It's just a phase. You'll grow out of it.

Many parents hope that, as their children grow up, those children will cling to values their parents hold dear. This often includes social values, such as music and fashion choices. Children, being the free thinkers that they are, will also be influenced heavily by their friends. Sometimes, this leads to children gravitating toward styles that the parents see as "rebellious." As goths, we're very familiar with our parents being less than pleased with our choices.

"So are you only going to wear black now? All the time?"
"That music is so depressing! How do you even dance to it?"
"That makeup makes you look like you're dead."
"A long black dress and pointy boots? No son of mine's going out looking like that!"

Many of those same parents consoled themselves by chalking it up to teenage rebellion and saying to each other, "It's just a phase" before trying to fall asleep at night. And for many of the parents, regardless of what scene their children were into, they were correct. As soon as they were off to college, or wherever their urges to leave the nest led them, they molted from the trappings of their youth and emerged a few years later with a new understanding of the world and a desire to conform to social norms.

But some did not. Those same experiences reinforced the idea within them that they are different, and that their changes were endemic to their personalities, and not just a factor of teenage rebellion. Fortunately, we now live in a society where people aren't (usually) burned at the stake, literally or figuratively, just because they're different. Certainly some goths do have to "dumb down" their overall aesthetic for the sake of earning a paycheck, but their time off work is still their own. Some of us have worked our way into prominent positions in media and merchandise, and have started making products and entertainment for ourselves. We may be accused of "arrested development" because we still do things we enjoyed when we were young, but many of us have careers, mortgages, children, and other things that people widely use to describe "grown-ups."

But a curious thing has happened. We aged. No one saw it coming, but it happened. Now many cities have entire scenes of goths and death rockers who are in their 40s and even 50s. We still dress the part, play the old music, form bands and make new music. And we are not the first. There were the heavy-metalers before us and the rock-and-rollers before them. All of these were thought of as rebellious scenes designed to annoy parents, but continued on and have people still involved in those scenes well into their old age.

Where do we go from here? Simple: we keep doing what we've always done. There may come a day where it will be laughable that someone my age (whatever that age may be. 60? 70?) will still want to play in a band, but if we didn't stop in our youth when people were laughing, why would we stop now, or at any age? I fully expect to see concerts, fashion, and other creative endeavors from my peers, and hope to be doing so myself. Or maybe, if I should be lucky enough to live so long, I'll wake up on my 90th birthday, realize "This isn't me," and finally walk away from this childish, rebellious "phase." If not, I hope they play 45 Grave at my funeral. That music is so depressing. How do we even dance to it?