Don’t watch it. Do not watch this fucked up mess of a show. Listen, I’ve been working in suicide prevention for almost six years, and I grew up in an area that had epidemics of teen suicides. The area is actually so well known that the show-writers and producers met with leading experts in the area on the ways that the media contributes to youth suicides - and then did almost everything they were warned not to do, even going so far as to actually show the suicide on-screen. Many of the experts that they’ve spoken with are expressing grave disappointment with how the show proceeded despite their advice.
If you’re suicidal, if you’re depressed, if you self-harm, and/or if you have any trauma associated with that, please do not watch this show. It was incredibly irresponsibly handled and puts people in very real danger.
No. No, no, and simply fucking no. Almost everyone should fucking watch this show; and before you throw rocks at me, here’s why I think this: everyone needs to watch it to open their eyes to the truth of high school and what bullying really does: this show was SO well done, because it shows things how they truly are, they didn’t romanticise it, they didn’t hide it behind a curtain, they fucking showed it all in its ugly reality, and it was the best thing they could have done.
And, before you all sensitive people tell me that I have no right to say anything, I will kindly tell you to stay quiet, and pay attention, because this response is being written by someone who got bullied worse than Hannah did, that got raped by two guys at the same time, that believed normalcy was people being horrible to me, and that, in the end did exactly what Hannah did, and I survived. Because, unlike with her, my parents found me in time, and because of it I’m here; so yes, I am allowed to speak about this, because I know what it’s like.
And, trust me, I am so glad I watched it, and I’m glad it exists, and I’m glad the show showed everything it shows, because if something’s true, it is what it is said on the thirty minute special at the end of the series: we want to hide from the ugly truth, and that only leads to the majority of people thinking the problem isn’t real, thus, keeping the problem within its wrongly thought shameful closed window. So, no, people need to watch this, they need to learn, they need to fucking learn once and for all, because so many great people have left the world because of shit like this, and it’s not okay. I fucking lost someone to suicide already, I tried it myself and died for two minutes according to the doctors, I hear of so many people being lost to fuckwads at school, and it. is. not. okay.
Though, yes, I will give you this: I agree wholeheartedly with the original last paragraph: if you’re suicidal, depressed, if you self-harm, were sexually abused and haven’t been able to handle it, and/or you have a very deep, horrible trauma having to do with any of these issues, then, yes, please, do not watch this show. Because, yes, looking at it in that viewpoint, the show can trigger so much and end up causing people with the listed issues to commit suicide; in the wrong eyes, all it can do is cause trouble.
But here’s where I disagree: If you are okay with yourself now, even if you went through something like that, if you’re happy with where you are now, if you have friends who think bullying can’t be to fault when suicide happens, if you have parents who don’t fucking listen and you’re at the end of your rope: watch it, tell them to watch it, shove it in the face of all those assholes who could become a reason why. Don’t hide it, don’t disgrace it because FOR ONCE suicide and all that lead to it wasn’t hidden behind a pretty romantic curtain, don’t disgrace it because FOR ONCE we get to see the reality of what bullying, or any little action one thinks doesn’t matter, can do, just don’t. Because if you do, it won’t help, it’ll just keep those ignorant people in their unknowing bubble; if you do, it’ll just be as if it had never come out, and no one will talk about the important and devastating issues presented on this show.
You see, in the fourteen years since I was assaulted, I hadn’t been able to tell my parents, I hadn’t been able to tell them anything but what was impossible to hide, like the self-harm that was discovered during my suicide attempt, or the depression I now need meds for; yet, in the happy self-loving mindset I am now in, watching this, watching the pain in Hannah’s parents, watching their horrified faces when they saw her daughter, dead, and bleeding in a bathtub… all I could see was them. All I could see was me in the tub, and my parents horrified, sad, and trying to comfort a corpse; and I felt guilty, and I felt horrified at myself for having put them through that, and I felt happy that the attempt failed, and I felt guiltier for not having been able to tell them everything that had been going on in my life, regardless of how Gilmore-Girls-like our relationship has always been. And because of this, because I watched this show, I was finally able to open up to them, to tell them everything, to apologise about everything, regardless of how they told me I didn’t need to. I apologised for putting them through all that horror, I apologised for not being able to speak, I apologised for lying to them about not having been abused when they asked me. And if I hadn’t watched the show, if my eyes hadn’t been opened to the horrible pain I caused them, we wouldn’t have had that conversation, I would still be lying to them when it comes to that, I would still be shut off about everything that happened. So, no, fuck no: because of this show, I was finally able to take this huge step of telling the people that matter the most to me that, yes, I was raped.
So simply telling people, everyone, to not watch this show because it deals graphically and without pretty curtains, with the reality of suicide, bullying, and sexual assault, is just so wrong. In the other hand, telling people to be careful, to be warned, and to please, PLEASE not watch if they’re depressed, suicidal, self-harmers, or get triggered by anything dealt with in the show? Now that is much, much better.
Simply put: be careful when you watch this show. Be very, very careful. But, hell yes, it should be fucking watched.
snowghoul
titsay
gummygunk
origamiaround
romaincrisis
jacobvanloon
