13 Reasons. But there’s still a question left.

I’ve thought many thoughts since the show came out, watched about half the episodes, was triggered by a few, and ultimately decided I didn’t care to finish it. I let my thoughts sit but today they all boiled into one question I found myself begging my steering wheel when I was listening to the NPR response on the way home.

Why on earth did they miss the opportunity to offer hope? Why did she have to die? What was so bad about having a 14th episode where she ran away from home, or BETTER YET where she sought help and was really successful in finding great therapists, new friends in a new town, or helpful doctors. Why the fuck did we miss the opportunity to show that yes, wanting to die and wanting to blame everyone involved and getting abused are real and valid thoughts, but there can be hope, and happiness can still be found. Can somebody in Hollywood explain to me why this didn’t happen?

I think opening the dialogue about suicide is wonderful. But why couldn’t we watch all those traumatic episodes and then find that despite all that darkness, there is still hope. Instead, I find the message to be “sometimes shit gets awful, but you can always die.” (This article doesn’t even touch on the false sense of power she gets, or that other people aren’t solely responsible for one’s suicide).

I’ve been up close and personal with severe depression and the part that enrages me the most is that it’s not hard to help others. Getting access to affordable mental health care is hard and living life as a human certainly is, but being a kind person is not hard. On that note, why on earth did these producers miss the opportunity to offer hope to thousands of viewers? Sure it didn’t negatively impact everyone, but it could have positively impacted more. Hope does that. It positively affects anyone it can nestle its little light into. And it irritates me to think that we had a chance to offer hope to the darkest of situations and dropped the ball for “effect.”