zombatty-blog

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So, I'm still not 'over' Chester Bennington's death.

Most people would think 'it's been over a month.  You didn't know him.  Get over it?', am I right?

Trust me when I say, if this were any other 'stranger' on Earth, I wouldn't have been personally effected.  Felt bad for their family, sure.  But not personally effected.

This person was basically my hero for years, for many many reasons.  I was never 'in love' with him, never 'had a crush' on him.  It was never about any of that like so many seem to want to conclude.  It was about a pure, raw and honest respect for someone who wore their heart on their sleeve in order to maybe connect with other people, help other people, reach out to other people and to just... relate.

Now a lot of artists have this as their goal with their fame.  Some don't feel genuine about it, and do it for popularity.  Others are genuine about it, for sure.  But there was something about Chester and his humbleness and gentle nature despite being such a tortured person, that made him feel like a friend.

Years and years ago, I lost someone to suicide.  That story is long, and not for this time.  But this event led to what eventually would be my own personal mental nightmare.  And Chester's voice would be the only voice in the world that would reach me and pull me out of darkness.  I mean that, sincerely.  I'm not sure what I would have done without it, or how far down the rabbit hole I would have gone.

 “I don’t know who to trust, no surprise (Everyone feels so far away from me)

 The suicide of someone close to me happened in a wink of time.  One day he was there, I saw him with my own eyes... and then the next day he was gone.  Forever. Just... gone.  The innocent, happy, bright eyed and full of life and positivity version of myself was gone too.  Just like that.  

The reality of death, something I had never experienced from anyone close to me up to that point, smashed me in the face like a speeding car, and left everything I was before in heaps all over the road with the wreckage.

 “So I, I won’t be the one, be the one to leave this in pieces…”

 Everything dark in life, every shitty dark reality, moved in to my head and evicted anything good and light.

I had zero control over this process.  I had zero warning it was coming.  I went from grieving and being confused to being someone that was not who I was a few days prior.

That's how fast your mind can turn on you.  And it happens so fast that you can't stop it.  How do you stop an intruder when you're sleeping?  

So there I was, trapped in my own mind while what felt like someone else, some stranger I didn't know, was driving my body.  I was locked away while my mind was filled with thoughts that I couldn't control. Horrible thoughts about death. How everyone would die.  How we were all just walking corpses.  TV shows I would watch would just be me looking at it all like it was pointless, like the cast were fake, like the people playing them on tv were all going to actually die.  DEATH DEATH DEATH.  Everyone, everywhere, everything, was about death.  It’s all I could see, could think about, and it was weighing me down.  Every breath was heavy.  And yes, that can easily reference the song ‘Heavy’ because I can relate to that too.  Just one more song in my list of life saving melodies.

 “And with the cataclysm raining down, insides crying “Save me now!”, you were there, impossibly alone”

 Then there were the anxiety attacks that came with this severe depression and outright invasion of my mind.  The first one came in the middle of the night.  I lay there attempting to sleep, looking at the ceiling waiting for my eyes to grow heavy.  And then just like that, ONE SECOND, the ceiling was coming down on me.  I couldn't breathe, my heart literally felt like it was shattering from beating too fast.  I absolutely do not remember the journey, but all of a sudden, I was in the middle of the street outside at four in the morning, in my nightgown, shaking and crying, mouth open screaming but no sound was coming out.

That was my first panic attack EVER.  I was terrified.  None of this made sense.

 “Tell me what the fuck is wrong with me”

 Then another came, and another, and another.  The panic attacks felt like I was actually dying, and my depression revolved around death, so you can imagine the lovely chain reactions that were happening inside me.

Then I started to play music.  Instinctively I picked up a Linkin Park CD.  

 “There's something inside me that pulls beneath the surface

Consuming, confusing

This lack of self control I fear is never ending

Controlling

I can't seem

To find myself again

My walls are closing in”

 These words came out of the speakers and went straight in to my mind, found where *I* was hiding, and held my hand.  The way Chester sang, the passion and pain in every note, every line, every word, found me. It reached me when nothing else and nobody else COULD.  It wasn't their fault, I did an excellent job of hiding how severe this all was for me. I was embarrassed to be so broken, and I was terrified because I didn't know WHAT was broken or how to fix it.

But Chester Bennington knew.  He knew, and he knew just what to say and how to say it, to reach people suffering like I was.

“Remember you’re loved and you always will be. This melody will bring you right back home.”

 He suffered too, and the lyrics were reflections of that, and they were real and tangible and they, at that moment in my life, were all mine.

My suffering lasted a full year.  It felt like ten years, or twenty.  I felt like someone else for so long that on the other side of all of this, I wasn't sure who I was anymore.  But the voice of Chester Bennington kept the real version of me alive long enough to survive the onslaught of illness and invasion that was happening in my mind. Because of him (and Linkin Park in general) I was able to have breaks from it all where I didn't feel isolated and alone. Where I just closed my eyes and listened to a voice that reached me somewhere nothing, or no one, else could. He was my lifeline, and when I say he saved me, I mean that.

In the darkest times of my life, Chester was my best friend.  He was my hero.  So yes, I mourn his death.  I miss him. I always will.

 'Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed..."

 He was my friend, and this IS personal.  He sang for me, for you, for himself, for anyone that suffered or suffers.  He wasn't about fame or greed.  He was so down to Earth and caring.  He was just our friend.  It was a two-way relationship that needed no names, no faces. You just knew he would be there for you when you needed him, and even though he's gone, he's helping us through mourning him with his voice and his kind nature, immortalized in video and sound, and memory.

 'Keep me in your memory, leave out all the rest'

 There are few that leave a mark on your heart in this life, and he was one.  

Without him helping me then, and helping me SO much through the end of my marriage and my divorce, I might not be who I am today.

 "This is the last smile that I'll fake for the sake of being with you"

 I might not have had the strength to get through it all and come out as well as I did.  And I now have a business, a beautiful and doting husband, a loving and beautiful mother that is still with me, and I have my mind back.

So, thank you Chester Bennington, for saving so many of us.  I'm sorry that we all could not save you in return.  That's what is almost the most heart-breaking thing about all of this... We are here, he is gone.  Yet he deserves to still be here.  I’ll never be okay with it.  And I won’t apologize for caring about someone I’ve never met, when most of the people I have met could never do as much for me as this one person has done.

 'And the shadow of the day

Will embrace the world in grey

And the sun will set for you'

 RIP dear friend.

[zombatty-blog]

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S��

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