on Facebook
about how Linkin Park's symbol has changed and is now
missing the sixth side in its hexagonal shape because of the
loss of Chester Bennington, as each piece represents an
individual member of the group, and it made silent tears run
down my face as I sat there looking at my phone thinking about
how terrible it all is. It's terrible that people kill
themselves because they think no one would miss them or notice
if they were gone, but the truth is, things are never
the same afterwards. The people whose lives you were in or
whose lives you touched never feel complete again, there's
no replacing you because no one else is a perfect fit to the
mark you left behind. And that holds true for anyone who dies,
whether it's by suicide or any other way. I just lost my
grandmother to cancer and there is an unfillable empty space in
my life now. And the thing that really got to me and made me
emotional today upon seeing that post, was that she
wanted to live. She loved her life, she was a happy,
resilient, energetic, passionate woman who was rarely seen
angry or upset, and when she was, it was for a damn good
reason. She was always on her feet, always traveling somewhere
and looking forward to something, she laughed at almost
everything anyone said and always had something encouraging to
say to someone who needed it. She wanted to
live. She wanted to keep living, and she wanted
to keep giving life to others. But she fell ill and she was
taken from us, from me much sooner than she should have been.
Then there's people whose bodies are perfectly healthy but
their minds are not, and so they take themselves from
their loved ones, they leave when they could have stayed. A
mental health battle can be just as tedious and painful as one
with a bodily disease, it's every bit as deserving of
treatment and support. Don't let anyone tell you that it
isn't. Please, don't take a strong body for
granted. Seek help for your struggling mind so that it can
be healthy, too. Because some people's physical health gets
stolen from them in the blink of an eye, and sometimes
there's nothing anyone can do to recover that.... But
it's never too late to learn to change or manage your
thoughts and coping methods. It's rarely easy, but it's
always possible. Do not give up. Some people don't even
have the luxury of a choice between fighting and letting go. I
wonder, if my grandmother hadn't passed before him, could
she have saved Mr. Bennington by talking to him and listening
to him? I think she might have. She seemed to have that
gift.