6:26am November 6, 2014

Before the “It Gets Better” thing even existed…

I wanted to write something, or make a video, showing young autistic and other developmentally disabled children and teens that their life does not have to end up the way the professionals and parents in their lives, or they themselves, imagined their future. That their future could be something that they never expected but that it could be something wonderful.

I attempted suicide and tried to run away from home, multiple times, because I thought I had no future. Someone I know almost shot up her high school for the same reason. She went as far as buying the gun, but was stopped by a spiritual experience that gave her hope again. Hope is a powerful thing. Who knows how many lives hope saved when it came to my friend that day? (She says that occasionally someone will try to tell her she had a spiritual experience because she was “special”. Her response is always, “What about the lives that were saved? What if they’re the ones who were special, and that experience just happened, so as=to keep them alive?”)

I know all the criticisms of this kind of thing, and I agree that this kind of thing is not perfect on its own. But I can’t believe that it’s wrong to tell people “When people say this is the best time of your life, they’re wrong. It can get better than this. Your life can change in ways you can’t even imagine. Things can get better.”

Yes, people should also be working to make things better for marginalized kids now. That isn’t contradicted by saying things can get better in the future.

Yes, people should understand that things don’t get better for everyone. But saying that things can get better (which is how I was going to put it in the video I was making… remember this was pre-“Things Get Better” so I wasn’t going off of their model of reality) can be very powerful for people who have lost all hope. To see an adult like yourself who is living a life different than you’ve ever been taught to imagine, is one of the most powerful things in the universe to a marginalized teen who’s been told they have no future. I know. I was that teen, I met those adults. (Being queer wasn’t even on the radar at that point. I mean I identified as bi, but as far as things that affected my future went, it was disability all the way. Meeting severely disabled adults who didn’t live in institutions, and who made the decisions about their own lives, changed my life utterly and completely, and I can’t believe that this is a bad thing.

And yes, the guy who started the whole thing is an asshole, if I remember right. But that doesn’t mean everyone doing it is an asshole, or has ties to him, or wants to have ties to him, or has even heard of him. (If it’s who I think he is, he was barely on my radar when I first started seeing “It Gets Better” videos, and I certainly didn’t connect him with it.)

It’s not enough to solve every problem facing disabled youth, or queer youth, or trans youth.

But it’s something, and when done properly (i.e. not condescending, not assuming it will get better for everyone, etc.) it can have a profound effect on the people who see it. I literally did not know that a life like my current life was possible or that people like me, as adults, living the life I live, even existed.

So I’m going to write about it. And I don’t care if it’s frowned upon. If it reaches even one disabled child, or one disabled parent, and tells them there’s another life to live than what they’ve been taught to expect? Then it’s done its job, and it’s important, and it doesn’t matter what anyone says. Because I know. Because it’s what saved my life in the end.