Life Gets Better, But Not By Itself

TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains references to bullying, as well as references to suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.

I remember them so well: the feelings, the sensations, and the thoughts running through my head as I tried so desperately to muster up the strength to just do it. I remember not caring how it would impact the ones who loved and cared about me, or how I would be robbing myself of the potential future that awaited me. I had been through enough in my then-seventeen years of life and I was done. Not angry, just done.

It was a February night during my senior year of high school, and I was alone, trying to drown myself by filling up the sink in my parents’ bathroom with water and holding my head underneath for as long as I could. Repeatedly, I held my head under, but my natural reflexes jerked my head upward, as if my physical half and emotional half were at war. My heart and soul felt like they were dead, and they wanted my physical self to join them - but it wouldn’t give up so easily. At the time, I was angry at my body for not allowing me to end my life and put a stop to all the suffering I had been through. Now, however, I look back on that night – and at that moment –  and I am thankful I was not able to accomplish the task.

Throughout my life, I have been the victim of bullying, anxiety, depression, serious lack of self-esteem, and, for several years, overly critical verbal abuse. It had gotten to the point where no matter how hard I tried – including speaking with therapists, the school guidance counselor, my parents, and even my friends – my problems were not going away. If anything, they were only getting worse.

In Judaism, we are taught from a young age to say the prayer of Modeh Ani when we wake up every morning, to thank God for restoring our soul to our body and for giving us another day. I can remember going to sleep at night praying for just the opposite: that I would be one of those stories of a child who simply does not wake up the next morning. That thought was my “sweet dream.” As soon as I would awaken the next morning, surely enough, an intense feeling of depression and hopelessness would overcome me, as I knew I then had to endure another day in my life.

Obviously, I would like to remain anonymous. However, I would also like to describe my experiences as much as possible so that whoever is going through anything similar to what I went through knows that they are not alone, and that they CAN get through whatever it is they are enduring.

The bullying started when I was in the first grade and continued through high school. Kids would constantly laugh at me, exclude me from hangouts, and even from conversations during the school day. I was called names and slurs and never felt like I was accepted in any environment I was a part of, despite being someone who loves people.

But why am I telling you all this? What’s my point? I do not need anyone’s sympathy or a shoulder to cry on. I simply have two goals in mind as I am writing this essay: to show others that they are not alone in their experiences of bullying, abuse, anxiety, depression, and lack of self-esteem, and to tell them that life does get better.

Yes, I know it sounds cliché. “It gets better.” We’ve all heard it at some point in our lives whenever we’ve gone through difficult situations and life challenges. But nonetheless, we feel that the giver of this verbal antidote doesn’t really know if the words will come true or not; we appreciate the gesture, but it does not appease our pain.

Well, I am here to tell you that you’re right. Just because someone tells you, “It gets better” doesn’t mean your life really will. Not one bit. What they mean to say, although it may not be the best choice of words in the moment, is the following: No matter what we endure in our lives, be it bullying, anxiety, depression, abuse – physical or verbal – eating disorders, acts of self-harm, traumatic experiences, or countless other challenges, we DO have the power to escape the hell we are enduring.  

Here is how: Most people think that if something bad happens to us, we will automatically become sad and there is nothing we can do about it. This is false. No matter what happens to us, we can control how it affects us emotionally by realizing that an event does not control our emotional reaction. An event simply causes a mental response, and that mental response then causes our emotional reaction. But we can learn to be in charge of the responses and reactions, however difficult it may be.

For example, if you are someone who is getting bullied, you may feel offended or sad whenever your bully insults or embarrasses you. This is very normal, but we can indeed change this. We become offended because when we get insulted or embarrassed by someone whose opinion we respect, we automatically give the insult credibility and believe it. This mental affirmation (mental reaction) of the insult thus causes us to become sad and hurt afterward (emotional response).

But what if we reacted differently? What if the next time someone insulted you, you actually went along with it and pretended to agree with them? How dumb would they feel and thus not want to mess with you in the future! This takes a lot, but if done properly, it is a prime example of how a simple mental response switch can save ourselves from a situation that once caused us intense sadness.

An additional example is one that doesn’t even require a response. Let’s redo that last situation. The bully insults you, but instead of mentally accepting his or her words as fact right off the bat, you think to yourself, “Is this really a person whose words are always 100% true? Who says that this person’s opinion has to be the be-all and end-all of life? Why should I give any credit at all to this person’s words? Maybe they are going through their own issues at home or with friends and hurting others is their strange way of coping with the pain.” This alternative mindset – our mental response – can surely give us a significantly better emotional reaction than if we simply agreed with the bully's words and succumbed to his or her verbal daggers.

The point I am trying to make is that we cannot control what happens to us. We cannot control having bullies in our lives, having a parent that mistreats us, or even how we feel about ourselves sometimes. However, what we can control is how we choose to mentally respond and emotionally react to these situations. This change of mindset literally saved my life, as it taught me that I don’t have to be a victim of the pains of life against my will. I can choose how I react to events. And although there are still situations I go through which are difficult to react positively to, the knowledge that my reaction is my choice gives me some solace.

I hope this lesson that I learned can help all of you as much as it has helped me.

Thank you,

Anonymous