No celebrity suicide in the recent past has left me more despondent than Chester Bennington’s. I can’t name a Linkin Park song released after 2007, but that doesn’t diminish the significant impact that the band’s music had on my adolescence. “Hybrid Theory” was one of the first albums that I could rattle off from top to bottom, and to this day, the opening beat of “Papercut” is infectious.
In the days following his death, I’ve pored over tribute videos, live performances and interviews. The video above isn’t actually his last interview, but his words are no less profound. In just a few minutes, it becomes abundantly clear that his emotional difficulties are marked by an internal struggle between two selves:
“It’s insane, it’s crazy in here (pointing to his head). This is a bad place for me to be, by myself... if I’m in there, I don’t say nice things to myself, like there’s another Chester in there that’s like, that wants to take me down... if I’m not actively like doing, getting out of myself, and being with other people — like being a dad, being a husband, being a bandmate, like being a friend, helping someone out, like … like if I’m out of myself… if I’m out of myself, I’m great. if I’m inside, all the time, I’m horrible, I’m a mess.”
Depression and its evil stepsister, suicidal ideation, are exactly that: captivity of your mind, imprisonment of your thoughts, slavery to your cognitive distortions. Trivial episodes are contorted into great tribulations and innocuous adversities are transformed into emotional ordeals. Bad things happen to everyone, but the way our minds process them is what separates the mentally strong from the weak. There is no objective justification for suicide — only questions about how we could have seen it before it was too late. When well-meaning people rush to remind you "how good you have it," they fail to understand that it's not external circumstances that are plaguing your mind — it's the internal turmoil; we just tend to conflate the two. To compound it even more, this mental incarceration clouds the self-awareness that the depressive needs in order to seek help.
But Bennington doesn't stop there:
"But it’s the moment, where it’s like realizing I drive myself nuts... all the stuff that’s going on in here (points to his head), it’s actually just, I’m doing this to myself, and regardless of whatever that thing is, so this is that conscious awareness of that thing, and like when you can step back and look at something, like you’re actually elevating yourself consciously, you’re enlightened at that point, to a certain degree, and so this is that moment of enlightenment where you go, you know, I could do something about this, and by doing it, I could move forward and get unstuck from this and I could actually be able to — for me, it’s like I can live with life on life’s terms, like I can experience the whole spectrum of humanity and not want to get out of it, whether it’s happiness, sadness, or whatever, I just want to — like when I’m in it, I just want to get out of however I’m feeling, no matter what it is."
Life becomes a constant search for these moments of elevated consciousness. These moments come unexpectedly — they could happen in places as breathtaking as the Karakoram Mountains, or they could happen in places as mundane as the dinner table, surrounded by loved ones. In these moments, the mind is liberated from the mental gymnastics that will twist every reality into its bleakest interpretation. These moments are not marked by gratitude as much as they are defined by clarity — clarity that you are in full control of your destiny and that this doesn't have to get the best of you. As fleeting as these moments are, they are the opposing force to a relentless barrage of cognitive distortions, and lay the foundation for the path toward a sense of normalcy.
When you are conditioned to take every adversity and turn it into its worst case scenario, these epiphanic moments are few and far between. The emotional pain becomes an addiction, and you don't know how to live without it. That pain manifests itself in the form of a resistance to any and all forms of help, even when it comes from loved ones. I’ve rebuffed many attempts at intervention, but the persistence of my closest friends has always proven to be the victor. I'm lucky in that way. Others are not, and we should always be ready to lend an ear to those who are not so fortunate. You can thwart them from taking one step closer to the edge.
I leave with a lyric from a track off “Hybrid Theory” fittingly named "A Place for my Head":
“I want to be in the energy, not with the enemy a place for my head"
A place of energy, indeed — one that sets us free from the debilitating effects of depression. A place for my head.
Mehran is currently wandering the Earth in search for the next obscure music festival. He is a compulsive CrossFitter with all of the cultish devotion and none of the results. You can find his other writing pieces scattered across a disorganized collection of iCloud notes.