1. You're not a Millennial

All jokes aside, if you are not a millennial you do not know what being bombarded with pictures of how “you’re supposed to look like” does to your self confidence.

2. You did not Attend High School During the ‘Social Media’ Phenomenon

Whether you liked high school or not, social media made everything just a little harder. This is the first time I am admitting this, but I graduated high school a year early, because if I didn’t I would have dropped out. High school was awful. I went to a place where all my peers always had their homework done on time, and parents that made them dinner and did their laundry. Most days, I barely knew if I was going to sleep in my bedroom.

3. You can’t Accept that it is Someone Else’s Reality

when I first read the book I was in 7th grade. My friend Megan let me borrow the book to read, ad I devoured it! Within three days I had finished the whole book. When I first saw the Netflix series, I was a sophomore in college, that had just come back from studying abroad in the Middle East. Now that I was older, it was so much harder to watch. I mean, if that would have been me in Hannah’s shoes, I wouldn’t have done anything differently. The fact that she felt those things, and people have the audacity to point fingers and say she was too weak! Since when do we not help ‘weak’ people? The fact that she is ‘weak’ should give us an incentive to help her out even more. If someone is that fucked up, we should be nicer.

4. You Probably Loved High School

If I would not have paid attention to half the things that I did, I would of loved high school. But instead I chose to open my third eye, and things started to get weird. I noticed everything. I noticed how mean guys talked about girls. How my ‘friends’ weren’t my friends, but had to hang out with people because our town was too small, and I was too weak at the time to be alone. But if you loved high school, and it was your peak, than you have no idea what it was liked for those people that had to talk themselves into getting up out of bed.

5. Not Interpersonal and Interpersonal Intelligent

I get it, it’s hard. Not everyone wants to feel all the time. But, by the time I was a sophomore in high school I had been so emotionally drained I had to look for the farthest place I could go to school. Having to actually be there to support other people emotionally while your own personal life is falling apart, is hard to do at 16 years old. I had absolutely no control of half the things that were happening to me. My body was chemically messed up, and these hormones or puberty or whatever literally made me feel like I was losing my shit. If you were not aware of the bullshit people did, and how passive aggressive and sketchy people are, than you didn’t have to worry about a thaaang!

6. Reality Sucks

The girl does not get the happy ending. I mean, in how many stories does that happen? It is not the popular choice, who wants to be sad after watching a movie. We want to watch movies and shows that take us away from our problems, not throw us straight into them.

7. Denial

If you do not see, that the way Hannah’s friend treated her was disgusting, you have got to watch read the whole thing again! People do not treat each other like this. There are way too many horrible things happening in the world for anyone in a first world country to be treating your ‘friends’ like that.

8. You Analyzed the Story, When it was not Mean to be Analyzed

It’s a story. It is not a what if. This is a form of reality, these things do happen. Some teenagers have to endure this, and some do not make it past their teens. These are the stories of the untold teens that kill themselves, because they feel like it is better that way.

9. You’re a Parent, so You Can’t Relate

I mean, how many parents want to think of the possibility of their kid committing, or even thinking about suicide? I sure hope my mom is not reading this, because I know it would destroy her. But shit happens. I was spending more time with friends than I was seeing my own mom. I had so many after school activities (that I wanted to be in), that I barely had time to receive advice from my mom. No matter how close you are to your child, you will never know what actually goes on inside of anyone else’s mind.

10. You Think it is Romanticized. The Girl Dies! Where is the Romance?

I actually decided to join the Odyssey team after reading an article where the author did not like 13 Reasons Why, because she was a physiology major, so she had extensive knowledge on teenage mind, even though she was 40. What part of this is romanticized?

11. You Got Stuck on the Details

She gets bullied to death! That’s it.

12. You Want to Believe Your Kids (or anyone you care about) Would Never do that.

You cannot put your expectations on others. This is not something you can ignore. Who wants to think of someone they care about doing this? Not a lot, and that’s the point.

13. Too Much Emotional Disturbance

At the end of the day, you are free to like/dislike the Netflix serious. But if you’re going to hate it, do it for the right reasons. Don’t like it, because ‘the characters didn’t look like they were in high school’, or because ‘the tones were too bright’. Not because you are trying to deny some deeper issues that are going on.