Hey, it's Hannah. Hannah Baker. That's right. Don't adjust your...whatever device you're reading this on. It's me, live and in stereo. No return engagements, no encore, and this time, absolutely no requests. Get a snack. Settle in…
When your child grows up your worst fear is for them to get bullied in middle school, high school or even college. We as students in this form of schooling try to survive, survival of the idiots. We fight our way up the social chain, or like some of us, we never make it to the top, we just settle for the middle and move on with our life. But imagine a kid in high school or college who is constantly fighting to keep a float. Someone who gets talked down on for having a nice ass. Someone in other eyes that is so pretty/handsome but gets treated like shit. The cover of someone’s book might be the dark side in another’s. People act so nice until that person is empty inside. Where does it come to an end? When will the darkness in people’s hearts come out of hiding? When will your tape push someone to the end?
Say one day you get a package on your door step. You get up to your room, sit down and open the box closed shut with secrets. When you open it, you realize there are 13 tapes, decorated in lavishly blue nail polish with each having a designated number on the front. What would you do? Listen and unfold the stories winded within the tapes, or throw them away like the package clearly wasn’t intriguing enough? For him the package was good enough, the curiosity didn’t kill Clay but he also wasn’t the only beloved piece to this puzzle.
My first experience with bullying was in elementary school. Welcome to your section, It all started with Catalina, to me one of the prettiest girls in elementary school. Her hair was long and brown and fell to the top of her butt. To us in elementary school that was the most mind-blowing feature. Catalina and I were -8-best friends, we would do everything together. Recess, dance competitions and at lunch we would even do each other’s hair. I mean can it get anymore best friend status than that? As we all think, can an 11-year-old even be a bully? Well surprise to me, they can and sometimes they can be the worst. She would spread rumors about me, she would laugh at me and make fun of me to all my friends and the next day would be my best friend again.
I would come home from school day after day, wondering what I possibly could be doing wrong at 11 years old. How could someone hate me so much for just being their friend one day and loving me like nothing ever happened the next. Fighting the tears and pain every night, aching to understand what was wrong with me. In my innocent mind, I would blame myself, I mean of course I’m doing something wrong, right? If someone can hate me so much for just being me. My mother always said to me, “people can only hate you because of the goodness they can’t find in themselves.”. Every day when I would come home crying she would talk to me, pray for me, guide me to stand up for myself. To not take the pettiness thrown at me by little kids who had nothing better to do. But to always pray about it, to fight the hurt and build myself up. “Always let your light shine Elise, you’re a leader.”
You start to listen to the tapes; one by one you learn more about all these people you knew or thought you knew. Just to find out that there was more to the story than what you could see. Finally, you get through half the tapes to find out that you are on them? What do you do, do you cowardly give up the tapes because you can’t bear to know that you could have been the reason someone killed themselves. Or do you continue to listen, and swallow hard on the mistakes you made, the events you could have stopped and the person you could have loved but instead let the fear overcome you or worse, consume you.
Which brings us to present, one would think, as we grow older we grow wiser. WRONG. While some wallow in the past and let their anger, and hate to consume them to become a beautiful young lady whose insecurities are so strong that she reflects the hate for herself onto someone that gave her friendship in exchange for nothing in return. Bonjour, Katrina c’est une section. Like it always starts, Katrina and I were close friends. She kind of looks like me, dark black hair, a medium height which made everyone think we were sisters. To be honest, I am kind of offended. Considering, I am a strong independent perfectionist, that would never bully someone because I thought they were “better than me”. So, us “looking” like sisters I would say that would be considered fake news.
I wouldn’t say best friends like Catalina because, after her, I use that word lightly. But we were damn near close I would say. We would party together, gossip together and give each other boy advice. Mistake. They say school and boys don’t mix, what they really meant was boys and insecurities don’t mix. One day, Katrina flipped on me, her love switch turned into full on hatred for me. She would threaten me, tweet about me and use social media as her outlet to trash talk me. Mind you, I live with this girl. Talk about a w k w a r d. Imagine avoiding sleeping in your bed or even taking a shower without feeling someone was going to go off on you just because they felt like it. Using cute nicknames like “weak ass bitch” to describe me, because her hatred was so strong that I became the weak one, even though I was the one being mature? How do you fight that? How do you tell yourself that this person is only attacking you because she can’t be you? Aching again and again because the overbearing feeling of not ever being good enough was too much to handle.
Some girls know all the lyrics to each other’s songs. They find harmonies in their laughter. Their linked elbows echo in tune. What if I can’t hum on key? What if my melodies are the ones nobody hears? Some people can recognize a tree, A front yard, and know they’ve made it home. How many circles can I walk in before I give up looking? How long before I’m lost for good. It must be possible to swim in the ocean of the one you love without drowning. It must be possible to swim without becoming water yourself. But I keep swallowing what I thought was air. I keep finding stones tied to my feet.
Every single day people fight the urge to commit suicide. They ache and fight the pain that sooner or later consumes their heart. To make them think that they can no longer fight this fight, that their best option is to give up. To surrender to the pain and hurtful words thrown towards them day in and day out. Today, suicide has led to the #1 death in teenagers. We never think of it that way, even for me, Catalina hurt me a lot and as a child, you never think that so much pain you inflict on someone can drive them to take their own life. That the words you form on the tip of your tongue, that your heart tells you not to do but let your anger tell you otherwise, can cost someone their life. Bullying is not an option and should never be an option. In 13 Reasons Why, Hannah fights that fight. To the point that 13 people couldn’t even put their pride, and anger aside to treat one human right. That 13 people could have saved one life but chose otherwise.
A lot of people don’t have the support system that I did when it came to fighting my bullies back. To use my words as a way of stating my opinion. Yes, all the pain inflicted on me just by Kyra was enough to make me never want to come back to school. But for me I had a mother to guide me. I had friends to keep me sane and most importantly I had God to cover my heart with his hands to give me the love and warmth I needed to keep myself calm with my soul attached.
Like Hannah Baker said “I think I’ve made myself very clear. But no one’s coming forward to stop me, some of you cared. But none of you cared enough. Neither did I and I’m sorry.” But think about if you were one of the 13 people who could have changed her outlook on life. What if you were that one soul who let her know you were there for her, no matter how hard it got. Do you think you could have done it, do you think you could have stopped that one innocent soul from taking their life? Well, we may never know. I guess that concludes my story…