Or me sneaking in an entry while I can because I’m working a long shift and I’m gonna be tired by the time I get my sorry ass home.

It’s just sinking in that next week, I have no long shift. I’m working strictly regular office hours, which means I may as well not expect a hefty paycheck next payday. In some ways, I kinda see it as a good thing but at the same time, when I’m getting eaten alive by bills, I’m kinda nervous.

I’m also taking the ExCPT this coming Tuesday. It’s basically the entry level exam to become a Pharmacy Tech. I still haven’t studied – in part because my current job is slowly turning me into a former shell of when I first started out and I come home tired. I feel a little bad saying that because I know there are people out there busting their asses working two jobs, and I’m only dealing with one. More power to them because I don’t know how they do it.

I also had a rough night last night – between realizing that my camera phone and iPod Touch are not getting me the results I want from my Foldio 1 and the shock of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington’s suicide, studying and makeup was the last thing on my mind. If anything, I can safely say that I’m psychologically trying to steel myself against it becoming a trigger for doing the same thing that Chester did. How?

My brain is continuously coming up with a list of what’s gonna go down for the next few days. My coworker is about to leave for her mini vacay and won’t be back until Thursday next week and for at least two days, I’m gonna be stuck with an idiot who can’t perform a simple task and someone else’s job because they wanna take a vacation and nobody even bothered to find a temp or a replacement. Instead, it’s just dump-it-on-the-reliable-workhorse.

Depression just doesn’t care whether you’re an average joe or a rich celebrity – when it comes for you, it’ll come full force and won’t stop until you pass on. It sucks.

I’m gonna try to get some studying done, but Chester’s sudden passing will always be in the back of my mind. I know there are many people who’ve cited him as a life saver during their roughest days – I’m one of them too. I have deep seated abandonment issues that flared up during Junior and Senior year of high school – the fact that I had to somehow accept that I was not gonna be in the same college as people I’ve befriended was a scary concept.

I had already forcibly said goodbye to the Juniors and Seniors I met when I was a Freshman. It was hard not to feel abandoned all over again. On top of that, I wasn’t getting along with my ma and the go-to coping mechanism of bottling up was no longer working. And I was left hanging on a thread by a guy friend I had a crush on.

Until I came across the music video for “Shadow of the Day.” It was the first time I’ve ever seen a Linkin Park video and the only songs that I’ve ever heard from them were “Numb,” “Faint,” and “Breaking the Habit” (blame the infamous AMVs that plagued YouTube in the early 2000s). I was expecting Chester’s velvety screamo vocals to blast throughout the music video, but it didn’t. Instead, I was treated to Chester’s vocal range – soft, melancholic, yet still very angsty. There was no one else who could bring out the depth of “Shadow of the Day.” It’s like you can’t vocally blast it out but you can’t go too soft either.

The lyrics worked so well with his vocals too. And in his own, unique way, Chester gave me comfort when no one or nothing else could and eased the dread of abandonment that threatened to swallow me whole once again.

I think what hurts the most was that the chorus of people who wanted Chester to know just how much he and his work meant to them got drowned out by depression. And it magnifies the most negative aspects of life and molds them into “truth.”

Thank you, Ches. You saved me more times than you’ll ever know.

I’m hoping to make a makeup-related post this Sunday. Now, if I could only get my pictures to come out the way I want them to…