Fahrenheit-182: A Memoir

by Mark Hoppus

But my foot kicked something as I turned. My cup of apple juice. It spilled everywhere. On the walls, on the floor. The door flew open as the juice soaked darkly into the carpet. That same shag carpet I lay on and listened to records when life was normal. It had betrayed me. I was caught.

I learned that quiet means disquiet. Quiet means yelling is on the way. Stop the quiet before it starts.

I don’t know if the sessions helped, but at the end of it the therapist gave me a book and told me to think about the story inside. The story followed a kid who lost their beloved teddy bear. The child was distraught. They looked everywhere. Despite their best efforts and fruitless searches, they never got it back. Never found it. The bear was gone. The moral of the story was “sometimes you have to let go.” I’m pretty sure it was the book they were supposed to give the kids whose parents died, but I went with it.

But with that desire to please people comes the fear of letting them down. I am constantly worried about being the source of friction. I want everyone to get along. I never want to put my own needs forward in case they upset a precarious balance. This dynamic is what made me the person I am. It gave me the good parts of my personality, as well as the darker parts. It gave me compassion and patience. It also gave me anxiety, hypervigilance, and the constant need for reassurance that everything is okay. Is everything okay? Really?

I once heard that the Japanese approach to life is you work every day toward perfection, knowing you’ll never reach it, but always moving closer. To me, that’s skateboarding. It’s art—abstract expressionism on concrete. Also, skaters are allowed to drink and smoke.

The next morning Tom called me to see how my feet felt. Then he said, “So . . . you want to come over again tonight and write more songs?” I loved Tom from the first day I met him.

Sure, it seemed like a one-in-a-million shot, but one-in-a-million happens to me all the time.

I was shocked. He’d worked just as hard and should be just as proud as me. We’d reached the mountaintop together. This was supposed to be our finest moment, cause for celebration on the day we completed the album we put our lives into. Drop the mic and high-five forever. I didn’t get it.

By the time we landed back in London days later, I was ready to kiss the ground. But the germs.

I didn’t just lose my best friend. When blink fell apart, I lost everything. I lost my direction, I lost my confidence, I lost my sense of self. I’d always been Mark from blink-182. But with no blink-182, who was I? I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or who I was supposed to be. I’d hear one of our songs playing in a store and have to walk out.

Travis inspires me like a Rocky movie. Being around him makes me want to be better. You want to get in the gym, dig down within yourself, and come out fighting. Puff up your chest, stick your chin out just a little bit, maybe bump into someone a little harder than the situation calls for. Travis reads books about champions and how they got there. Hard work, perseverance, victory. He wants to win. Conquer. Beat people. Travis is Jordan midair. He’s Johnny Cash’s middle finger. He’s Tyler Durden.

Eat that, motherfucker. The press loved it. They couldn’t get enough of the blink boys bashing each other. And all three of us obliged. Looking back, I don’t know which was worse, keeping quiet like we did the first time Tom quit, or going to war like we did the second time. They both sucked. But at least this time, instead of being hurt and lost, I felt strong. Emboldened. I’d been through this before and survived. I could do it again. Let’s keep going.

It was then I started to fully understand the greater importance of blink, that it was bigger than the three of us. The band had been around for more than twenty years. People had grown up with us. Lost their virginity to our music. Hung our posters on their bedroom walls. They had kids of their own and introduced our music to them. We were transcending into something more than a band. blink was an idea. And we couldn’t let that idea die.

We had big plans for the future and the road was wide open. That’s the best part about success: it never goes away. Once you’re on top you stay there forever. Nothing bad can happen to you. A new year was just around the corner and one thing was absolutely certain: 2020 was going to be the best year ever.

“What are you gonna do? Kill yourself?” Written out, it sounds callous and hurtful. But it wasn’t. It was a kindness. A genuine question. Are you going to kill yourself? Is that what you’re saying? Because if so, you need to tell me now, so I can prepare. So your son can prepare. It was tough love, and she was right. What was I saying? Which path was I going to choose? What choice did I have? It was either continue putting myself through unimaginable pain for four more months or accept defeat and die. I had to at least try, if only for Skye and Jack. I was afraid of dying, but I was more afraid of letting them down.

Chemo involves a lot of writing important things down. What time you’re supposed to show up for what treatment and what you’re supposed to do to prepare and what medicine you should take and when. I asked my oncologist what comes next and what I was supposed to do now. He said, “Now you go live the rest of your life, Mark.”

There were no balloons. No confetti. I didn’t even get to ring a bell like those kids in the cancer commercials. It was unceremonious and mundane. They uninstalled my port and bandaged up my arm. I was no longer a cyborg. I was a person again. Hi, my name is Mark Hoppus and I don’t have cancer anymore.

Not long after I announced that I was cancer-free, a paparazzo approached me as I was leaving dinner with Skye and some friends. “Any lessons you want to impart to the rest of us?” he asked. How do you answer something like that? “Enjoy every day,” I told him. It was the first thing that came to mind, but it’s true. Enjoy every fucking day.

GQ Man of the Year party. Felt uncomfortable and out of place, went home early.

“You’re gonna get through this. The universe is sending you a lesson and you need to be open to learning it.”

The three of us pose for a quick photo. The camera flashes and time stops. I take it all in. I look at my bandmates and consider everything we’ve been through to get here. Fights and pain and disease and death and tears. The joys and successes, heartbreak and loss.

I’m on God’s time now. Every day on earth from here on is a bonus. A gift. Thank you, Universe. I’ll do my best to earn it.

Time kicks in and I’m thrown into reality. Back in the desert, where it all began. What are the odds? One in a million? That’s fine. One-in-a-million happens to me all the time. My best friends follow me onstage. A thought crosses my mind. Maybe I died in that cancer center and this is heaven. I step out into the light and noise.