Skin to Bone: The Fullest, Darkest Version of My Story Ever (CW)

How my fate has always been tied to Linkin Park and Chester Bennington, and what we need to do in the accusations about Emily Armstrong

(CW: details of sexual assault, allusions of sexual assault, and other kinds of abuse)

My forehead is pressed against the glass of the school bus on the way home. The metal around the edges was cool to the touch, giving me a brief reprieve from the heat and humidity, like someone with a water dropper giving you just enough to taunt you as you slowly die of thirst buried in the sand. I have a pair of cheap stock headphones on, they were probably meant for computer usage but they’re what I had. Two things were going through my mind: how I planned to kill myself that night, and the lyrics to Linkin Park’s “Faint.”

I have no clue what year this is, but this memory is etched into the fabric of my being. I’d tried to kill myself before, only to be thwarted by the others who also live in my body (I originally thought they were ghosts, so I’ll refer to them as my poltergeist for now). I spent many of my waking hours trying to figure out how to creatively do the job without the poltergeist knowing. I had settled on something slow, my intention was to use the various poisons from our home that were meant for pest control, wasps and the like, combined with blood thinning medicines.

I can't feel
Don't turn your back on me, I won't be ignored
Time won't heal
Don't turn your back on me, I won't be ignored

Linkin Park’s Meteora had just come out not long ago. I listened to it in my sleep, much to the irritation of my father who often said I should listen to relaxing music. “It makes ME relaxed,” I’d tell him. And it did.

My favorite member of the band was Mike Shinoda. Ever since I’d heard his verses in an In The End AMV (Anime Music Video) of Vegeta (from Dragon Ball Z), I’d become a fan of both the band and Dragon Ball Z.

This particular night, hearing their newest album, I landed on that song, “Faint.” It became my fight song. That night I laid in bed, the song on repeat, and I fell asleep to the spiteful hope it provided. I can’t heal, but I won’t be ignored.

But how did I get here? This is the story about Linkin Park, and the day I decided to transition. It’s not a happy story, but it’s a true one.

With You

I’ve written at length in allusions about the assaults on my body and mind when I was younger. The best I can tell, the fire that nearly killed me in my sleep was the first of many “accidents” in my life starting around age 4-5. Around that time, I began having problems with “sleep walking,” at night.

Not long after, my parents were divorced and my family fell apart. I was stuck between one house where I was in a hostage situation, and another where because of the amount of time I had to be alone I was vulnerable to predators.

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[Note: this may sound like I am blaming my father for leaving me alone so often, I could not be blaming him less. He worked himself to the bone not just for me and our family, but to live up to his family’s name, often subsisting on whatever candy bars were meant for distribution at his shop. If anyone is to blame, I could place that blame squarely on local politicians, businesses like Kmart and Walmart, and more whose aggressive business practices made it harder for my father to maintain any kind of steady living.

We didn’t have a perfect relationship, and I resented him a lot in my youth for leaving me with the wolves. I was angry, constantly erupting inside and I wanted to have someone, anyone, protect me. He was protecting me, the whole time, in the only ways he could. It is not his fault that he was a human being and couldn’t be everywhere at once. I know that now. I love my father and I will not hear a bad word against him where this is concerned]

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Things were done to my body that I still require surgeries to repair. I still bleed often when I go to the toilet because of what they did to me. I know what it feels like to be drowned repeatedly because of what they did to me. I know what it feels like to have microwaved water inside my body because of what they did to me.

At some point, in the middle of all this abuse, I learned what happened to Chester Bennington, or at least enough to feel like he and I were kindred spirits. If anyone understood me, he did. I could hear it in his voice. It was so achingly familiar, not like those other musicians. There was something in the way his voice trembled as he screamed that perhaps only people like us could identify, but I knew him and I felt like he knew me at a level deeper than human.

I watched behind the scenes footage about his story, how the band forced him to get clean in order to join, and the great lengths they went to for his health. The more I learned, the more his story became the inspiration for mine. If Chester could live, so could I. I could do this. I could win. I would not be ignored.

