When I saw the headline from the Daily Mirror, I couldn't believe it. I just assumed it was one of those fake headlines, and with a knotted stomach, I clicked the link, waiting for the rick roll. Of course the punchline didn't come, and I reacted the way I do to most bad news: I froze. I went numb and felt nothing. 10 hours later, it brought tears to my eyes.
In my early 20's, my closest friend jokingly referred to it as my love of "angry, white-boy rock." I didn't have the words then to explain my connection to the sadness and rage in Chester Bennington's words. I couldn't explain why the frustrated sadness and rage made more sense to me than the artful alienation of David Bowie. But I want to explain, as well as I can, why I love Linkin Park. I want to explain what they mean to me, and why Chester Bennington's suicide makes me cry.
The context is, of course, everything. I grew up in a rural area, where there were two radio stations to choose from: one pop and one country. So I listened to the radio and clenched my teeth through boy bands and Britney Spears to find tolerable pop rock groups. I had missed the grunge years, and found myself in the middle of a pop hell that never matched the anxiety and fear I hid behind spiked hair and baggy clothes. All I had was a discordant soundtrack of Hanson and NSYNC played over anxiety and self loathing.
Hybrid Theory, their first album came out in 2000, my first year of college. That was when I first realized just how bad my depression was. It's when I first realized that it was depression and not just being over emotional. I was figuring out that the infrequent highs, regular lows, and general numbness weren't just hormonal changes, but a lingering specter that would never go away.
As I vacillated between numbness and anxiety, sadness, and rage, I felt as though my physical form hadn't been put together properly. As if some immutable aspect of myself was wrong, like a shattered bone that never healed right. But I kept smiling, kept doing my homework and going to class. I didn't know what else to do. All the while, I felt like something was slipping away from me. I felt stretched thin and on the verge of breaking, trapped in an invisible tomb that kept me from the world, yet no one could see it. And amid the overwhelming numbness was a looming terror of what would happen when I finally broke. This is who I was when I first heard Linkin Park.
I remember sitting on an orange couch the first time I saw a Linkin Park video. At first, I seemed a bit over the top, like a bunch of suburban boys playing badass. Then I heard the rage filled cries of Bennington. Bennington's rage and pain were never an act. They were a part of his demons, exorcised, as he screamed out. When he sang "everything you say to me, brings me one step closer to the edge, and I'm about to break," something in me clicked. The music resonated with me, connected with the sadness, confusion and anger I felt. It was the notion that something was lurking, hidden, with the power to break me.
But at the same time, there was a strength, a will to remain unbeaten. Chester sang these words, these fears, but continued on. At that time, I sought every scrap of hope that my depression could be conquered. All of the dark thoughts I'd tried to imagine as figments, Bennington would scream, but survive. He made me feel less alone. He made me feel like all of my anger and sadness could make me stronger.
Knowing that he killed himself hurts. A part of me felt that if he survived, so could I. But that was never my choice, and I am not him. We all make our own choices, and he made his. My heart aches for his wife and children. I lost my own father to illness, and I can't imagine how they feel. But my heart breaks for Chester.
Because what people don't seem to understand is that for so many of us, depression isn't a one time battle; it's an endless war. When you feel worse, you play with your meds, talk it out, hope for the upswing that can years to arrive. Sometimes, I'm lucky to reach a state of melancholic normality as opposed to the oppressive numbness. It's exhausting on a on a bone deep level. It's a feeling that you either recognize or don't, and it can't ever by truly explained to you.
During the past, when I would contemplate suicide, I would think of my family, of my friends. Of how I couldn't abandon them. The more exhausted and disconnected I felt, the longer it took to for me to remember them. For Chester to have chosen suicide, I can only imagine how tired he was of that endless battle. I imagine he made this choice because he was so exhausted that he could no longer face another 41 years of downs interspersed with a hard-won happiness. I think that in the end, death didn't seem like a bad thing, but permanent surcease from the endless struggles in his mind. I think in the end, he was just so tired he felt everyone would be better off without him.
I feel terrible for his family. I know that his death, his decision to end his life, has shattered his family, and their pain is unfathomable to me. But I can understand why he did it. I just wish with every fiber of my being that he'd found a way to keep fighting for his family.
I'm sorry it wasn't easier for you, Chester. But your words helped me. And though you'll never read these words, or even know who I was, I hope you've found some measure peace that you never had in life.
