It Gets Better

But sometimes the scars don’t.

I don’t suppose I can really say I’ve ever been bullied.  Mocked, picked on, marginalized?  Sure.  Maybe some.

For the most part, though, my scars come from self-inflicted wounds.  It was really the weird confluence of being the fat, awkward kid and being my particular flavor of Evangelical Christian that defined my junior high and high school years.  Being fatalistic and, if I’m honest, somewhat overly dramatic, probably didn’t help.

The scary thing is that I now realize that I had it pretty good, comparatively speaking.  That’s where unexamined privilege becomes the biggest problem.  Because, when it gets right down to it, I didn’t have it particularly good.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I didn’t fit in at school.  At least, I didn’t think I did.  I was always the outsider, always being judged due to the whole Fat Kid thing and my general social ineptitude.  At least, I think so.  It’s entirely possible that I was really the only one judging me or that my own lack of self esteem massively inflated my own opinion of how much of an outcast I was.  I don’t know.  I know two things: junior high and high school kids can be real assholes and I didn’t much like me in those days.

Add to this two other problems.  First, I had (and, probably, still have) a tendency to overcompensate.  Like, really.  I tried way, way too fucking hard to get people to like me.  Chances are that made things a whole hell of a lot worse.  Second, as mentioned before, I’m basically a fatalist and tend to get overly dramatic.  Every slight, every bit of mockery, hell, every perceived slight[1] became the worst thing ever and the end of the fucking world.  Eventually there comes a point where there is absolutely no reason to want to go on in such a terrible, hateful world.

I would never, ever dream of mocking someone who hit a point where he or she decided to commit suicide.  I contemplated it more times than I’d really care to admit and nothing that has ever happened to me has come close to what happened to the kids who took their own lives and who Dan Savage is trying to reach with the “It Gets Better” project and those of us who wore purple with purpose today attempted to reach on Spirit Day.

Most of the time I mock “awareness.”  This month everything is pink so we can all be aware of breast cancer.  The question I always ask is, “Who the fuck ISN’T aware of breast cancer?”  I mean, do we really need to see pink ribbons everywhere, special pink editions of everyday items, and football players running around in pink cleats to be reminded of breast cancer?  No.  In a situation like that awareness doesn’t matter.  Breast cancer is killing women right now.  Breast cancer will continue to kill women.  And whether or not I’m aware of it does not change that reality, especially since we all know it already.

But sometimes awareness is all that matters.  Suicide is a completely preventable death, unlike terminal diseases we still don’t understand.  When faced with the Tyler Clementis of the world the only tool we have to fix the problem is awareness.  The only cure for assholes who mock, marginalize, and set out to injure others is awareness.  The bullies need to be made aware that their actions are unacceptable.  The victims need to be made aware that there is a larger world where we don’t care what you do in your bedroom and we don’t think anyone else should be allowed to mess with your life because of it, either.

The thing is, in those moments where suicide seems the only option there is no, “It gets better.”  That pain, that hurt, that horrible thing that happened grows to the point where it is the only thing in the universe.  Nothing will get better because all there is is this moment.  All there is is this pain.

This, more than any other justification, is why I will never own a gun.[2]  What I have learned is that no matter how bad it is at the moment, it does get better.  If I can just sit down and take a deep breath, maybe sleep on it, in the morning I’ll realize it’s not the end of the world.  If an immediate method of dispatch is available, however, I might not give myself that chance next time.  And there will be a next time.

See, I thought I’d left that all behind when I got the fuck out of high school.  But it seems to be a stress thing for me.  A few years ago I was unemployed for about nine months.  After eight months of not having a job and hitting the point where I was completely out of money and couldn’t see anything good on the horizon, I found that I wasn’t so insulated from thoughts of ending it as I’d thought.  But I didn’t.  Then I got a job.  It got better.

Back in July or August there was a night when it finally hit me just how fucking far away from Chicago I was.  I couldn’t explain it then and, honestly, still can’t explain it now, but that realization cascaded from, “Shit, I don’t have a home anymore,” to, “Shit, I’ll never have a home,” to, “Hell, might as well just call it quits now.”[3]  That was a bad night.  It got better.

I feel like, on some level, I’m trivializing suicide.  I’m not.  It’s more that there are an awful lot of self-important, self-righteous jackasses who want to sit around and say, “Well suicide is never an option.  And that person should not have killed him- or herself.”  What they don’t get is that for some people suicide is always an option.  What they don’t get is that for some situations suicide seems like the only reasonable option.  It’s like listening to someone who has never, ever touched drugs or alcohol moralizing over the decisions of a junkie or an alcoholic.  If you’ve never been there you can’t understand it.  If you can’t understand it you sure as hell shouldn’t be telling anyone else that they’ve failed because they make different choices than you.