My December

In 2007, a few things had changed in my life. The sexual abuse had stopped, I guess I had aged out of their little program. I felt lost — discarded. It’s sick to say, but in the years prior I even tried to deliberately subject myself to the abuse again and again, but they didn’t want me anymore. The only people I was good for something to, they didn’t want me anymore. All that was left was trying to answer “what now?”

I was hospitalized after an episode with one of my poltergeists attempting to take revenge for me. The weeks leading up to that, I felt raw anger and terror around me at all times. I knew I was possessed. I drew and printed out every kind of ward or good symbol I could find online and taped them around my “room.” All to no avail. I don’t know how long I was in that hospital, my intuition tells me “weeks.”

I had entered a rather self destructive phase of my life, but Linkin Park was still there for me. Chester was still there for me. He was still there, so I could still be there. He outran that dark cloud that chased us both.

I needed to see him, and so I dragged my best friend in the world to a Projekt Revolution concert. We stood in a tornadic thunderstorm waiting for the gates to open, drenched to the bone and bruised from the hail. I’ll never forget how the water heating up in my clothes under the summer sun burnt my skin.

It didn’t matter. I could endure anything as long as it meant I was going to be in the front row of the pit. I spent all my money on those tickets, this meant everything to me. The show as incredible, we didn’t quite make it to the front row right away. With careful maneuvering, by the time Chris Cornell had finished his set, I had a hand on the metal barricade and slowly pulled my way forward. Every moment of that show is etched into my soul. They leaned heavily into their newest album, Minutes to Midnight, which was more political and rock-ish than their previous work. It was something new and interesting.

And then came Breaking the Habit. Chester was inches from my face singing the lyrics. I rolled up my sleeve and did anything I could to draw his attention to my freshly acquired Linkin Park tattoo. He smiled and pointed at me as he sang. I was right. He knew me. I knew it. He saw it in me just like I saw in him.

I could do it. I could survive.

In The End

Years later, I’m in Nashville, TN visiting my girlfriend. By this point, I’ve adopted a rather masculine persona and wear a stubbly beard à la Dr. House. My phone starts to ding: Chester Bennington found dead of presumed suicide.

Nothing else existed in that moment. A part of me had just given up. He didn’t win. He didn’t outrun it. It still caught him. It was going to catch me.

I had no intentions of going quietly. Just like the song said, if I was going to die, I would not be ignored.

After I mourned him and the shock set in, a plan formed in my mind. I was going to die, this was a foregone conclusion. My ghosts could only save me so long. I became even more wreckless.

I nearly sold myself into a trafficking situation to a man who promised to pay for all my transitional surgeries (no bottom surgery though, his clients would prefer me with a penis) and I was not allowed to pick my own name. I’d live with and work for him. I almost went through with it, I was good at being a sex object, at least this way would feel more natural to me. I figured I’d die in that captivity eventually.

When the day came for me to get in the van meant to pick me up, I froze. I didn’t pick up the phone. Later I called for therapy after realizing what I’d almost just done. All the while, I listened to Linkin Park to keep me going, but now there were no more songs in the future. Their story was over. I needed mine to end on my terms, not my abusers.

Castle of Glass

In therapy, I withheld my ultimate goal from my therapist and instead focused on a few things: not transitioning (I didn’t want to die “ugly”) and processing what happened to me so I could get control enough.

It was in that round of therapy that I first eventually told my therapist about my poltergeist. I remember the almost comical, record scratching, pause when I told my therapist that “my poltergeist is in a good mood today.”

What followed was a flurry of visits with other therapists (one of whom I believe deliberately triggered me), long Scantron style tests and IQ tests, and so on. At the end of it, I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. I found out that my ghost was actually six other personas, and my hospitalization was credited to a persona known only as “the other one.”

