There are many more than 13 reasons why...

 

I finished this new(ish) series on Netflix last night after binge watching all the episodes in 2 days. I had avoided this show altogether for the simple reason that I tend to shy away from anything "viral". It took me 6 years to read/watch twilight just because it was so damn annoying to see it in media all day long for so long. When something becomes extremely popular in social media very quickly, it annoys me. My self-psycho-analysis tells me it's because deep down I'm just a non-conformist. But we live in a society where conformity is the norm, so at some point in life, even strongly non-conformist people must choose to conform, or be an outcast forever. I chose the former. I also avoided the show because I kept seeing quips from people about how it "glorified suicide". Suicide is a very very personal subject to me that I don't like to talk about to people in general, and the idea that someone would glorify it sickens me. Suicide is painful. For everyone. As a person who has lived an entire lifetime with suicidal thoughts, at times consumed by them, but with enough logic and intelligence and fear of letting people down, it's never been an actual option for me. People hear "suicidal thoughts", or "suicidal tendencies" and assume that they need to talk you out of it. The thing is, we already know everything you're telling us. We know it's selfish. We know it's not worth it. We know it won't solve anything. And we know that it would essentially destroy those around us. Most people who do commit suicide do so because they have completely convinced themselves that everyone they care about would be better off without them. It wasn't completely clear until the final episode that Hannah felt that way, but it came through in innuendos and between the lines for any of us who have struggled with this feeling. I know it all to well myself.

But after the first few episodes it became clear that this show was not glorifying suicide in any way at all. By the end I determined that anyone who claimed it did glorify suicide missed the entire point. In fact, it did quite the opposite. It shed a simple, yet profound light on one specific thing. "Her truth isn't my truth". Everyone sees every situation just slightly differently. Everyone has their own version of the truth, and that doesn't mean that the real version of events isn't the truth, it just means that everyone sees each situation slightly differently based upon their life experiences. It shows quite clearly that if Hannah could have just seen all the information instead of her own biased logic she might have made a different choice. It shows that no matter how much someone hurts you, they may not have meant what you thought they did. It shows that you can't just decide what someone meant based on your experiences. Because if you do, you have a limited view of what the real truth is.

This show hit all the emotional points it should have about what suicide really is. It holds such a stigma in society, that people honestly have no clue, unless they have ever been at that point, and even then they may not even get it. Everyone who does commit suicide has never fully disclosed their feelings with anyone. That's part of why it happens. Because the ability to pour out raw feelings just doesn't exist in some people. Some of us can't verbalize our feelings at all, and therefore spend our entire lives feeling misunderstood. No one could understand, and no one ever will, because I don't have the ability to even explain it, and it's far too complicated to have a black and white explanation.

Using a cliche word... it was gripping. It was intense. Profound even, if you dive in deep enough to the message. If you're one of those people who think this show glorified suicide, watch it again, but without all the biases.There are a billion reasons to want to leave this life, and only a few to convince you to stick around. I hate the term "permanent solution to a temporary problem" because it's not just a temporary problem. People don't commit suicide over one thing. It's not just one problem. It's a lifetime of problems, and an awareness that while the specifics within each problem we face are different, there's something to be said about the cycle that is all of life. It goes up and down, and there's good and bad, but it all seems pretty pointless when the good is few and far between, and the bad is a constant. Life is a permanent problem, and it's pretty easy for me to see why someone would decide there's no point in it. But the fact remains that life is also beautiful, and there are a lot of beautiful things to experience and see, and if you stick around long enough, you'll see that it is worth it.

Time Marches On

Time is a funny thing. Days can feel like a fleeting moment or an eternity. Months, years go by so quickly sometimes that it's surreal, and then other times they can drag on and on and on...

I read an article once that explained why it feels like days go by so slowly when we're young but then fly by as adults. When we're younger, we have less time on this earth, so when we're a kid, a year is a significant chunk of our lives. As we get older, each year is a smaller and smaller increment of our lives, and therefore the perception of time changes.

It's been 16 years since THE 9/11 happened, and yet I can still remember nearly every detail of that day with more clarity than almost any other day since.

I've always been fascinated by New York City, and spent many of my teenage daydreams fantasizing about when I finally got to move there. As a child I would watch the Cosby show and marvel at the houses in Brooklyn wishing I could live in one of those brownstones. I would draw the skyline and copy pictures from the library books, reading and watching anything that was based in or around NYC just immersing myself in the prospect of escaping the boredom that small town life presented. I was jealous of the constant activity and endless opportunities. I think this is a fairly common thing for girls in the midwest in general. An obsession with some large city somewhere, NYC and Paris being the most common.

I left my house early in the morning to pick up my paycheck from Bass Pro Shops where I was employed. It was my day off but I was pregnant, and had an early morning appointment and then grabbed my check afterward. On the way home there were cars starting to line up at the gas stations. The further I drove the longer the lines became and I remember thinking "What on earth is going on? Why are people suddenly flocking to get gas at every station?" I lived in an older victorian house that had been turned into two units. My neighbor, was extremely eccentric and strange, and I suspected some sort of mental illness as well. As I pulled into our shared driveway he comes running out of his front door to my car screaming and waving his hands wildly. "It's GONE!" he said. "ALL OF IT IS GONE!!". I asked him what he meant and told him to stay calm, everything would be okay. He just continued running in circles waving his arms and yelling "They are blowing EVERYTHING UP!" "The white house is GONE!, the pentagon is GONE!!, EVERYTHING IS GONE!!"

I remember thinking quite plainly that this guy had totally lost it and I was going to have to call the police. I slid into my doorway to hear a frighting noise on my TV that I had left on when I left earlier. The reporter on the news was witnessing the second plane hit in real time and had broken down into hysterics. I turned toward the TV just in time to see it happen and my heart sank. At that moment I panicked. I was thousands of miles away from NYC, but I knew in that moment what this all meant. I was fully aware how this event would change everything. I was terrified, and watched the TV for the following 6 hours without moving. I don't think I even got up to eat, or pee, or anything. My eyes were glue to the screen. This was long before Facebook, long before I even had regular access to a computer. I didn't even own a cell phone. I had no communication with the outside world beyond my TV, and my land line phone. Sometime during those 6 hours I talked with my mom, and some friends, and we all wondered what would happen next. Would we go to war? Would life as we knew it change drastically?

It didn't for us, but it did for the rest of the world. Travel changed. Business changed, laws changed. Everyone was different. Everyone was affected. This wasn't just a New York thing, this was an America thing. Not to say that those in NYC and close by weren't far more affected than the rest of the country because they were. I can't imagine what it must be like being a native New Yorker. I was emotional enough about the whole thing, I don't know how I could have handled witnessing something like that happening in the city I call home.

Sixteen years has gone by, yet every one of us knows exactly what we were doing that morning. Politics aside, we all have our own theories about the entire situation, and more and more people are questioning the official story. Being a "truther" has become mainstream. I think another 16 years will go by before anyone knows the truth, maybe more. Regardless, we will all stand proudly to remember those moments with everything in us.