See, I’ve had the advantage of contemplating but never actually committing suicide.  So I know that it does get better.  The sun will come out tomorrow.  Something good will happen.  You can’t give in to a moment of despair.  Because, really, in the grand scheme of things, it is just a moment.[4]  It gets better.

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Here’s where it gets awkward, though.

When I was that fat, unhappy, marginalized kid I took refuge in the church.  To a large extent it worked.  I felt accepted on the good days, not-as-ostracized on the bad days.  Eventually I earned a measure of respect from the adult leaders, the pastors, and my peers.

The problem with that, though, is that the system was broken.  The respect I received was for the façade I put on.  Because I was really good at the “man of god” shtick.  It’s not hard to do, either.  Make sure you know a lot of Bible verses.  Make sure you’re really good at seeming to be pious.  Then speak slowly and offer well-defended opinions during Bible study.  Everyone will assume that you know your shit and will say things like, “Wow, you’re such a man of god.  It’s great.”  Of course it helps if you believe your own shtick, but I don’t think that’s actually required.  I’m utterly convinced that I could walk in to the Bible Church down the street from my apartment on Sunday, find a small group or some such, and have them eating out of the palm of my hand by Thanksgiving.  Maybe Halloween.

But that “man of god” shtick was, ultimately, something that I tried to use to bamboozle myself.

See, there are all these things you’re supposed to be and do when you’re at church.  I wanted to be who I was supposed to be.  I wanted to do what I was supposed to do.  Mostly, though, I was failing at it.  And then I was covering my failure up by doubling down on the “man of god” shtick.

The biggest problem, though, is that I was pretty convinced god was a jackass who was just fucking with me.[5]  Ultimately, god didn’t like me much, either.  He, too, saw me as the fat kid who would never be loved.

I was a straight, white, male in a suburban Evangelical church.  The horrible, secret sins that I was worried god was holding against me were a (very short) laundry list of “shit that every teenager goes through.”  I’m really trying to come up with a more prosaic way of saying, “I was horny,” but it ain’t happening.  It seemed the end of the world then.  I now realize that I was privileged.

I wasn’t a girl.  That meant that I could look to the pastors, who were all men, as role models.  I didn’t have to take in an implied message that my primary value was as Pastor So-and-So’s wife.  I got to listen to messages about roles in proper Christian households and worry about whether or not I would make good decisions as the default head of household instead of having to think of myself as inherently inferior according to the words of a supposedly loving god.

When I was sneaking peeks at whoever I happened to wish I was with instead of praying it was always a girl.  That meant that, although I had to worry about policing my mind for lustful thoughts, I didn’t have to worry that there was something inherently wrong and evil in me.  I didn’t have to worry about covering up a part of myself and living a lie or facing ostracism and “therapy” that wouldn’t actually help.

Even with my inherent privilege, though, my shelter eventually became a prison.

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It gets better.  But the scars don’t always heal.

The worst part about it, though, is that sometimes I do unto others what I hated having done unto me.  These days I’m largely accepted, respected, and appreciated on my own terms.  These days I sometimes see people who aren’t being accepted and think, “Eh, that’s not my problem.”  Or, worse, “Eh, I don’t really like that person much, either.”

How can I say, “It gets better,” then turn around and say, “As long as I don’t have to do anything for that person?”

It’s not always intentional, though.  Sometimes it’s that self-inflicted unlovable mess I call “the fat kid.”  See, the fat kid assumes that everyone else has it more-or-less together.  The fat kid assumes that, basically, no woman would ever, ever want to be seen in public with me.

I learned that the fat kid might just be a massive idiot today.  I was telling a co-worker about one of my random first-dates-that-didn’t-go-anywhere today.  When I explained the reason why I’d decided at the end of the date that it just wasn’t worth it to go on, basically because I’d passed judgment on the (otherwise very nice, really) girl, she stopped me.

“Maybe you just intimidated her,” she said.

That thought actually stopped me short (well, not immediately.  I basically kicked it in to my next cycle of things to mull over and continued on with the conversation.  Later on, after it had tumbled around in my brain for a while it stopped me short).  See, that’s not the first time I’d basically gotten the same response to the same sort of explanation of why I didn’t go on a second date with someone who rather seemed to want one.

The first time it happened I basically just rejected the idea as a complete impossibility.  Of course that was before round 2 of weight loss and at the tail-end of 2008, when I was just massively fucked up emotionally, anyway.  This time around, though…

Well, it occurs to me that I’m tall, broad shouldered, not so much fat, capable of intelligently discussing a wide variety of topics, and have a default setting of “respectful” towards women, as opposed to, “assuming she’ll have sex with me just because, y’know, I’m here.”  Oh, and the job, the new car, and the fact that I don’t dress like a schlub anymore probably help immensely.  I’ve also been told many times lately that I’m “cute,” which I’m also told is a good thing.[6]

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What’s my point?  Mostly that, um, it got better.