I also learned from my therapist that trying to avoid transition would only make me sicker. We worked together on my needs, figuring out where they came from, and sorting them from the sexual abuse I could remember. The others, they knew way more than me about what happened to me, enough that every therapist of mine has been shocked and horrified. With their help, though, my therapist was able to help me process my feelings, just a little bit.

I had a name now. Evey Winters. I named myself after Evey Hammond, of V for Vendetta. I saw something in her I wished I could be, strong and vulnerable at the same time. Her name, my name, would become an aspiration I only hoped I could live up to.

[Note: Hilariously, my last name was almost December, because of the song “My December” from Linkin Park’s first album. If eveywinters.com wasn’t available, I planned to use the December last name because I felt it very important I own my name.]

I had decided that Evey Winters would make her debut with a bang. And I had a plan.

I’ll Be Gone

The first part of my plan was simple. I would move to Maryland. Maryland offered me two things that I needed: medicine for my transition, and space away from anyone who knew me.

I found work that would get me there, where I knew I could do whatever I needed to do to myself. Nobody would check in on me, because nobody knew me. It’d likely be days before anyone discovered me (though I made sure it’d be sooner because I planned to make sure my dogs were cared for).

I created a Dead Man’s Box. If you don’t know what those are, they are a form of reverse trap. If you *don’t* interact with them on a certain schedule, they go off and send all the evidence, all the stories, to whoever you please. In my box, I wrote detailed information about what I knew: who did what to me, when, and why. The contents of that box would cut through my hometown like a fire and my death would take down everyone who deserved it. My death would be quiet, peaceful, but my exit from this world would be anything but.

I also began my transition. I wanted to wait long enough that when my body was found, nobody would be able to deny who I was. Evey Winters died here, and everyone was going to know it. I wanted everyone who had ever called me that old name to feel the sting of my refusal to die under it. I was angry. I was calm. I was hopeless. Nothing could hurt me anymore, but I had a lot of hurt leftover to share with the world. They were going to feel it.

Halfway Right

I got my wish. I took those estrogen pills, went to sleep, and died. I will often say that just like the others are not the original Evey, neither am I. The me that woke up the next day, she was so different. She rushed to the mirror to look at herself every day. She was hopeful. She was excited. She had different goals than the me before her, she didn’t want to die. She wanted to see what she could do — who she’d become.

She brought me here, but ultimately she sacrificed herself to this process the same as the other versions of myself did. Each step on the way here seemed to create a new Evey, one custom made for the next step. Until me. I am, I hope, the last Evey that will be necessary.

There are no more steps to take. There is just life. I find myself looking back on my teen years with that same familiar sense of being lost, and having no idea what comes next. What’s there to wait for? What is the goal now?

That question has tormented me over the last couple years. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want there to be another Evey. The last one, she was so scared before she went into surgery because she knew she would never wake up. I read her note to me often. She knew that she wasn’t built for living, she was built for finishing the job. She told me to “go be the stars.” I still haven’t figured out what that means for me.

I fear making missteps in my life, what if I learn too much about me and that causes me to reset just like the other versions of me? What if I make a mistake? What if I’m doing the wrong things? My existence is full of unknown rules, rules that have consequences for me. But I have hope and most importantly desire to see what I can do and how far I can take this new life. What can I accomplish?

This is where you all have joined me. Thousands of you, building a community I wish I’d had and that I never could have imagined. I built the home that I needed, and so did so many others. A home where people were free to wake up as new versions of themselves and to explore all those possibilities even if they’d deeply, deeply messed up before — just like me.

From Zero

It seems so fitting that my legacy and life continue to be tied to Chester’s. As I was struggling for my north star, so were his bandmates. And as I had died and resurrected as something new, bearing the burdens and the benefits of what came before, so was Linkin Park. Just like with me, what they introduced yesterday in a 1 hour mini concert was familiar, but different enough as to be something new. It was, just like me: confusing to everyone who knew and loved what came before.

