#chestersavedme

[sisterofoblivion]

I know it’s been some time, and that a lot are still in pain from Chester’s untimely passing. I know there are, and always will be, people struggling out there, famous or not. A lot of us, at least from my friend group, were impacted by Linkin Park and their music since as long as we can remember. I speak for myself, I suppose. There’s this hashtag going around on Twitter about Chester. And, well… this is my tribute. Linkin Park helped me through a lot. They still do. So… here’s to you, Chester, and Linkin Park. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart.

[irenedeovindice-blog]

Suicide - Symptom, Not Selfishness

Today Chester Bennington was laid to rest, but the hearts of those who mourn him are not at rest at all. My heart is troubled in a way it hasn’t been for years, and I’m struggling not to think of his final moments. Today I’m going to speak to those who have called him, or anyone else, selfish for taking their own life.

I’m not entirely unsympathetic to your sentiments, because I had my moment of thinking, “Oh, that rat bastard,” when I found out. As someone who lost her father in childhood, I know how hard things will be for his children throughout the rest of their lives. I’m especially concerned for his sweet little six-year-old daughters, Lila and Lily, because I developed major abandonment issues on the back of my father’s death when I was just a bit older than them. And my father died of brain cancer, so no one could even suggest that he left by choice. But I’m here to tell you that calling people who kill themselves selfish makes you look ignorant.

To those of you who, like me, have struggled with suicidal impulses in their lives: you should know better. The fact that you’re still alive, while Chester is not, does not make you better or stronger than him. He lived a productive, extraordinary life for decades while struggling with depression, addiction, self-loathing and the aftermath of his abusive childhood. And the demons still got him. And they could still take any of us. Stay humble and be thankful for every good day that you have.

To those of you who have been fortunate enough to not struggle with these things, this letter is mostly to you. I hope that none of you ever, ever have to experience the feeling of being a danger to yourself. Of feeling like you, and everyone around you, would be better off if you were gone. Of feeling like eternal damnation would be preferable to staying alive. These feelings are not rational and often do not make sense in the wider context of a person’s life. A person can have a blessed and fortunate life, and still find the world unbearable.

From age nine until age thirteen I suffered from suicidal impulses off and on. My father died when I was eight, and my remarkable stepfather came along soon enough after to help fill the void (though he never replaced my father and never pretended to). But the first few years after that horrible event were the worst of my life. I had a complicated and troubled family life, I was bullied incessantly at my new school, I became estranged from God without my father there to guide me in seeking Him, and life seemed like a bleak road ahead.

The only reason that I did not actually kill myself was that I feared going to hell if I did. My Catholic friends were taught that those who commit suicide go to hell, and I feared that they could be right. (Just by the by, both the Orthodox and Catholic Churches hold suicide to be a sin, but have given consideration in recent history to how mental illness can affect one’s judgment. Beliefs about the salvation of those who kill themselves are the subject of some debate.) God and I weren’t always close in those years, but He was still Lord and sovereign, and my eternal soul was in His hands. If enduring the miserable, dark world for a few decades would save me from eternal hellfire, that was a deal I would take. But I still self-harmed and often wished that life would somehow come to an end because I didn’t want to live life like a tragic character in a sad movie.

The (physical) self-harm and suicidal tendencies stopped entirely after Linkin Park entered my paradigm. They got me out of a massive ditch that I’d never thought I’d get out of and put me on the long, long, lonnnnnggg and winding road to a happy (if imperfect and still challenging) life. That road would be filled with roadblocks, and I would go through another episode of self-harm and suicidality a few years after, though it had a good outcome.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder quite often onsets at adolescence, and mine reared its ugly head and became severe around age fifteen/sixteen. It got to a point where I could no longer function, and although I had a bright outlook on the future at that moment, I felt like it was slipping away from me. I knew there had to be something wrong with me, psychiatrically, but having already been (as I now know) misdiagnosed and given medication that didn’t help, I was afraid that even the best modern medicine couldn’t help me.

