{"id":1055,"date":"2017-10-28T07:48:16","date_gmt":"2017-10-28T07:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/dear-chester-bennington-6\/"},"modified":"2017-10-28T07:48:16","modified_gmt":"2017-10-28T07:48:16","slug":"dear-chester-bennington-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/dear-chester-bennington-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Chester Bennington"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is probably going to be a pretty tough letter but, I might as well begin. My name is Tigerstar Massacre- I was a little girl when I discovered Linkin Park, I had grown up in a dysfunctional family and I believed at the time that my mother and brother hated me, so I drifted into music. I found Linkin Park when I was maybe 7-8 at the time, Numb had hit my soul and it impacted my life. I found your band, Slipknot and System of A Down to be the biggest influences throughout my childhood- even when I had been bullied for my looks (I wore black from head to toe, making me the only Goth in school) and the music I loved, I found peace within your lyrics, because I felt you understood what I was going through. <\/p>\n<p>Then in 2006, I lost my cousin to murder and I remember that day as if it were today. All she was doing was coming home and this person stabbed her and robbed her for money. I remember feeling so upset and above all- angry. I wanted to hurt the person who put their hands on her. So I took it all out on myself by self harming. And no one knew because I wanted to keep it hidden from my family.  I found a lot of comfort within your songs &#8220;Breaking The Habit&#8221; and &#8220;Somewhere I Belong&#8221; and they helped enough where I wasn&#8217;t picking up the blade as less as I wanted but enough where I didn&#8217;t hurt myself every single day. <\/p>\n<p>Eventually with your music, I was able to give up that demon and I found my creative path- I started writing stories. Stories that made you on the edge of your seat and made you feel raw and emotional. I feel as if your way of song writing strongly influenced that so I could help people in my own way. I would have people come up and say- &#8220;Your stories are so unbelievable, I cried&#8221; and that made me feel great knowing that I touched some people&#8217;s lives like you did with your music. <\/p>\n<p>Your voice lead me to find so many other bands and musicians that have made me become who I am today- from bands like Black Veil Brides to singers like Juliet Simms, I know I wouldn&#8217;t have found myself if it wasn&#8217;t for you. <\/p>\n<p>And you also not only touched my life but you touched my late uncle you passed from cancer&#8217;s life as well. My uncle told me one time when we were watching you and LP perform at Download on TV, and he&#8217;d told me that him and his roommate who was a tattoo artist, he would blast your guys&#8217; music when he tattooed him. <\/p>\n<p>But the day that I had heard you passed away, I felt like my entire world stopped. I felt like I wasn&#8217;t even existing anymore. I felt my whole world fall under me because I had dreamed that some day that I would meet you and Mike Shinoda and all of the boys in the band and tell you thank you for saving my life. But it wasn&#8217;t going to happen, which made me hysterical. I cried for many days, thinking it wasn&#8217;t real. And knowing that it was and not a figment of my imagination- I listened to every Linkin Park song and sang them at the top of my lungs. <\/p>\n<p>I hope you see that you have saved and touched so many lives- my own as well. It meant a lot to me to have an artist who wrote songs that understood my anger, my pain and my sadness and that will always be something that I will cherish for the rest of my life. <\/p>\n<p>I guess I can say &#8220;Thank you for saving my life, Chester.&#8221; in this letter. Because I mean it. Thank you for saving my life and so many others. Thank you for understanding me. Above all, thank you for helping me find my path in life. <\/p>\n<p>We all love you, Chester. I hope you&#8217;ve found peace on the other side- I really wish you didn&#8217;t end up the way you did but I will always cherish every song and every lyric you wrote. Thank you, again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is probably going to be a pretty tough letter but, I might as well begin. My name is Tigerstar Massacre- I was a little girl when I discovered Linkin Park, I had grown up in a dysfunctional family and I believed at the time that my mother and brother hated me, so I drifted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-love-letters"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}