I was excited. Joyous even. Not too many live streams hold my attention for an hour straight, but Kirsti (my wife) knew better than to interrupt this one and just listened with me. We guessed the songs and sang together. It was new, it was old. There was a new spirit inhabiting the body of a beloved old identity. Just. Like. Me.

And then, as the internet does, immediately people looked for some gotcha.

About Emily Armstrong

I will attempt to present the internet’s case here as factually as possible. It seems to hinge primarily on the account of Cedric Bixler-Zavala and the reporting done by Tony Ortega of The Underground Voice. The accusations levied are being an active scientologist and a rape apologist.

If you’ve read this far, you know that last one has to sting, especially given Chester’s history and my own.

My immediate thoughts were of betrayal. How could the band not do any homework on her? How could they let a wolf in with no knowledge?

And it might have something to do with what’s happening right now: the truth is being buried under a mountain of accusation and noise. It’s noise I’m familiar with, as a victim, and it helps nobody.

There’s a reason I have never named my rapists. The way others would react and what they would put me through would hurt me as much as the assaults. They’d tell stories about how they should have known, or the weird eccentricities of my rapists. They’d distance themselves from the person to absolve themselves of any guilt in my pain. They’d flood my communities with rumor and innuendo, and before long the truth would be lost below an ocean of stories that weren’t about me.

When I see people immediately saying “Oh Emily’s horrible, she’s XYZ” I see a reminder of how my pain won’t belong to me anymore if I share it. They aren’t in those comments saying that sort of thing because they actually care about integrity or justice — because neither of those things can come exclusively from one angry comment and an obsessive reporter. They care about how they’re seen, this is little more than a PR campaign to make sure they look good and don’t touch anything potentially unclean.

As a victim, and as a long time fan who is bonded with Linkin Park at a spiritually cellular level, my intuition tells me that Chester Bennington did not survive all those years under the care of a band and team that did not understand him or care about him. My intuition tells me the messages and reporting are years old, and that none of us know much about Emily Armstrong’s life in the between years.

My intuition also tells me that the people most loudly proclaiming her to be unfit and guilty by presumption are the exact ones who would be the most likely to become a pariah if they ever received a fraction of the investigation being done to Emily right now.

The question before me is about missing information: Linkin Park has had to carefully cultivate their PR and relationships to narratives over the years and I would be positively shocked if anyone in that band didn’t think, “maybe we should check into folks’ backgrounds before we hire them?” There are years of missing information in the story about Emily right now, and two people who have dedicated themselves to anti-scientology action are not the ones who can process that information in a lens designed for any kind of justice. People who have a score to settle are not inherently dishonest, but they are extremely likely to have a very specific kind of tunnel vision that produces something very different than the truth.

We, as the people who want to love this band again in its new form, deserve to have the truth of this new member. We will not get that by presuming we already know it.

What I can tell you is that, right now, if I named my rapists — a lot of people would briefly want to believe in that person they’ve known all their lives, and they would (hopefully) change their tune the more they learned. Some of the people who would stand by my rapists are, I know, good people who care about me and want to do the right thing. It would hurt me, immensely, to see them standing with someone who desecrated my body that way. But that one, very human, action on their behalves shouldn’t be a brand they can never wash off.

I believe that with every fiber of my being as someone who was raped, violently and ritualistically, for half a decade of my childhood. I want to meet the person who’s willing to look at the blood in my bath water and my underwear and tell me, to my face, that my opinion of how to handle this sort of injustice doesn’t matter as much as theirs.

In the meantime, I will listen to the music and I will attend the concerts. My history is not clean, and I know that. Maybe this will be an era of darkness in Linkin Park’s identity, maybe it will be very revealing about ourselves and our own biases. Right now is the time to find out more about this new Linkin Park and its members, to learn the truth and make good decisions.

I wouldn’t be here today if I had not been afforded that same opportunity to become someone new, and that goes for the band and for Emily both. I’m anxiously waiting to learn more, but my faith in Mike and crew tells me there’s something else worth knowing.

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