TW: depression, sexual assault, bullying, suicide, spoilers
Before you ask:
- Yes, I’m depressed (diagnosed).
- Yes, I have been a victim, more than once, of sexual assault.
- Yes, I was bullied for much of my K-12 years.
- No, I haven’t explicitly thought about the act of suicide, but I’ve thought many times that I, and the world, would be better off without me. That I would be better off dead. And due to stereotypes, myths, and Facebook’s suicide ‘prevention’ tool that locks you out of your account, I keep it to myself.
I’m afraid of pain. I feel pain more intensely than others seem to do. I attribute this to sensory processing disorder. I wouldn’t want to experience the pain of suicide. And I wouldn’t want to cause others emotional pain. I have huge amounts of feelings and empathy.
(Yes, I’m autistic, and I have empathy.)
Also, if you give anyone any indication you actively think about suicide, you risk being cut off from your supports. Facebook, for instance literally cuts you off from your account, from your friends. You won’t get to know which “friend” reported your post instead of reaching out to you themselves. Parents, therapists, or police, might place you in an involuntary mental health hold (aka psychiatric hold) for 72-hours or 14 days.
It’s easy to lie to a therapist if you don’t want even the idea of suicide in your records. Have you ever seen the form most therapists use to determine major clinical depression? Suicide is on the checklist (patient fills it out, by the way, not the doctor), and checking off suicide isn’t a requirement. In 13 Reasons Why, you see Hannah trying to get help but unwilling to fully admit the worst if things, or that she is suicidal. She dances all around it, but never blatantly says it. And she gets dismissed. Advised to move on.
13 Reasons Why is heart wrenching. Gut wrenching. Abject human misery from bullying. Presented without filters.
It’s not glorified. It’s not romanticized.
It’s definitely not gross.
Not even the suicide scene. And I find it…offensive to call such an agonizing, heart rending scene as “gross”. I know some people can’t stand the sight of blood. But it’s not gratuitous and the scene is there for a reason.
The episode also had a trigger warning. And, earlier in the season, you were clued into how Hannah died, so there was forewarning that this was coming.
Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice deal with suicide (including assisted suicide).
There are documentaries on Netflix which deal with suicide.
You get to see the suicide happen in some of those shows.
But I don’t remember hearing a lot of flack about it.
13 Reasons Why even offers a link to sites if you need help. The others didn’t that I saw.
13 Reasons Why also has a follow-up show on Netflix called 13 Reasons Why: Beyond the Reasons (The cast, producers, and mental health professionals discuss scenes dealing with difficult issues, including bullying, depression, and sexual assault.)
I’ve seen so many criticisms saying that the producers of 13 Reasons Why talked to psychologists, survivors, et cetera, and they “all told them not to show the rape, not to show the suicide”. Watch Beyond the Reasons and tell me where they were told that? Especially when you get to the part where they helped the producers set-up those scenes for filming. When they worked with the actors in those scenes on how to act, what they would/should be feeling in that moment, and so forth.
They talk about how yes, Hannah could have done more, could have said more, when she was talking to the counselor in the last episode. But she didn’t have the strength or the courage to talk about it (especially the most recent assault). It is very difficult to talk about being sexually assaulted, even with people you hold dearest to you, whom you trust beyond anything. Hannah does not trust Mr. Porter enough. Most students do not trust their guidance counselor enough to really open about the things that hurt the most. I sure couldn’t have approached my HS counselor about anything like that. I could barely talk to mine about the classes I wanted to take because he was so demeaning.
It is not Hannah’s fault that she couldn’t say “the right words”. The “trigger words” to really get Mr. Porter’s attention. But she still gave him a lot of key signs — that he missed.
And, if you’ll remember, it’s very hard as a child or teenager to find the right words to tell people how you’re really feeling. Hell, it’s hard as an adult. It’s doubly hard if you don’t understand fully what you’re feeling (not limited to children/teens/young adults). It’s hard if you can’t trust the people who are there to help you to believe you. And the immediate victim shaming can make it worse – or in a way, be worse than what happened in the first place.
From what I’ve noticed, and from my own experience, most students are required to read Romeo & Juliet in junior/middle or high school. TL;DR: Two teenagers meet, fall in love, and are dead, by suicide days later. It’s presented as romantic. It’s glorified. It’s romantically tragic. It’s everything 13 Reasons Why is not.
13 is not romantic.
Hannah is not seen as the tragic hero.
13 reasons are her truth. Not the whole story. But her truth from her experience. The fact that it is not the whole truth per reason/story doesn’t make it any less valid. Any less painful.
Hannah went through some pretty brutal experiences. This is not an unrequited love story. Yes, there’s some there, but it’s not by any means the driving factor behind her terrible pain.
I don’t think it was wrong to show the suicide because it was the only suicide I’ve ever seen, even counting documentaries, that faced the horror of it. The intense agony for the person doing it. The truth of what happens in the midst of it. How she struggled to breathe after it, while waiting for everything to end.
It’s the only time I’ve ever seen suicide in a show where it didn’t have romantic, glorified undertones.
I watched that scene twice.
I cried a lot.
I cried more when her parents found her.
It shows you that agony too.
I cried when it was clear that most of those who bullied and brutalized her didn’t care about anything except that they might get caught. That their futures might be ruined. They had no empathy of Hannah or her parents. They had no empathy that Hannah’s future was ruined, and that they absolutely played a part in it.
Yes, it was her choice to do what she did. But she didn’t get there on her own.
I understand that not everyone could watch this show.
But I wonder how many bullies would continue on their path after watching this.
If you ask people about helping those who are suicidal, on average, they’re all for it. But have someone admit they think about it, and we* demonize them. We blame them. We tell them platitudes. We put up Facebook statuses for thirty minutes, an hour, a day, that we’re there for anyone feeling like this.
But for the most part, we don’t want to actually do anything.
I sat up all night once with a suicidal friend. No judgement. That was nearly 20 years ago.
They’re still alive.
That won’t always be the outcome.
Hannah said she was giving life one more try, admitted she needed help. Got dismissed.
I didn’t dismiss my friend. Maybe they weren’t serious. But I took them seriously.
Start there.
*general we, not pointing fingers at any specific people
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