Spoiler alerts and trigger warnings ahead.

Two months into my freshman year of high school, a boy one year older than me committed suicide. While I didn't know him that well, I went to summer camp with him the previous summer. I remember the night it happened everyone was talking about it on Facebook. There were "I'm sorry" and "My prayers are with the family" and "He was so loved" messages circulating everywhere. I remember thinking "He must not have felt that loved when he was alive or he wouldn't have done this." Everyone showed up to school wearing black the next day. I never figured out why he did what he did, but even though I didn't really know him, I couldn't help thinking there was something that I could have done.

On Friday, March 31st, Netflix premiered its new show "Thirteen Reasons Why." It's based on the book by Jay Asher that was released in 2007. Of course, I needed to watch this show because this book was my favorite book when I was in eighth grade. Thirteen episodes lasting thirteen grueling hours in front of the television, but I kept watching. "Thirteen Reasons Why" tells the story of high school junior Hannah Baker, who has just committed suicide. She has left behind a shoe box of thirteen tapes in which she records the ways that thirteen people are responsible for her taking her own life. On her instruction, the box of tapes is to be passed around to each of these people so that they can truly understand her pain and understand that their actions have consequences.

However, this show isn't just about suicide. The show exposes the effects that things such as sexual assault and slut-shaming have on the self-esteem of a teenage girl. The show doesn't shy away from topics and forces you to watch sexual assault taking place and the eventual suicide of Hannah by slitting her wrists in her bathtub. But that's the point. It is supposed to be uncomfortable. It is supposed to, at the very least, attempt to make you understand how helpless and empty Hannah feels by watching her experience everything.

But there are some people that I fear are missing the point. Hank Stuever, a TV critic for the Washington Post, wrote an insensitive article about the show and how it didn't properly represent suicide and teenage angst. He claims that the characters are too melodramatic and that the plot is messy. Now, I have no idea what Stuever's experiences are or how close he has been to suicide. But I feel like he is being too quick to judge and doesn't have all of the resources he thinks he does to be able to claim something as daft as this.

First of all, the characters may come across as melodramatic because teenagers are melodramatic. Second of all, the plot may seem messy, but that's because suicide and sexual assault are messy. Obviously, Stuever was a teenager at some point. But he is nearly 50-years-old which means he was not a teenager at the same time that I was. Being a teenager in the age of social media is a lot different than being a teenager in the '80s. Furthermore, while he may have been a teenager, I can certainly tell you that he has never been a teenage girl.

He never had to endure what it's like to be called a slut by your peers because of untrue rumors. Not only are teenage girls the targets of these rumors, but they are then the ones being blamed because "they should have known better" or "they were dressing provocatively." This is the exact mindset that this show is fighting against. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, while males are four times more likely to die from suicide, females attempt suicide three times as often as males. Youth are also more likely to attempt suicide, with the ratio of suicide attempts to suicide deaths in youth being 25:1 compared to 4:1 in the elderly. Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for young persons aged 15-24.

But there is also a relationship between suicide and sexual assault. About 44% of rape victims are under the age of eighteen. About 13% of rape victims with attempt suicide. I know it sounds like I'm just spewing about a bunch of statistics (and I guess I kind of am), but these statistics hold meaning. Nearly half of all rape victims in the world are teenagers! Does this not bother anyone? This means that it is more likely than not that a few of these teenagers are attempting suicide. And no one is doing anything to help them.

This is what I think Stuever is missing. He is leaving out the important message that this show is conveying because he doesn't want to acknowledge the very real aspect of the show. He doesn't want to admit that bullying, rape, and slut-shaming have more of an impact than he thinks. Maybe he was strictly trying to critique the show from a producing standpoint and maybe I can't blame him for that. But I can blame him for not seeing how the concepts of suicide and rape contributed to how the show was produced and for refusing to see the connection.

I wish I could say that I'm sorry for pinpointing my aggression towards Stuever, but I'm not sorry. When someone who writes for a large publication like The Washington Post, which reaches nearly one billion page views per month, doesn't take rape and suicide seriously, it conveys to the readers that it's okay not to take rape and suicide seriously. If more people understood, maybe teenagers wouldn't be so afraid to talk. And maybe someone would have been able to help the boy I went to school with.

"Thirteen Reasons Why" is so important because it is trying to change the narrative around rape and suicide. It exposes the dirty and messy reasons why a person would be driven to take their own life and it is exceedingly raw because they don't shy away from the difficulty of the subject like so many other TV shows. It emphasizes the need to compassionate and kind. It's uncomfortable and it's hard to watch. But that is exactly why you need to be watching it.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255

National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673