Sometimes it gets better because of things we have control over.  Sometimes it gets better because we’re just plain fortunate.  Sometimes it gets better because you get a better perspective on things.

But just because things have gotten better for me, that doesn’t mean they’ve gotten better for everyone.  It also means that I am now in a position where I can, intentionally or not, make things worse for other people.  Or I can make things better, but I have to be aware of the fact that I am in that position.

Because, see, that’s the problem.  We often just don’t know.

Sometimes it’s a big, important issue, like marginalized kids reaching a point where they believe suicide is the only option.  Sometimes it’s a little, personal issue, like one person feeling left out of a group.

We have to care about the big, important issues.  They’re big and important, after all.

But that doesn’t mean we should forget about the little ones, either.

Everyone who is hurting, everyone who is marginalized, everyone who is ignored should be able to believe that it does, in fact, get better.

Because sometimes those little things are actually big.  And sometimes they’re a tipping point that no one would have ever seen coming.

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[1]I had more than my fair share of nicknames.  Some of them were derisive, some were not.  Most were probably not, really.  The most interesting one, though, is the one I carry forward as my nym.  I was on a missions trip the summer after eighth grade.  Two of my oldest friends started referring to me as “Geds,” as it’s a rather obvious derivation of my last name (y’know, if you know my real last name…).  At first I assumed that they were making fun of me, which is odd, since there is absolutely no straight-line progression from “old friends making up a pretty obvious nickname” to “jackasses mocking me.”

At one point I even asked if they were doing it to mock me.  They were deeply, deeply confused as to why I’d even think such a thing.  Looking back, so am I…

[2]And I’ve got plenty of others.  Guns are expensive.  Which, really, isn’t that big of a problem when you consider that I could have purchased a couple guns for what I paid for my TV or my laptop.  But the point is that my priorities are such that if I had a thousand dollars and a choice between buying a nice TV or a gun, I’d buy a TV.  If I had a choice between buying a gun or socking that money away for a rainy day, I’d go and make a deposit.

And I don’t need a bullshit, “But what if someone tries to rob you while you’re depositing that money?”  It hasn’t happened yet.  I’m not going to carry a gun around on the slim chance that it happens at the exact time I’m getting in to my car with a wad of bills and I actually manage to get the gun out and use it before some guy who’s pointing a gun at me and saying, “Give me your money,” manages to pull the trigger, either.

Well, that and I’m not entirely sure I can appreciate a philosophical difference between money I don’t have because it was stolen and money I don’t have because I spent it on a gun.  Sure, in the second scenario I have a gun as opposed to nothing, but in neither case have I put money in to my savings account.  And, again, I’m a-ok with that where it comes to the choice between my TV and my savings account.  But I like watching TV and don’t really give a shit either way about guns.

[3]This, by the by, is where the not owning a gun thing comes in handy.  I use my overly dramatic/literary style to my advantage in these cases.  That particular night I spun out an elaborate plan to, I shit you not, drive off a cliff from Highway 101 in California.  I think that would be a fantastic way to end a movie or something, so why not?  It’s also a three-day drive from Dallas, so even if I’d gotten through the planning stage to the getting in my car to do it stage, I probably would have had plenty of time to re-think the strategy.

If I’d had a nearby gun, however…

[4]Unfortunately, I cannot speak for or about clinical depression.  I imagine that’s different.

[5]Oddly, while I used to spend my days laboring under the impression that god was jerking me around, I now regularly say, “The universe loves me.”  I don’t actually think that the universe gives a shit about me either way.  But my life, I’m forced to admit, is pretty damn good.  What it ultimately comes down to is that I’m learning to focus on the good things and fixate on the coincidences that bring happiness, rather than focusing on the things that make me unhappy.  It gets better.

[6]Girls are cute.  Puppies are cute.  Kitties that are repeating horribly sexist and racist Mel Gibson quotes are somewhere between “cute” and “adorabubble.”[7]  I, personally, don’t think guys should be called “cute.”  “Ruggedly handsome” is good, really.  But, apparently, “cute” is good.[8]

[7]Don’t know why I came up with that word, but it amuses me to no end.

[8]Ironically enough, now that I think about it, I once got in trouble for telling a certain member of the female gender that she was “cute.”  To her, “cute” meant something closely approximating “the girl next door with whom you are platonic friends,” and not, “hey let’s go make out and shit.”  I disagreed with that one completely.  But in my lexicon, “cute” just means “attractive in a specific way,” and it most certainly does not preclude a desire to go make out and shit.  So, y’know, I’ll shut up now.

