emo knows what I went through and what I almost did. And he knows half the reason it happened was because people called me names like "emo," "fag," and "goth." And yet he still calls me emo, and has convinced my other "friends" to call me emo, too. I hate it when they do that.
P.S. I'm never going to hit rock bottom again. I'm going to stay happy. I've promised myself, and I never go back on my word.