A few weeks after my eighteenth birthday, my helpless and terrified parents took me to the ER with cuts all over my arm. In my extremely ill state, that was the only way I knew how to explain I was in real trouble and needed professional help. The only reason I didn’t take a sharp blade and cut my carotid artery was that I owed it to everyone who loved me to try, one last time, to survive this torment, which felt like a culmination of all the pain I’d experienced my whole life. But I had decided, in that surreal space in time, that if nothing could be done to stop the symptoms, I would have no choice but to end my own life. Even hell was preferable to this.

This is the state to which mental illness can reduce people. Mental illness – be it depression, OCD spectrum disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc.– is as real as heart disease, renal disease, respiratory disease, or any other medical problem. But it has an ability like no other kind of illness to make people want to die.

I was extraordinarily lucky, and was immediately taken into the care of excellent psychiatrists who quickly diagnosed me with OCD. OCD is often accompanied by depression, and that combined with the difficulties in my life made a fertile breeding ground for depression. (To this day I suffer from occasional depressive episodes, during very hard or anxiety-inducing times.) The OCD symptoms are largely controlled with medication, with cognitive-behavioural therapy and bibliotherapy as useful tools when they do flare up. I was released into the care of my parents after a night in hospital, and was confined to my house for a week afterward, still in a bad state although filled with new hope. The medications took a few days to start taking effect, and during those difficult days, I listened to Linkin Park as I always did in bad times. I prayed, read Scripture, and thought about all those people who were suffering like me without getting medical treatment.

From the time of onset to the time of my diagnoses was just a few years. Many people suffer from mental illness for decades before they are diagnosed. Some are never diagnosed at all. Some are diagnosed and for a myriad of reasons do not get the help they need. Any and all of these people are at risk for suicide, and no one is immune from it. It’s easy when you’re thinking of ending your life, to believe that you are a burden to those you love and that you’re doing them a favour. I do not believe for one moment that people end their lives from a lack of love for their families, their children, their friends, their faith, or a desire to hurt anyone.

No one knows what went through Chester’s mind in those last moments, and in this life at least, we never will. But I think it’s safe to say that whatever else was happening within him, he hadn’t forgotten about those who loved him. He wasn’t trying to hurt his beautiful wife who loved him so much, his six gorgeous children, his incredible bandmates who cherished him, the rest of his family, or the millions of us around the world whose lives he touched, changed, and saved. He didn’t leave by a reasoned choice, he was stolen from us. For that, I will feel cheated and angry to the end of my days.

So the next time you want to call Chester, or Chris Cornell, or Robin Williams, or anyone else who kills themselves, selfish, stop and think. Ask yourself what it feels like to reject the most basic human instinct, to survive, because life is too painful. Ask yourself what it feels like to have your own brain betray you, and destroy you from the inside out. Suicide is a symptom of serious illness, that could happen to anyone, and placing blame is no help to anyone.

[irenedeovindice-blog]

Bleed It Out - Don't apologize for your grief

Warning: NSFW language ahead

Four days on, and countless tributes to Chester Bennington continue to flow from all corners of the world. Musicians from all genres, actors, athletes, TV hosts…people from so many walks of life are united in their sadness and respect for this fallen hero. I’ve found it very uplifting and comforting over these difficult last few days, reading and watching all the heartfelt expressions of admiration and loss. It’s also opened my eyes to just how much of an impact he’s had on the world, and on a much larger group of people than I realized.  Many of my peers with whom I listened to Hybrid Theory and Meteora back in high school long ago stopped listening to Linkin Park, and dismissed them as has-beens.

A core group of us stuck with them since those days, through their hits and misses, and we’re the ones taking this loss the hardest. For many of us, Linkin Park are more than just another musical act, and Chester Bennington was bigger than himself. I leave it to better writers than myself, and those trained in human psychology, to explain why people so often mourn the loss of celebrities they never met. We all know it’s a bit weird, and highly illogical, but as I said in my last post, that doesn’t change the reality of how we feel.

As has been the case for nearly two decades, the Linkin Park community has come together online from all over the world, and we are comforting each other through this worst of nightmares come true. Generally, people have been pretty well-behaved, but whenever people gather (in person or in cyberspace) to grieve for a pop culture figure, there are always some creeps who show up to mock those in pain. They tell people, “You didn’t know them.” “Why are you so obsessed with someone you didn’t even know?” “OMG, you people are so lameeee, there’s like real tragedies going on the world and ur all sitting here crying over someone you never met.” “[Insert name of deceased] sucked, why do you care that they died?”

