Papercut | Mike Shinoda/Linkin Park

It's Me, Jordene.

Hey guys, Jordan/Laura/Jordanah/Jordene/Bennerz/Mrs Shinoda/Mrs Bourdon/what have you here.

This isn't a chapter obviously, and I don't know how to properly begin what I want to say, but I'm going to go ahead.

When I saw the announcement that Mike had three new songs coming out, my heart sunk. I hoped they would be Linkin Park songs, or Fort Minor - but no, his own. I feared the worst, that he was departing Linkin Park (god, I hope this doesn't happen).

I anxiously sat around waiting for the Post Traumatic EP to come out on Spotify. I was an anxious mess - part of my own mental health and things going on, but all I could see in my head was Mike leaving.

At about 1am, I went on YouTube and I decided to sit through the concert for Chester entirely, something I've never been able to do. I've flicked through certain songs in the past, and really, the furthest I've ever gotten was Looking For An Answer. But I watched the whole thing.

I had an intermission about halfway through to go outside and have a smoke. I'd been watching YouTube on my iPad and turned off all my notifications for everything, so when I checked my phone, I saw the update [jordanlaurabe] m_shinoda just uploaded a post. I didn't want to open Instagram and bring myself to reading about him possibly departing the band. When I opened Instagram, I found out he wasn't leaving. Just uploading very personal songs under his own name.

I quickly added the EP to my playlist and went back inside to finish the concert. I made it through Talinda's speech without crying. But as soon as the speech at Birmingham about Manchester came on, I lost it. Was that Chester's last concert? I think it was. He was saying goodbye. I lost it.

. I couldn't sit in my pitch black bedroom with the only light emitting from my screen for any longer. My chest ached, the pain of loss. I know I didn't personally know Chester, but all I can think about are his kids, his wife, his family, Mike, Rob, Joe, Dave and Brad.

I couldn't stop thinking about how wrong every guest singer looked. That should have been Chester. He should have been up there with them. That concert shouldn't have happened at all.

I still feel empty and can't believe he's gone. It's a horrible cold feeling in my chest. It hits me more and more everyday. I probably sound like the most cliche fucking idiot right now, but you have to believe me as I say all this.

I've had many people comment/message me about PAPERCUT. Olivia, Ashleigh, Jackie, Sierra, Imersion, BreathlessThunder, Iamaginary, Lena, Iveta - you all know who you are. Your support since I published this book means the absolute world to me. I hope you all know that. I know I may come across as rude, or short tempered in certain replies and messages - but I really, truly, honestly don't mean to be. I'm not that girl the haters make of me either. I'm broken

Next month is his death anniversary. I have death anniversaries everywhere.. I don't want to have to cancel my holidays and time to see family, but I'm most likely gonna have to - I'm so busy I hardly have time to take a breather each day.

My best friend Olivia has been offline for six days now, and I'm worried. Another friend of mine - a huge Mike Shinoda/Linkin Park fan who I met through PAPERCUT, has gone on a hiatus from social media. I feel like every single person who talks to me hates me. I have to search profiles to make sure I'm not being set up. I'm paranoid and insane.

When I started writing Papercut, Olivia Grace was immediately the name I had for the main character. Rob was originally supposed to be in Mike's place, and Mike in Rob's - but I decided to swap them around. I played around a lot with a few plot ideas and I feel like they're all coming together in a bad, amateurish, unrealistic, and stupid way. I hate how I made Olivia disappear. I look over mistakes I've made in certain chapters and curse at myself. I lost the motivation to continue writing PAPERCUT not too long ago, but thankfully, I got back into it. I think the reason for that is, I feel guilty. Guilty that I'm writing this about real people with real feelings. People who will never even know my book exists. So far in my plot, I've made Mike look crazy, deranged, dangerous, and abusive. I did not want him to be like that at all. Rob's character isn't much better either. I don't even know where to begin when writing about Chester. But there's this trigger in my head that tells me every time I write a sentence, a word, that if Mike or Rob or whoever got the chance to read this, they'd be horrified, mortified, demand I take it down. I know it'll never happen. But guilt's a language I can understand very well. I know what it's like to be behind a page full of slander, I've slandered a few people myself - but I'm no better. I feel like I'm slandering Mike Shinoda and Rob Bourdon. This book is stupid and hurtful. I don't know what else to say. But apparently you guys seem to like it, so I'll continue writing it.

I chose the song PAPERCUT as the title, because I wanted Olivia's character to be like me - paranoid, labelled as crazy, insane or troubled. There's no better character I can write than one who suffers from the same mental health problems I do. None of this will make sense to anyone. But it makes sense to me. Any questions? Leave them down below, please. I'll be happy to answer any. Even the 'why you so stupid?' questions.

I myself have a few questions for my readers, and even though I'm only expecting two - or now possibly one person to answer, I'm going to ask them anyway.

1) What do you like about PAPERCUT?

2) Anything I can improve on?

3) Have I taken it too far?

4) Should I even keep PAPERCUT up?

5) Would you like a set day of the week for updates? Or would you rather I keep it spontaneous?

6) Would it be okay if I used the songs off Mike's new EP as chapter headers? (For example, the last one was Burning In The Skies)

7) Do I talk too much about random crap?

8) Should I cut down on the GIFs and chapter lengths?

9) and do I have any character requests/scene requests? Or song requests?

Thanks you guys. I'll try to get my updating schedule back to the norm soon. I just have to find time, leave behind certain things and 'put to rest what they think of me', and get past this...slump.

Yours truly,

Jordan-Laura Bennington. Officially.