Chester Bennington passed away earlier today.

Julz
Julz
Jul 21, 2017 · 4 min read

His body was found in his home, and it was an apparent suicide. A friend of mine tweeted the article from TMZ and I automatically ruled it out as a scam or false news, but as time went on and more sources began to report it the anxiety began to tighten itself up into a tense little ball in the pit of my stomach. Everything finally unraveled when Mike Shinoda confirmed the news via Twitter: Chester was really gone.

Some things are cliché and overused for a reason. The phrase “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone” has been repeated countless times throughout the course of history because it’s true: You don’t really appreciate the things that impact your life until you lose them.

I remember when I first heard Linkin Park; I was only ten years old at the time. I remember watching TV with my brother, who was only eight years old, and the music video for In The End came on and we were sucked in immediately. It was nothing neither of us have ever heard before. It was hard, it was edgy, it was catchy, it was good. Hybrid Theory was one of the first albums I ever bought, and the CD jacket is so worn from being opened so many times that it’s falling apart.

The heavy lyrics coupled with Chester’s angry screams resonated within me. Songs like By Myself, Runaway, Pushing Me Away, and A Place For My Head were dark and often spoke about things like feeling isolated from everyone, feeling like you can’t express yourself properly, feeling like the only solace from your anger and pain is to find something to completely numb yourself from feeling anything at all — to eliminate feelings altogether and curl within yourself and let your negativity fester and mutate until it consumes you and it’s all you can see. I thought the album was groundbreaking at the time, and that Chester was screaming all of the things I wanted to scream about but wasn’t able to.

Meteora came out in 2003, when I was 13 — when things were beginning to take a downward turn, mental health-wise. Depression began to set in and it was beginning to take a toll on my academic and social lives. Meteora hit even harder than Hybrid Theory, probably because it was introduced at such a crucial time in my life. Easier to Run, Breaking the Habit, From the Inside, and of course Numb were on constant repeat. Chester was there again, singing all the things I wanted to say to people — that I was lonely, that I was hurting, that I wanted someone to listen to me — but couldn’t.

Linkin Park was a voice for a lot of people in my generation. You knew who they were and you knew their songs even if you weren’t a fan of them. Chester’s ability to seamlessly switch from soft and melodic to gritty and loud wasn’t really heard of when the band just started; nowadays you have a lot of bands — post-hardcore, emo/screamo, nu-metal, even some alternative bands — borrowing that technique. He paved the way for so many bands and artists.

Back then, I was in too deep in my own grief to see that Chester’s lyrics are a tad autobiographical. I feel really bad for not really thinking about it until now, because it makes sense. How else could those lyrics feel so raw and relatable if they didn’t come from a real place? I did some research and found out that not only has Chester suffered from alcohol/drug abuse and mental illness, but he was also a victim of sexual assault in his adolescence. This dude has been through a lot, and it reflects in his music — and I feel like an idiot for making the connection so late.

And the worst part is that you hear this narrative billions of times, the one about how the person who committed suicide left behind so many warning signs but no one bothered to read them. I hate that he had to go through this, and I hate that he felt like he had no other option. I hate that he felt like that the only way he could stop hurting was to end his own life. Too many lights have been snuffed out way too early because of this very reason, and it pains me to know that Chester Bennington — one of the people who helped me keep my own light burning — is now gone.

What hurts most is that he helped me overcome my own thoughts of self-harm and suicide. He helped me cope with the hurt, and the confusion, and the fear, and the anger, and all the different kinds of negative thoughts and feelings that come with mental illness. He made me feel like it was okay to feel these things, and that they’re not out of the ordinary and I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. He made me feel like there was at least one person out there who understood what I was going through — and that was enough. It was enough to get me to realize that even though it’s really fucking hard, it’s always worth it to keep trying, to keep treading water, to keep slugging through it. He taught me how to fight back, he taught me how to survive. The guy who helped me get through my own suicidal tendencies ended up succumbing to his own…and the irony of that situation is a difficult pill to swallow.

Suicide is never the answer and it sucks that there are so many people out there who feel like it is. So many people out there feel alone, like there isn’t anyone out there who’ll listen to them or want to help them — but that’s far from the truth. There’ll always be someone out there who’ll listen.

In the end, it mattered. It always did. I just wish Chester knew. I wish everyone knows.

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