Dear Agony

Last week right about this time I was in a state of numbness. I had just wrapped up another semester of grad school. One of my cousins had just passed away. My work has been in a constant shift of uncertainty lately. But through it all, I was still looking forward to seeing another of my bucket list bands – Breaking Benjamin.

The last time they were in Lubbock, I was pregnant and there’s no way I could’ve survived a rock show. Last year, they did an acoustic tour and one of the stops was in Midland which is only two hours away from me. But it was on a Tuesday and I felt like if I was going to see one of my bucket list rock bands, I wanted to get the full effect!

Well, about six months ago I started getting notifications that Breaking Benjamin was hitting the road again. I decided that if they would be in Albuquerque, I’d head out there again since my last two concert experiences there have been amazing! On the day of the official tour announcement, I saw Lubbock was one of the stops! So you know I totally jumped on that! And I didn’t go for some reserved seat. I wanted to be up close and personal right in front of the stage, even if it meant getting destroyed in the mosh pit!

The first time I heard Breaking Benjamin was when we moved to Midland, TX, way back in 2006. It was so exciting to me that they had a real rock station there! At that time “The Diary of Jane” was all over the place, and that was my first exposure to the band. After doing the MySpace research on them (remember this was 2006), I found more of their songs I fell in love with because it was mad rocker music that was genuinely good and there was actual thought behind it. They rocked so hard! I was a fan!

Fast forward to 2009, we were living in Lubbock. So many things in my brain and soul just hurt. I didn’t have anyone to really talk to and I felt lost. There were things I wanted in my life, but I felt stuck. I was seriously going through things. My depressive problem was getting the best of me. I was going through an existential crisis, the voices in my head screamed louder than ever, and no one around me could hear any of it.

One day as I was surfing the interwebs looking for music to save my life, I came across Breaking Benjamin’s new album, Dear Agony. I listened to the title track and the world stopped. At the time, I had no idea about the reasons why Ben Burnley actually wrote that song. I just knew that someone in the world reached into my soul and knew exactly how I felt. Dear Agony became a song that was drilled into every bit of my soul!

So last week, I was excited to rock out! The show was amazing! The whole thing was so high energy from the beginning to the end! Getting to be in the same room as a band that touches your soul is somehow cathartic. I love the rush of absorbing amazing music with a few hundred other people who just get it! The only thing that would’ve made it better is if they had played longer than a one-hour set. But they performed all the crowd favorites that we all sang and jumped around to.

Then they performed Dear Agony right in front of me. I wasn’t expecting them to play that song. And my little soul was just so happy. Even though it’s a song about real pain, at that moment, I was reminded of how far I’ve come in healing myself. The depression and anxiety will never go away, but we’ve learned to live together without breaking me.

Dear Agony
Carry me to Heaven's arms
Light the way and let me go
Take the time to take my breath
I will end where I began

And I will find the enemy within
'Cause I can feel it crawl beneath my skin

- Breaking Benjamin