Comments

[Sue]

wow
that's all
just wow

[jessa]

[4] Yes. Very very different. I'm so glad when people recognize that. So many people try to use the same "it gets better" tactic for depression. But really? It doesn't get better for everyone. To say "it gets better" without being able to guarantee it, is, to my mind, cruel. What if it doesn't get better? What have you done to that suffering person you lied to? If she's me, you've put her in the position where she equates hope with impending doom.

There are people who think all suicide should be prevented, full stop. Because they think life will get better for everyone. Because they refuse to believe there can be a suffering so deep to make suicide make sense. Because they refuse to believe that it might not get better. That is, to me, the cruelest thing imaginable. Ignorance is not an excuse for making people suffer. If you aren't more knowledgeable about the issue, you have no business acting in ways with such huge consequences.

I didn't commit suicide, it did get better, but the life I have now was not worth the suffering I experienced. If I had to go back, knowing what I know now, I would commit suicide swiftly, decisively, and effectively. And I know that is always a possibility for the future.

I immensely appreciate your ability to acknowledge suicide in this way. Acknowledging the limitations of your experience and ability to understand what it is like to suffer, while using the experience you do have for compassion. There are precious few people who have not experienced this kind of suffering, the kind where suicide makes sense, who are willing to admit it exists or even admit the possibility. That means there are precious few to fight on our behalf who are not marred with the discredit of being mentally ill, which means suicide prevention is not likely to get more nuanced or less cruel.

[Geds]

Sue:

I'm not entirely sure how to take that. But mostly because, "Wow. Just...wow." is my standard response to breathtaking stupidity or meanness that renders me speechless.

jessa:

There's a huge gulf in the understanding. I completely agree. For one, I just don't know what depression is actually like. I had a doctor who put me on Prozac back when it was the fashionable new drug, but I think I only took, like, two of them. I simply didn't believe it was necessary. As it turns out, I was right. I could just as easily have been wrong. And I know there are depressed people who make the same decision I did who do, in fact, need the medication. So I will also never presume to say, "Well, I didn't need it and I got better, so you don't need it, either."

As for actual suicide, there are two reasons I don't like to talk about it.

First, I worry that my relatively minor experiences do, genuinely, belittle the experiences of those who actually have committed suicide. My worst day has never come close to actually justifying suicide and I know it. So I risk creating an environment where it seems like I'm either trying to say, "OMG! My life has been so terrible, I totally get this," when I'm emphatically not or it seems like I'm implying that my situations really aren't so bad, so of course no one else's is, either.

Second, I worry that people will start thinking of me as suicidal and treating me as such. I'm not. As best I can tell its simply a byproduct of my innate coping mechanisms. When I'm confronted by a massive, seemingly unwinnable situation my tendency is to try to stoically push on through. That doesn't mean I don't have emotional reactions, it just means I try to defer them. If the situation disappears quickly enough the emotions then dissipate and I blow off steam. If it continues, however, they build up. So it explodes in to a, "This has been terrible, it continues to be terrible, and it doesn't look like it will stop being terrible, screw this," sort of thing. And I know it's basically a pressure valve releasing, because I spend a couple of hours allowing all of the terrible reactions and dark thoughts I've been trying to suppress out. Then I sleep on it and the next morning I realize, "Hey, it's not that bad."

I now know this. I've figured out how to deal with it. That doesn't make the moment any less valid, however. And it certainly shouldn't reflect on anyone else's experiences.

But there is the problem that people don't understand why people commit suicide. They want it to be a one size fits all problem. You're depressed. Or you've had a trauma. Or you're a drama queen. Or you're an attention whore. Some people are. But that doesn't mean that everyone is, nor does it mean that, "Eh, suck it up and deal," is an appropriate response. And, again, for people who haven't been there to pass judgment on people who have and find them somehow weak or lesser is flat wrong.

[GailVortex]

I was just gonna say "wow."

But in light of Sue having gotten there first :) , I will say instead:

Insightful and beautifully written. Well done, sir.

[The Everlasting Dave]

Sir, this is a tremendous post. And you won't say it, so I will. You were a victim of hardcore bullying at least through middle school. It sucked to be you for a lot more reasons than what your religion and your brain were conspiring to do to you.

[Geds]

Well, then. I guess that clears that one up. Good, then?

[Michael Mock]

I had a rough time with my first two years of college. I was, in fact, depressed, though for the most part I didn't realize it at the time. Then I switched colleges, and things did, in fact, get better - so much better that I'm not sure how to describe the difference without using religious terms like "salvation" or "redemption" or "miraculous".

And then, during grad school, I worked in the adolescent boy's wing of a drug and alcohol rehab. One of the weirdest moments I had there was when I learned that one of the things they checked the patients for during the initial intake screening was "suicidal ideation" - basically, whether they've thought about committing suicide, or whether they still think about committing suicide. It was weird to me because my first reaction was, "What? Doesn't everybody do that?"