April 12, 2017
1:00 am
Beijing, China
I wanted to write this really quickly because I wanted to share something with you all. About a week ago, my sister Jaidyn asked me about a new Netflix show called “13 Reasons Why.” She said that she had read the book, but that she had heard the show was a bit inappropriate. She had wondered if I was watching it. I told her that I wasn’t—I actually hadn’t even heard about it—but that I would check it out for her. Today, being my day off, I decided to check it out. I watched the entire series in one day. It was a very, very long binge and I feel a bit unproductive, although I did clean while watching. The reason I watched the whole thing was basically because I couldn’t look away. Upon watching it, I feel like there’s an important message I need to share with you.
Be careful what you say and do to people, especially young people. The things that happen to them, they seem like the end of the world. I know I’m not much of an adult now, I mean I just left high school a few years ago, but I can already tell how much differently I see the world. As the person I now am, I can see the future. Okay, not literally. But I have enough life experience to know that things are going to change, and usually get better. I know when crappy stuff goes on, that it won’t stay that way forever. A few years ago that was a lot harder to see. When you’re a teenager, you don’t know what the future holds. You can’t always see the light at the end of the tunnel. Things and problems are so intimate and profound that it doesn’t seem like they’ll ever let up.
I remember discussing time with someone a few years ago. We were talking about how the older you get, the faster time seems to go. I mean, when you’re little each year seems to take so long. It’s April and Christmas isn’t until December! Nine months is sooooo far away. A year is such a long time. But even now, at 23, I’ve been in China for almost 6 months and arriving here felt like a week ago. I mean, come on, I graduated last May! How can I have been out of college for almost a full year? That’s impossible, right? So what explains this change in time perception? One: the younger the are, the less you’ve lived, the more experiences are new to you. Each day holds new experiences so it seems to hold so much more. When you’re older, you fall into routines and your days aren’t nearly as exciting. So, each day blends into the next and BOOM a year has gone by. Two: the older you are, the less percentage of your life is comprised in one year. When you’re six-years-old, one year of your life is 1/6th of your life. When you’re twenty-three, one year equals 1/23rd of your life. When your fifty, one year amounts to 1/50th. The more life you have, the less impact one year makes.
I think this concept is true of experiences, as well. When you’re in your twenties, you’ve been through the crap of high school. You’ve had the (hopefully) exciting college experience, and you’ve started to figure out a bit of the world. When you’re fifty, you’ve gone through a lot of ups and downs in life. You know that there’s always another sunrise and that things don’t always look as bad when you are able to look back on them. But when you’re a kid, especially a teenager, you don’t have any of that. You don’t have life experience yet. Seriously, they make you raise your hand and ask for permission to use the bathroom. And, if you don’t ask correctly, they give you a grammar lesson to go along with it. There’s limited amounts of freedom that often come with long lists of dos and don’ts. I’m not saying that giving kids rules and regulations is necessarily a bad thing. They’re kids, they don’t know what the heck they’re doing. Which is exactly my point. They don’t know much about life (sorry to any teenagers reading this–I love you, but it’s true). They’re in a stage where they’re trying to figure out what’s going on. And, you know what, they’re going to make mistakes, it’s natural. Here’s the kicker, though, because they haven’t gone through many big life events, they don’t know how the event is going to play out. For many teenagers, the first time something bad happens, they can’t see an end. They just don’t have the previous knowledge to understand it. And, as with most bad things in life, they rarely come in single occurrences. Just like with lies, bad things tend to pile up. One thing leads to another, which leads to another, and before you know it, you’re suffocating under a big, huge pile of (pardon my French) sh*t.
But there’s another part of this that I think some adults tend to forget. For most teenagers, they’re entire lives are school. In the morning, they wake up, grab a bagel or bowl of cereal, and head to school. There, they spend the next eight hours of their life in a giant cesspool of teenage hormones and drama. They often get teased or annoyed by their classmates. They’re drilled, lectured, and sometimes ridiculed by teachers. The entire environment consists of extreme pressure to succeed and huge helpings of peer- and self-criticism. (Don’t mistake me, sometimes high school can be fun. I know my friends and I had many enjoyable days at school. I have fond memories of my high school years, but I also have some pretty bad ones, too) After school, they participate in extra-curricular, school-sponsored activities with their classmates. If they work, many work in jobs where their classmates are either co-workers or customers (McDonalds, movie theater, grocery store, etc.). Then they go home and they do homework. Most kids these days have smartphones and computers at home. They’re almost constantly connected. So through all of those activities that comprise their day, they are in instant contact with people from school.
As adults, we can often leave the drama at work. Don’t lie, we all know there are things or people that you don’t like at your work. But when you go home at the end of the day, you have friends who aren’t from your office and you are more likely to spend your time away from media. Teenagers aren’t like that. If there’s something going on at school, it’s likely to follow them around all day and everywhere they go. So of course things tend to feel like they’re never going to end. They’re a constant presence in these teenagers’ lives. So when a rumor spreads, it’s not just something they’re experiencing a little bit at school, it’s something they see every time they look at their phones. If they’re getting bullied, it follows them to work and home. It’s a black hole that swallows and surrounds them until they can’t see the sun. They can’t see a way out.
