If you were anything like me, you had been waiting for "13 Reasons Why " to become an adaptation for a long time. A few years after the book came out, there were rumors that Selena Gomez was going to play Hannah Baker, but the movie never came. Now, Netflix has made it into a TV series and it's all everyone is talking about.
There are two different lessons you can learn from this show. For the people that don't have suicidal thoughts: words hurt. You could be joking about something but that person might take it personally. You never know what that person is going through. For a person that has had suicidal thoughts: people will miss you. The people that hurt you while you were alive will beat themselves up, because they'll believe that they are the reason you killed yourself. Your parents are going to miss seeing your face every day.
There is a lot everyone can learn by watching this show, but I'm not here to write about what you can learn about this show; I'm here to talk about one specific storyline from "13 Reasons Why".
Everyone's been talking about Hannah Baker and her story, and yes, her story is sad; people treated her like trash. They took every chance they had to shoot her down, but all the other characters had sad storylines too, specifically Jessica Davis.
Her life at Liberty High started off like Hannah Baker's; she was the new kid in town who didn't have any friends and didn't know anyone. But Jessica was use to it, because her dad always had to move around. She was always the new kid. Just from that, you could tell that she didn't have many close friends.
Then she started dating Alex who supposedly "loved her", but made a list and put her best friend, Hannah Baker as the best ass in school and put her as the worst ass in school, because she wouldn't have sex with him. Alex pinned them against each other and it left Hannah and Jessica with no friends.
Jessica Davis needed someone which brought her to Justin Foley, the person that let her down the most. The one person she trusted with all her heart who let his best friend, Bryce, rape her while she was unconscious. The worst part about that situation is that he lied to her about getting raped for months, telling her that they hooked up that night and that's all that happened.
Twelve people knew about Jessica getting raped by Bryce and they let her walk around getting high and drunk with him; they let her be buddy-buddy with her rapist. He could have raped her again if he wanted too. No one was stopping her.
The only reason Justin ended up telling her that Bryce raped her was because he didn't want her hanging out with him anymore. It wasn't because she deserved to know; he thought that he was "protecting" her when in reality, he was hurting her even more. He humiliated her in front of a group of people and he let her soul get taken away without her even knowing it was gone.
Justin and Jessica had so much trust in each other; they were both broken and when they were together, they were whole. Because of this, Jessica believed every word that came out of his mouth, so when she heard Hannah's tape about the night of the party, she of course believed what Justin had said.
A part of me thinks that she knew that something else happened that night but she was too scared to ask if the tapes were true. In one scene, Courtney and Jessica were in the locker room, and Jessica had mentioned that Clay wanted to help her and go forward about what happened to her. But Courtney tells her that everything Hannah said was a lie, but Jessica said that the tape about Bryce and the hot or not list was true so why would she lie about this.
She wanted to believe Justin, because that's her boyfriend, but Hannah's tape is contradictory of what he is saying and she doesn't know what to believe. People keep giving Jessica ultimatums to not believe the tapes and she takes them every chance she can, because she's afraid of the truth and she doesn't know what to do with it.
Jessica knows that something else might have happened that night, which is why I think she started hanging out with Bryce more than usual, because she wants Justin to tell her the truth. She knows that if she asks Justin what happened that night, then he's going to tell her that they only had sex together. So instead of asking Justin, she hangs out with Bryce to push Justin's buttons into telling her the truth. She shouldn't have had to push Justin's buttons into telling her; he should have told her. She deserved more than walking around everyday not knowing that she was sexually assaulted.
Her story made me cry multiple times. The person she use to call her friend killed herself. Her ex-boyfriend tried to pressure her into having sex with him by making a list and embarrassing her, and she was raped by her boyfriend's best friend and was lied to about it for months. Just like Hannah, Jessica had her soul snatched away, the only difference is that Jessica didn't know hers was taken away.