To those people, and you know who you are: you’re worthless pieces of human vermin and I hope you each get anally raped with a cactus.

Showing up to a gathering of mourners and telling them their grief isn’t warranted doesn’t make you some enlightened sage with the secret to humanity’s achievement of inner peace. It just makes you an asshole who is further hurting people. That kind of behaviour is immoral, unethical, and totally unnecessary. Also, why do you care about how other people are feeling? Unless someone’s reaction to a celebrity’s death is having an actual, quantifiable impact on your life, their feelings are none of your fucking business. If you’re not offering a hand to hold, or a friendly, sympathetic ear, leave us alone. You don’t have to share someone’s pain to help them through it.

[irenedeovindice-blog]

Bleed it Out – How Chester Bennington gave me my voice

I’m writing this barely a day after finding out that the most influential pop culture figure in my life is dead. Celebrity deaths, especially untimely ones by their own hands, are all too common, and we’ve had a terrible flurry of these tragedies in the last couple of years. Some celebrity deaths have made me very sad, and few hit particularly hard, namely Leonard Nimoy, Paul Walker, and Heath Ledger, for various reasons. But nothing can hold a candle to the what I feel right now. It’s a mix of pain, disbelief, disappointment, and chilling terror.

Pain over the loss of someone I admired, looked up to, and cherished since childhood, knowing his incredible life’s work is over, just like that. Disbelief, because he seemed to be happy and thriving for long, with so much to live for. Disappointment, that he left his wife and six children behind, not to mention the rest of his family and the millions of us who adored him. And terrified by the reminder that no one is ever really out of the woods.

Chester Bennington was a man who shared his life with the world. He was always open about the difficulties of his childhood, being molested by a family friend, the drug and alcohol abuse that started very early, and the suicidal impulses that plagued him for years. With his partner in crime, the equally brilliant Mike Shinoda, he channeled his own troubles into music that changed the way the world saw rap-rock, and changed millions of lives in the process. One of those lives, as you can probably guess, was mine.

Why this is so shattering to me will only be clear to those who knew me long before I was the powerful, confident, bubbly person I am today. When I started listening to Linkin Park sixteen years ago, I was an angry, self-loathing and often suicidal teenager who felt all alone. My childhood was difficult, to say the least, and as I approached adolescence, I questioned whether life was worth living, and often wished it would end. My (still under-developed and pre-Orthodox) religious beliefs kept me from killing myself, but my outlook on life was incredibly bleak.

When I bought Hybrid Theory a year or so after it came out, I spent hours alone listening to it, obsessed with Chester’s haunting voice and the lyrics that seemed to describe how I felt about myself and the world. It struck my thirteen-year-old self as weird that a group of musicians who I’d never met, and didn’t know my life story, seemed to understand me better than anyone, even my own parents. But in these early days of everyone getting the internet at home (this was way before we all had internet access in our pockets), I reached out to other fans all around the world, and found that I was in very good company.

For so many of the people listening, Linkin Park’s music was like therapy, and helped them process their feelings, and face their demons. For many of us, myself included, clinically diagnosed mental illness would help explain some of our despair and feelings of worthlessness.  (Far too often, people’s mental illness goes undiagnosed for a long time, and just knowing that someone else is experiencing what they are is a comfort like no other.) For other fans, they may not have had a clinical condition that caused them mental torment, but the world we live in leaves you no shortage of things to make life difficult. Whatever it was that was troubling each individual, we all shared the common experience of finding comfort in these lyrics, which were mainly based on Chester’s life.

People often stay silent and don’t discuss their problems because they are afraid no one will listen. Many people try to speak out about their pain and unhappiness, and are shut down by people being incredibly unhelpful. “Be grateful for what you have.” “There are people in this world who are way worse off than you.” “Stop thinking so much.” “Stop trying to get attention.” “Suck it up and move on.” “Think about something else.” “You have nothing to be unhappy about, your life is great.” I heard all these things and more, and none of them help. Human emotions are not rational, and we often struggle to understand our own emotions, never mind other people’s. But if a person is unhappy, whatever the reason, that is the reality of the situation. If someone you love is struggling, it doesn’t matter whether you think the struggle is valid, it’s real, and if you love the person, help them deal with what’s real to them.

