TW: Suicide, depression, mental illness
I say with no irony, that Chester Bennington, lead vocalist and frontman for the nu-metal band Linkin Park, was a legend. When Prince died, my mother was in tears. When Carrie Fisher left us, my girlfriend wept and wept over her space mom. I adored those artists as well, but I didn’t connect to them or their work in an intimate fashion like my loved ones did. But Chester was like that for me. I’ve long loved the band, every member, and I can’t imagine what they’re going through right now, much less Talinda Bennington and Chester’s kids.
If you were unaware, Chester died by suicide recently. It still feels unreal to think about, let alone write that sentence, but it’s the truth. For someone whose soothing and cathartic vocals so often communicated the hurt and weight in my heart across seven albums, he himself couldn’t go on in the end. That hits me deep. I never wanted to say goodbye to Chester. I wanted him to keep raising his beautiful family and keep making music with his best buds until they were all old and gray. I keep wondering why he left, and some facts do emerge - Chester was a survivor of sexual assault, which factored into the substance abuse he struggled with, and he grew up isolated like a lot of the kids who listened to his music. He was a deeply human artist, someone who genuinely cared about the well being of others. When his longtime friend and fellow artist Chris Cornell died by suicide, I think maybe Chester couldn’t get him out of his head - Chester left us on the day that Chris would have turned 53 years old.
On social media, there was an outpouring of love and grief for the Benningtons and the members of Linkin Park, but there were also the slanderers, the mockers, the scum. Folks hacked Talinda’s Twitter account to post some horrible lies, and some still today deride Chester’s death simply because they don’t like the music of Linkin Park. I think about how hipsters who jeer at Linkin Park as being solely music for middle schoolers and then I remember Chester put all of his heart and soul into every lyric. I think a lot of folks have serious thinking to do about how they contributed to his depression.
I myself have long struggled with depression. It’s impacted my grades, my family, my life’s work. I’ve never made it a secret. But it’s an inalienable truth that our modern capitalist society stigmatizes mental illness and marginalizes those of us who live with it. Health care in Amerika is a freaking disaster where folks who are more concerned with respectability than the lives of human beings applaud war criminals as they vote to make health care even more out of reach for the mentally ill. It is simply not enough to post the Suicide Hotline or to tell mentally ill people to “speak up”. You are your brother’s keeper. Check in with your friends. Listen. Preventing suicide and taking care of one another takes work. Part of that work is standing up and not buying into ableist, disgusting lies about how it was Chester’s “responsiblity” for his suicide or that he was “selfish” or a “coward” as Korn so eloquently put it. The people who leave us because of depression are not villains or cowards. There is a lot to be depressed about in our profoundly racist, profoundly elitist, profoundly misogynist world even without the burden of mental illness. That anyone at all maintains a modicum of what is called “sanity” is amazing to me. Chester did try to get help. Chester inspired millions. Chester loved us and others.
It should not take the death of a legend, an artist on a worldstage, for people to rise up and love one another. You will be missed, Chester. RIP.
