The enormous loss of Chester Bennington.

I have been thinking about what was going to be my first Steemit post for about a week and a half now. Was I going to make this about veganism? Libertarian-ism? Who was my identity going to be on THIS social media platform? And then Chester Bennington killed himself and all of those questions in my head just vanished. I know that just about everyone says this but usually celebrity deaths don't affect me the way this one did.

Chester's death shook me down to my core and that is because it is so fucking tragic. Here was someone who had demons for a very long time but had seemed to figure out how to keep them at bay by surrounding himself with the things that truly mattered like his wife, his kids, his work, music. And all of a sudden, he went home one day and strung a rope up and hung himself leaving behind all 6 of his children and that's it. No more Chester, no more Linkin Park.

I cannot imagine feeling as trapped as he did in his own mind. Depression does not discriminate. I remember being thirteen and angry about my parents mistakes and shortcomings, their divorce and the situations it put my sisters and I through and I needed an outlet. So when my best friend at the time, Renee, played me Linkin Park...I was hooked. I played 'In the End' on repeat, over and over and over. And then I heard 'Crawling', then 'Papercut' and by the time Meteora was released, I was listening to them every single day and fast forward to 2017, I will blast 'Faint' whenever I'm feeling super pissed off and I need a release. Drumming on my steering wheel, screaming my lungs out to the song is the sort of therapy I never got when I was young. It's fucking cathartic!

The year I moved to Las Vegas, I was working at a hotel and casino downtown and they paid the Stone Temple Pilots to come and perform. Chester was their frontman instead of Scott Weiland. I was working as a production assistant so I got Chester's rider and set up his green-room and remember listening to him warm up from the hallway. I was in awe. His voice was incredible, I'll never forget that moment. I met him a few hours later and I was on cloud nine.

So in honor of my first Steemit post and in honor of Chester Charles Bennington, the vocalist who changed my life and who changed what I thought about music, I created a cover of 'Crawling.' I am so heartbroken that I will never see Linkin Park in concert. It may be one of my biggest regrets.

Rest in peace, CB.