13 Reasons Why Not

13 Reasons Why aired its second season under the premise of instigating conversation on mental health, violence within the school system, and the life saving value of recognizing the beauty of the individuals around you before it's too late. In reality, 13 Reasons Why aired another season culminating in a scene so beyond the boundaries of allowable or understandable that it borders on dangerous. This post is half rant, half my heart, and I apologize in advance for the sections in which fear or anger outweighs my ability to be compassionate. Also there might be spoilers, but I think they're worth it.

Season One:

I first read the book 13 Reasons Why the summer after losing a dear friend (and a piece of my heart), and the book itself was shockingly healing. The book negates the extremes of the show and teaches that sometimes just being in high school is enough to feel overwhelming and devastating. The book walks through Hannah Baker's honestly average teen experience, and through that average experience allows Hannah to become a connector for all teenagers experiencing anything that feels so heavy they think they can't continue. The message is a useful and essential one: you don't have to be experiencing the most extreme version of pain for you pain to be valid, crippling, or enough. Anything that feels so intense that the darkness feels unending is enough. Your pain is enough, because the fact that someone else might have it "worse" does absolutely nothing to negate the fact that you have value and your pain is worth hearing and voicing. The book also left behind the message that suicide is the ending to a conversation -- no matter how people may react to a person's absence, death means that person will no longer be there to experience it. Death ends healing, reconciliation, belief, hope, and the glimmer of a possibility that somehow, someway things might not be this bad for always. In the book, Hannah isn't a hero. She's just a human being that makes a choice, and the reader is given the honor of deciding whether or not that choice was correct. I was left wishing she had stayed.

FAST FORWARD TO THE SHOW. This show, targeted at teenagers, leaves behind the message that if your problem seems too overwhelming, death is a valid, attainable, and acceptable answer. The viewer watches Hannah get everything she ever wanted in life: her parents are sorry, the teenagers that made her life miserable get what's coming to them, and the boy she wants to like her spends every day regretting that he didn't tell her. Because we're watching a TV show, the viewer forgets that in real life this information is negated. Hannah doesn't know any of this, because Hannah is dead. 13 Reasons Why doesn't offer a conversation on mental health, it offers one out without any sort of alternative and without any depiction of what it might look like to deal with depression and suicidality in a healthy, communal way. The TV show amps up Hannah's experience to the extreme, removing the average teen's ability to relate and reinforcing the unspoken rule that "others have it worse, so we're not sure why you're complaining". Hannah's suicide has little to no negative consequences on people that didn't "have it coming". We don't see the emptiness of grief or the permanence of death. We see a young girl on a mission whose ghost ensures its completion. High school can be one of the most isolating experiences without any sort of external influence - giving the world a "hero" who uses suicide to manipulate and punish those she feels has wronged her sets an example for young humans who may have felt that Hannah was the first person who understood them. This doesn't even TOUCH on the trauma of the graphic scene that takes the audience step by brutal step through Hannah's suicide, providing a real time, no holds barred seat to Hannah cutting her wrists and being found by her parents.

Season Two: The Reason Behind This Post

When the rumors hit that season two involved a school shooting, I honestly thought (and hoped) they were joking. What I didn't expect was for the school shooting to revolve around a character who was seeking retaliation for being brutally sodomized using a broken broom handle by three jocks in the locker room while his head was held down in the toilet. Again, in true 13RW fashion, this scene in shown in real time, graphic detail with absolutely no boundaries between the trauma and the viewer. And I'll be brutally honest -- if I had known this was the character backstory and his motivation for walking into a cafeteria and wanting revenge, I might have held the door open for him.

It should NEVER become "normal" to turn on the news and see another story involving a kid killing other kids. But the reason I think 13 Reasons Why is so dangerous is because they've given the potential school shooter perhaps the only story that makes the audience wonder if this level of violence might just be acceptable. They haven't initiated a healthy discussion or discussed mental health, they've given the shooter a worthy cause. And they've done so in a way that traumatizes the audience alongside the characters. I have nothing but admiration in my heart for those who seek to start difficult conversations, but I honestly believe that this scene went so far beyond the limits of appropriate that it did nothing but harm. The production/direction team for the show argued that this level of crime against another human being needed to be shown in graphic detail because this level of horror should be experienced. I agree. It should. But showing it is unnecessary. Also, I would argue that this level of cruelty might not be happening everyday. This level of cruelty is rare. Rare enough that it might be considered extreme.

I don't know how to end this post, other than saying if you disagree or want to talk, PLEASE get in contact with me. If you're struggling, please talk to someone. Anyone. A friend, a counselor, the stranger on the bus. Know that you're seen and you're loved and your life has value, despite how horrible current circumstances may seem. Know that life is designed for change, and no situation is stagnant. Know that every morning you wake up and get out of bed is a sign of incredible strength, and if some mornings consist of you just opening your eyes and laying there breathing, that strength is just as apparent. Know that death isn't an answer, it's a door slamming. Know that there's hope, that there are people who can hope for you when you can't, and that the world will get better. And know that you are a beautiful, complex human bean, and you get to decide what breaks you.

-Bethany Elyse-

Why I Read

Once upon a time, someone asked me why reading was important to me and why I made the time to do it in the midst of the insanity of grad school, practicum, and just general life happenings. At the time, due to my incredible eloquence, I believe I made some sort of high pitched humming noise and then said “because it’s fun!” The topic was changed, we both moved on, and the conversation has been following me around waiting for me to readdress it ever since.

