In the end

“Linkin WHO cares if one more light goes out?”

Park’s Chester Bennington sang. For fans like us, we definitely do care. We do not need another lost flicker, not after Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, or the many musicians who took out their own candle lights. Their music was very much part of our highschool lives, especially that five-note intro that starts with “One thing…I don’t know why”.

Ushering the millennium, Linkin Park became the alternative to the boy/girl-band-saturated music scene. Fifteen years have passed but I can still sing the lines of their Hybrid theory songs. It was not only that grungy screams, sharp distortions, and deep rapped poetry that appealed to us youngsters with our teenage angst, the rebellious sound expressed our fears and internal struggles. It made us feel that we’re not alone. Unfortunately, this ends with one more light out.

People ask, “what makes one finally kick the chair? To numb one’s self and die inside?” Escape? Humans will always seek to escape reality – this gloomy, dark and corrupted world. Even a tourism guy like me who has to exude fun and positivity knows what it is. I have personally seen its face, I have struggled against it…and I won. But there are those who are still there; battling depression, doubting their value and existence, or struggling to face challenges after challenges.

The inner demons are there, fed and fattened by the elected medicine – alcohol, drugs, or what have you. For me, I had alcohol. I was dependent on it for many years that started in that little sip in college. I had to drink to sleep every night which is haunted by my contemplation of life’s absurdity. It did not help that I was a reader of Camus, Nietzsche, and Sartre. It didn’t help that I easily become miserable with the pitiful and wicked things around me – disease, poverty, power politics, war, the human suffering in general. That is why I thought of it, you know, who would want to become part of this dark world? I was drowning and struggling for air. Thankfully, I was saved by a little boy in that rainy August.

Chester was on that struggle too. He was bullied, molested, and had a tough childhood. He had kept those agonizing experience deep down which would be later used as embers to their raw music. Despite the band’s success, he himself said that even successful people are not immune to the human experience; that, “success does not equate to happiness”, maybe musicians are even more exposed to the darkness of their arts. He was on deeper water and worse, a metal ball chained on his leg. Even his family was not enough to save him from that murky pit.

I wouldn’t really know what it felt like for those who chose that way. I can only tell my story but not theirs. I had a friend who shot himself in the head, and until now, I would never really understand why he pulled it. I mean, I can understand the feeling, but not the extent of its effects to a person. Still, we cannot afford to romanticize depression and suicide. It’s just NOT the way.

Even if Chester was one of my music heroes, and because he is, I will not have second thoughts in concluding that he became selfish for not sucking it all up for his family and friends. I simply couldn’t imagine what his six beautiful children are going through at these times. But then, who am I to judge his life, or anybody’s life? Perhaps his inner demons have taken control and dragged him against his will? Or he simply made a lethal mistake and there’s no way back? Or maybe he forgot …he forgot what really matters more than himself in the end.