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musical-chick-13 · 5 years

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Okay, it’s Personal(TM) Time.

This has been on my mind for awhile, and since my url has the word “musical” in it, but I don’t actually talk about music in-depth a whole lot on here, I thought now was as good of a time as any to put this out there.

I talk about suicidal ideation and other ugly mental illness things under the cut, so I’m putting that as a content warning both here and in the tags.

So, as many people who regularly pay attention to my blog probably know, I have dealt almost my entire life with multiple concurrent mental illnesses, which has, to put it bluntly, been an utterly hellish experience that has made even existing as a person very hard sometimes.

There have been many times I have felt hopeless, incapable of moving, or borderline-numb to reality. There have been times I have felt angry at the concept of existence itself because mine was so hard for me. There have been times I have been so full of rage due to my brain hellscape and the inability to function the way I wanted that I was incapable of connecting with other people or doing my job or feeling any kind of positive feelings toward myself.

And there were, yes, a lot of times where I thought that killing myself might be the answer. I made a plan. I made a back-up plan. I fantasized about how I and everyone around me would be free from all of my gross, mental illness hell if I were no longer alive.

But the one thing that always got me through was music. Always. Whether it was me focusing on practicing or finding catharsis through songs that understood my feelings, that was what kept me going. That was what kept me from giving up performing, and that was what kept me alive.

I say this because there has been...a rather distressing trend I’ve seen in terms of how we view certain types of music. Although, in this particular case, I’m only going to talk about one band (or, I guess, more specifically, one person, in particular).

I know it’s probably way too late to talk about this, but I’m going to anyway.

The band in question is Linkin Park. The man, of course, is Chester Bennington.

For anyone who might not be familiar with this whole situation, Linkin Park is a rockish-metalish band (I’m not good at classifying genres of music and I don’t want people to yell at me) that has been around for a pretty long time. They were a pretty big deal when I was in middle/high school, and were actually one of my first positive experiences with music that was not Tchaikovsky or Mozart or musical theatre. They were known for making loud, emotional songs that were filled with pain, angst, and other unsubtle, ugly feelings. And then in 2017, Chester Bennington, their lead singer, killed himself.

I had seen so many memes joking about this band’s “overdramatic” or “wangsty” or “first world problems white boy” music. But...Chester actually felt all of those things. I felt all of those things. That extreme exemplification of pain and rage and sadness and emptiness and self-hatred was exactly what I felt all the time because that’s exactly how suicidal ideation feels.

And there were so many people talking about how “He’s singing about his youthful angst when he has no reason to have any, his life is fine.” But his life was not fine. His life was so not-fine that he decided he’d literally rather die.

I got that a lot, too. People who asked me why I was so upset all the time. People who told me they wished they were me, with my good grades and parents who were still together who loved me. There was nothing wrong with my life. I was just afraid and sad for no reason. I was “crazy.” “Overdramatic.”

But it was music like this, music that understood how I felt, music that I could use as an outlet that made me feel less like an ungrateful, melodramatic, bratty young person and more like a human being who deserved to be listened to, that got me through. This was what I listened to, and this was what I needed when I was having a mental breakdown at two am thinking about what would happen if I dropped out of school and lived as a dirty wilderness hermit at best and just never woke up again at worst.

And I see this all the time. People criticize so much punk or modern rap or “emo” music (and I’m not talking about genuinely unhelpful, counterproductive pieces like “Sad!” by XXX) for being “too needlessly sad” and “self-indulgent in angst” or “overly-loud whining about nothing.” They dismiss music like this as overly-glorified teenagers/young adults complaining about how their parents won’t buy them the newest iphone. And, yeah, inevitably, some music will be that. But so, so much of it is not.

You can’t listen to Chester Bennington’s entire personal, pain-ridden output and then tell me it makes no sense that he was suicidally depressed. There’s a reason his and the band’s music spoke to me. There’s a reason I still cry about his death on a regular basis. Because that very easily could have been me. And I hate to think about any other person dealing with this and coming to the conclusion that that was the answer.

And maybe, next time someone says they’re dealing with stuff, even if things seem “okay” on the surface...believe them. Don’t write them off as just having trivial, insignificant problems that aren’t real. If someone wants to listen to angsty teen pop or make angsty teen pop, just let them. Because that might be what’s keeping them from imploding. (Again, this does not excuse toxic, abusive, or ableist attitudes, and things like “Sad!” absolutely deserve to be criticized. This also does not mean we coddle people who think “white boy” is a racial slur or who feel insulted if someone calls them out for making rape jokes. I’m talking about the young people who listen to, like...Green Day and MCR and Linkin Park and all of the “angsty emo” bands that people typically think of.)

And, for the love of God, don’t ever, ever tell someone dealing with mental illness that they have no good reason to be upset, that they’re just being ungrateful, or that other people have it worse. If someone is is pain, accept that they are in pain. Don’t gaslight them, don’t shame them, don’t invalidate them, don’t mock them, and don’t belittle or take away their genuinely healthy coping mechanisms.

I’ve seen a lot of hate get leveled at Linkin Park and similar bands for venting their frustrations “overdramatically.” It’s time that stopped.

And for anyone struggling with this: you don’t deserve to feel like this. What you feel is real, and I’m sorry that is your reality. This is your sign to stay alive. To not give up. You are loved, and I can promise you that the world would be less without you. You are not alone, and you will get through this. You will come out on the other end, you will recover, and I will be standing to greet you. I am proud of you for making it this far, and please, please don’t give up on your dreams. Stay alive. I love you.

#tw: suicide mention #tw: ableism #depression #mental illness #linkin park #chester bennington #mc13 gets personal

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