Now this is me readdressing it, in random, creative, bullet type form. I hope it kind of makes sense, I hope you enjoy it, and I hope at the end it’s clear that it really IS fun, so I sort of (kind of) wasn’t lying.

So. WHY I READ:

1. Reading teaches me to be patient with my own story.

My best friend’s favorite movie is Love, Actually. In the midst of the movie, one character quips that “people only get together at the end.” As a reader, it’s easy for me to view the narrative as one might look at a maze overhead. The entrance and exit are both clear, the path between the two even more so. One forgets that in the midst of trying to navigate the maze, all anyone actually sees are dead ends, high walls, and feeling trapped. When I read a book, it’s easy for me to brush past emotions because I know how it ends. I know this isn’t forever. I know we’re halfway through, and the next chapter could change everything. One day, via what could only be called grace, I realized that we’re not so different. Every day we wake up one page deeper into a story that’s ours. We could be three chapters in, fifteen pages from the epilogue, six pages away from the chapter that changes everything. Reading has taught me that it’s ok to feel lost in the midst of my own fairytale, because right now all I can see are the hedges, the dead ends, and the height of the maze. Reading teaches me that I will learn when and as I need to, that it’s ok to grieve now and understand later, and that other characters will be introduced when they’re meant to. It has taught me that it’s ok not to be able to articulate everything now, because my story isn’t over. But it’s also taught me it’s ok to voice what I do understand now, because being afraid of failing or not completely understanding isn’t a fear I’ll get over until I’m dead.

2. Reading provides a world where the villains are clear.

Often, it’s relatively easy to tell who the villains, heroes, and love interests in the story might be. It’s easy to root for the hero and demonize the villains, and more than anything else, it’s easy to tell who they are. In real life, people are nuanced. Emotions are hard. Learning how to counsel has taught me that most often the people who hurt others, who would be the villains in a story, often do so because their soul was wounded too and they haven’t recovered. It’s hard for a human to be “just” anything, but it's impossible for them to authentically fit into one box and it can be exhausting remembering that and applying it and trying to love well. And so, I'm thankful for the comfort of stepping into a story where I'm asked to be passive learner and observer for just long enough to catch my breath.

3. Reading lets me feel through the parts of my own story I’m not ready for.

Growth is hard, and more often than not it’s painful. I’d love to say that I’m the kind of person who seeks growth just for the fun of it, but that’s often not human nature or the human inclination. Most of the time, I seek growth because I’ve gotten uncomfortable where I’m at. Something painful has happened. I’ve been made aware of a character piece that I don’t love about myself. But more than anything else, it’s terrifying as heck. When I look at my list of favorite books over the years, it’s easy for me to see what I was learning to deal with because more often than not I was obsessed with characters who were dealing with the very same things. The people I let myself fall into on the page gave me just enough distance from my own problems to be taught that I needed to deal with them. And even though they weren’t real, finishing a book that resolved made me feel a little more encouraged that someone else had gone through it and survived. Even if it was just on paper. And if they could, then so could I.

4. Reading helps me understand an eternal story.

“The God one?” Yes, the God one. I personally attribute it to my amazingly talented and beautiful friends, but hanging around them for as long as I have means that art will always, in some way, remind me that God is worth choosing. The Christian life, if lived authentically, is one of the hardest things I’ve ever been part of OR watched anyone else be part of. So I read, and I write, and somewhere along the way I fall into something bigger than myself and find myself alongside everyone else. We’ve used a billion words and a million covers and thousands and thousands of story lines, but what we’re all looking for is redemption. Assurance that good wins, evil doesn’t, that the people we’ve lost matter, that the pain isn’t for nothing. That creation matters. That our stories matter. The theme is almost always the same. It also helps me understand stories I’d never be able to understand otherwise. My friends make fun of me all the time because I’m obsessed with LGBTQ literature – but I’m obsessed because it helps me understand. And understanding makes me love people. And loving people is never a bad idea, but always always a brave one. Also, this is my ETERNAL plug for “I’ll Give You The Sun” by Jandy Nelson, because not only is it art but it gave my tiny, conservative, confused Christian heart understanding that I desperately needed and am incredibly grateful for. Good literature will always touch something in the reader, and the reader will always become more "them" than they started.

AND FINALLY….

5. Reading helps me believe.

Reading gives me hope. Reading helps me remember that who I am is broken and fallen, but being formed. Countless characters have taught me that dignity is God’s to give, mine to find, and absolutely no one’s to take away. Narnia taught me at an early age to yearn for and come to terms with the idea that heaven existed, because I couldn’t touch or feel or be present in Narnia but it was shaping and teaching me and making me better. Somehow, without even being present, Narnia and the Shire and Hogwarts and Prythian brought me peace. Experiencing that made the concept of God and heaven, two things I can feel in words I can’t express but can’t experience fully, seem like things that not only could exist but do exist and that one day I’ll be able to be part of in every aspect. Further up and further in, one might say ;). A country no longer hidden in the wardrobe.

And so, I will continue to nerd and read and hide myself in corners and occasionally neglect my homework (sorry parents and teachers). It’s not always this philosophical. Most times I pick up books because the covers are shiny. But God persists, and somehow even in the most trivial of stories I never come away empty or unformed. And even when nothing else seems good, that (and He) always, always is.

Happy Monday, friends. I hope it is a glorious one.