And if that wasn’t enough, they also don’t know how to deal with it. They’re afraid to talk about things. Many of them don’t want to involve other people. They’re afraid that it will just be a burden placed on someone else’s shoulders. Or, they’re afraid that they won’t be believed; that adults will just belittle their problem. It can be hard, as an adult, to remember how much someone calling you a bad name hurts. As an adult, you know it’ll be forgotten soon and to just brush it off. But for teenagers, their reputations are who they are. Kids know that it’s hard for adults to understand, so they just don’t share their problems. The difficulty with that is that if adults don’t know what’s going on, how can they possibly help? How do we look for signs of problems, especially when they’re often so small they can pass unnoticed? How do we see that cry for help?
Here are some solutions:
- If you’re a parent, tell your child it’s okay to have problems. I don’t mean, necessarily, to sit down and have a lengthy talk about it. In fact, that will probably just get an eyeroll and an “Okay, Mom.” But show them. Don’t hide your mistakes, past or present. Talk to them about the struggles you faced. Tell them about the time you got into a car accident because you did something stupid. Tell them about the bad boyfriend or girlfriend you wish you hadn’t dated. Show them that you struggle getting along with people at work. Share how your coworkers make you feel. Don’t sugarcoat life for them. Be real! Give them an example of someone who has gone through crap and has come out the other side. Give them hope that things will turn out better tomorrow.
- If you’re a parent, talk to your kids. Get to know them. I know that can be tough with teenagers, but seriously, just ask them about little things. Try to know what’s going on in their lives. Ask them who their friends are and what’s going on at school. Don’t push too hard, but let them tell you the amount that they want to. Reach out and let them know you’re there.
- If you’re a parent or someone who works with kids, make sure that they know there’s a safe place for them to talk. I was never scared to talk to my parents. I have no idea what they did to make me feel comfortable talking to them, but they did. Maybe it was because they talked to me about issues as if I were a person, not a child. For example, I knew about alcohol before I was in high school. My parents don’t drink, but they both told me their reasons. They explained that alcohol isn’t necessarily bad, but that you have to be careful with it. They told me that laws are there for a reason, but if I ever found myself in a position where they were needed, I could always call for help. Thankfully, I never needed to use that particular resource. I also read somewhere that one family had a code word. The kids could use that code word to tell the parents that they needed help, but the code word prevented the parent from doing anything (punishing, lecturing, etc.) until they heard the full story, with the promise that they would get the story. It created a safe space for the kids to talk about what’s going on while ensuring that they would be able to share everything they needed to say. I don’t know if that particular solution would help with bullying, but I’d like to think that setting up that safe space where a child knows they won’t get judged would be a good basis.
Finally, If you’re a teenager, or anyone, going through something, know that things will get better! Please hear this! THINGS WILL GET BETTER! Don’t ever, for even a second, believe that you are alone. I know it’s hard to see sometimes, but you are surrounded by people who love you. They are all there to listen and help you. Unfortunately, the people that can support you the most are not always the ones in your home. But I promise you, they are in your school and in your community. They are all around you. You just have to be brave enough to look. If you can’t reach out to people you know and are having trouble, please call a hotline. There are literally dozens of hotlines for anything you could ever possibly need. Here are the numbers for the Suicide Hotline: 800-784-2433 and the Crisis Call Center: 800-273-8255 (for any type of crisis). You can also text the Crisis Call Center by texting ANSWER to 839863. Attached to the bottom of this post are also three links to many, many other hotline numbers. Please, please, PLEASE call them if you need to talk.
Remember that life has ups and downs. Things in life aren’t always going to be great. People are going to hurt you, but you are more important than what they think of you. Your worth does not lie in them. You were created by an Abba that loves you for everything that you are. He has an amazing plan for you and you are just getting started on the story of your life. Don’t forget that He is always there for you, even when you feel completely alone. I’m not going to ever tell you that everything happens for a reason, because that is complete BS. But I will say that you are able to get through this. You are able to move on and live a life that is amazing and spectacular. I will tell you that someday this trial you’re facing will fade. It may stay with you, but it will no longer consume you. And, if your life goes the way that I believe Abba has planned, this struggle you’re facing now will make you stronger. Who knows, it may be the thing that saves someone else someday. But please, whatever you do, know that you are stronger than this. Know that you have worth and it is greater than you can ever imagine. If you’re to this point and none of this has helped, maybe this simple statistic will. “Each suicide intimately affects at least 6 other people” (dosomething.org). There are at least six people who love you so deeply that your death would seriously affect their lives. This means that there are probably at least 24 more whose lives would be affected in some meaningful way. Even if you’re not thinking about suicide or self-harm and are just struggling, remember that those 6 people still exist. They love you and they want to help you. I pray that you find them.
Thinking of You,
Kristen
http://www.teenhealthandwellness.com/static/hotlines
https://psychcentral.com/lib/common-hotline-phone-numbers/
https://psychcentral.com/lib/telephone-hotlines-and-help-lines/