Another major problem with getting help with your problems is that emotions can be hard to explain. Linkin Park somehow managed to give me the words I needed to express myself, and after that, I started being honest about who I am and how I feel. I was finally able to explain to my parents that no, I was not happy and mentally well, as much as they wanted me to say I was when they asked. I started telling my classmates and friends when something they did upset me. I realized that I wasn’t obligated to pretend to be happy when I wasn’t, or pretend to be someone other than myself, just to make others happy.

This newfound voice came at the right time, because within a few years I had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and comorbid depression, a disease very common but deeply misunderstood. About 2% of the population is afflicted with OCD, and because the symptoms are confusing, embarrassing, and sometimes abstract, it’s hard to open up and say that you’re having them. As a result, many people with the disease go undiagnosed for years, even decades, and some end up committing suicide.

But, thanks at least in part to the ability to speak out that I learned from Chester, I was diagnosed in a timely manner, and am receiving the treatment and support I need. I have always been very open about my struggles with mental illness, because I know from what Linkin Park did for me that sharing your story can and will help others. As my mother reminded me last night during a teary FaceTime call, my openness led my father to help someone he loves get the help he needed. Not too long after my own diagnosis, my dad was talking with a close friend who, as we now know, was suffering from undetected OCD. My dad knew, from his horrible experiences watching me struggle, that the symptoms his friend was suffering from were consistent with OCD. Before long, he had been officially diagnosed and placed in the care of physicians who could help him, putting his life back on track.

I was raised by huge music fans, and the interesting musical era in which I came of age has given me a very wide musical taste. There are many, many artists who have touched me with their work, but Linkin Park is, always has, and always will be the most important influence of all. In her maternal wisdom, all those many moons ago, my mom knew that Linkin Park had done something different to me, and told me that it was nothing to be embarrassed about. Music, she told me, can have profound effects on people, and the best musicians are the ones who touch people deeply.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was I. I continued to struggle for many years - and to some degree still struggle, frankly – with self-loathing, existential angst, doubts about the beauty of life, and lack of self-esteem. But that important, transitional time in adolescence through which Linkin Park carried me put me on the right path, and though it’s been rocky, I stay the course.

The loss of Chester at such a young age, in such a terrible, sudden way, means the road will be rocky again for a while. Like a shovel to the head, the world has seen that he hadn’t recovered from his troubled past like we thought he had. I feel like the stone floor on which I’ve been standing is now shaking and cracking. He was a source of strength to me and so many others, and his own strength failed him. Even the love of an adoring wife, six kids, and millions around the world couldn’t keep him here.

To lose him is painful enough, but to know he took his own life makes it borderline unbearable. Suicide is an ugly thing that has always plagued humankind, and it leaves a destructive wake like nothing else. What Chester was thinking in those final moments is something no one will ever know, and no one can judge him. Whatever caused him to leave us, let’s honour his memory by not letting this happen anymore.

So I say this now, to anyone feeling like giving up: speak out. Even if you’ve spoken out before, keep speaking. Even if the world things you’ve gotten better, if you aren’t, tell the truth. Anyone who would be dismissive or insensitive is a worthless piece of crap whose opinion is worth nothing. There will always be someone to listen, someone to love you, someone to remind you to always choose death of life, hope over despair, and cries for help over silence. Silence helps no one, but truth and openness can save you and others.

[yourockfndn]

We are incredibly grateful to @Slipknot for listing The You Rock Foundation with @NationalSuicidePrevention and @AFSPnational. I hope that fans of @ChesterBe and @LinkinPark discover us and see how many rock stars have overcome their suicidal thoughts through treatment and artistic expression. Despite today's news, I still believe that music saves lives. Bands like #Slipknot and #LinkinPark allow us to feel and express the emotion we spend most of our lives hiding. If #ChesterBennington's music saved your life, please repost this or share a Linkin Park song with #ChesterSavedMe. Lyrics speak when we can't. #RIPChesterBennington

[yourockfndn]

If @ChesterBe's music saved your life, please re-post this or share a @LinkinPark song with #ChesterSavedMe. Lyrics speak when we can't. #RIPChesterBennington