Weekend Blues

I've got a case of the weekend blues that started on Friday morning, when I woke up to the news that Linkin Park's lead singer Chester Bennington had taken his own life. Admittedly, I hadn't listened to any of their music for a long time, but a few years ago a number of their songs were the anthem of an angry, stifled, rebellious teenage me, who was still trying to figure out how the hell she was supposed to fit into this world. Songs like 'Numb', 'In the End', and 'One Step Closer' were the tunes I turned to in my darkest hours, the ones I blasted through my headphones when I wanted to block out the rest of the world. Chester's voice resided on a playlist of other loud, angry music on my iPod, and on a mixed tape my first boyfriend made for me. I stood in the crowd in front of their stage at Soundwave in 2013, surrounded by people who were too tall for me to really see past, but we were all singing along.

All day on Friday, I read posts from other bands paying tribute to Chester and urge anyone who was struggling to reach out and talk to someone, anyone, because suicide is not the answer. My heart feels heavy just thinking about this.

I've been trying to make an effort to list three positive things at the end of every day to help keep my mood in check. It's worth doing just to make sure I'm not always focusing on the bad things, even though they often seem more frequent and severe than the good. I've been doing it for about two weeks now, but on Friday, after dealing with Rest in Peace posts all day, I really struggled to find three good things to list about that day. I ended up trying to focus on the simple, small things that made the day a little brighter: I had a rostered day off work, I went for a long walk in the nearby park lands, and my partner came home early from work.

Though I am saddened by Chester's passing, once we acknowledge the tragedy and urge others who are suffering in silence to reach out for help, and offer condolences to those who knew him ... I would rather celebrate his life, the greatness he achieved, and the amazing music he shared with us, than only remember him as a man who hung himself.

This weekend, I am listening to Linkin Park even though I haven't done so in a couple of years. I'm also thinking about Chester, the pain he must have been in, the way he must have felt and the things he must have thought in the time leading up to his passing. I turned to this man's voice in some of my darkest moments because those lyrics rang true to me, like this stranger understood how I felt. I wish there was something, anything I could have offered in return to help him too.