It Gets Better
Someone tweeted this YouTube video yesterday, which I then retweeted, but I can't let it rest there. I'll tell you why after you watch:
Click to viewSeattle columnist Dan Savage created the "It Gets Better Project" on YouTube as a place for gay, lesbian, bi or trans adults to share their stories with teens, to help gay, lesbian, bi or trans teens understand that life gets better after high school.
The project was launched in response to the suicide of Billy Lucas, who was 15 when he killed himself in Greensburg, IL. Apparently Billy was being bullied by his classmates because they thought he was gay. Here's a link to one news story. It's worth following the link in that story to the local Fox story.
Here's the thing. Every student who is bullied or shunned (a passive agressive form of bullying) in high school needs to know that life does get better. I know this because I was one of those students and because, when I was Billy's age and a freshman in high school, I was steps away from killing myself. Literally steps. If my father had not had some sense that something was up and had not used his Voice of God Who Must Be Obeyed (something he seldom did), I would not be here today.
Why was I driven to the point of wanting to be dead? I am different. In a part of the world where 5'7' is considered tall for a girl, I was 5'11¾" (that's what I said when asked). I was flat chested in a class of at least C cups. I wore glasses (contacts weren't even an option until I was at least a junior.) I was smart and was under the impression that school was a place where you went to learn. I loved to read. I was unathletic (to the gym teacher's despair, because until she saw me in action, she hoped there was a basketball player in there somewhere). Oh yes, and shy to the point of blushing when my name was called for attendance in home room.
It felt like (and at that age, what it feels like is all that is important) I was the target of teasing (not outright bullying thanks be), and was called the Jolly Green Giant and the Walking Encyclopedia. Neither felt like a compliment. If I wasn't being teased, I was shunned. I was asked to no parties, no dances, no one's house. No matter what I did, how much small talk I tried, there was no reciprocity. By November it was all too much.
But my father's voice did compel me back into the living room (literally and figuratively). Two therapy sessions (in The City 60 miles away) later--this was the '70s, mind--and I got on with life. What finally helped me was figuring out for myself that if these were the best years of some people's lives, then those people were going to have lives that went downhill from high school. Whereas my life could only get better.
It didn't happen right away, but it did happen. Right now, I love my life--and Life--in a way I never dreamed possible when I was 15.
My point is, there's a link-up between Dan Savage's "It Gets Better Project" and the support so many of us have been expressing for Laurie Halse Anderson's novel Speak (#SpeakLoudly), and for all the challenged books for teens. We human beings are social creatures. We need communities. Books can create those communities when the real thing is not available. Books tell us we are not alone, that someone has been where we are and that they have come out the other side. We need the hope offered by stories both real and imagined.
Those challenged books deal with the hard side of life, one that it's not easy to talk about. But that's what makes it so important that they be available. Because that hard side of life exists, no matter how much we might wish it didn't. It's clear from the stories shared on countless blogs through the #SpeakLoudly tag that Laurie's novel has been important because it does what the "It Gets Better Project" does: it gives people community ("I've been where you are") and hope ("Let me tell you about it").
That's what I hope for StT, too. It is why I believe in this project so much. It is the book I wish I had been able to read when I was fifteen.