This past weekend, I gave up all responsibilities and started another Netflix adventure. This time a show that I've heard a lot about, and one that I've been anticipating for a while now, "13 Reasons Why".
Originally depicted in a novel by Jay Asher, "13 Reasons Why" walks through the life and death of the young Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford), who recorded 13 tapes and 13 reasons why she committed suicide. These involve many controversial topics, like bullying, young love, sexual assault, stalking and much more. The main protagonist of this story is Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette) who struggles with grief and receives the tapes from Hannah's trusted individual.
I originally became interested in this story when I heard about the book from a few of my friends. They all raved about the book, saying how great yet sad the story is, and honestly, I didn't know what I was getting myself into.
I know that when I started watching the Netflix original series, I didn't cry like I expected myself to. Instead, after watching each episode I felt a little bit more hesitant of the world around me.
Being a former victim of bullying and seeing what others have faced, I empathized with Hannah. I felt her pain and I recognized myself in her more than once throughout the entire series. In addition to the empathy and sympathy I felt for each character going through a bad situation, I started to recognize how much our actions really impact others.
I learned that we all have choices, and those choices shape our own life, as well as others, even if we don't know it. Whatever we do, whether it be bad or good, has the power to impact another person. We can say something, we can assume things, and we can even make mistakes that actually hurts someone, but maybe the best choice is to just care about another person.
We don't know what is going on in other people's lives unless we actually ask, so it's better to be kind and caring than to risk hurting another person.
In the series, she says "some of you cared, but some of you didn't care enough." And no matter how cynical or hateful a person can be, if they can care about another human being, they have the power to save a life.
In addition to this, I learned that although this show was a dramatic portrayal of highschool, a lot of the negative mentality and sexist language still radiates through today's society. I know in my highschool, many girls were harassed, and I look around the world and see it's still very much present in college, and in everyday life.
After watching the entire season in a weekend, my emotions are definitely at an all time high, but I really appreciate what this show and novel did.
This series highlights almost all of the topics people are afraid to discuss, like suicide and bullying. But hopefully this show can teach others the truth about victims and how they get to the point of no return, so that maybe, one day, we can actually save them.
