Venting It gets better is bs even when my life is “good”

[kittyneedsabreak]

I know everyone complains about the "it gets better" bit and it still gets used. But man did I see it so much more with the suicide prevention week shit.

It drives me insane because to some person who thinks like that, just looking at me and knowing my basic story would make them say I'm a great example of "it getting better". I have a full ride to my college, my dorm is paid for for a year as well, I'm in a research scholarship related to art that also pays a bit. I get good grades, I have a boyfriend, I made new friends at college, etc etc. It sounds so great right?

Except the US is falling apart so all of those things just mean slightly better chances of getting out. With more and more censorship and lack of rights and safety in this country, I'd have no career if I didn't leave (film practically requires some level of free speech). Ensue insane pressure to do perfect for that reason, to take every relevant academic opportunity I can, to somehow not lose friends I just made and not make my bf lose interest after 2 years because I'm so absorbed in building some chance at a future where I actually feel like living. It then also makes me really fucking unstable and also puts pressure on the relationship and on my studies, and it doesn't help that my mom- the family member who lives in town and can help me most as a broke and busy first year college student- is in a shit portion with health and by proxy money at the moment. Like potentially really shit health situation. So even though my life has on the surface evened out since high school, the bigger and deeper picture is so much fucking worse.

 

[Arihman]

I always hated this line of reasoning. Not only because it ignores that therapy is not some guaranteed miracle cure, but because things could also either stay the same, or get worse for reasons that are not necessarily related to you being somehow deserving of your fate (and even then, to quote Schopenhauer, you can do what you want, but you can't want what you want, including getting better). That and because, even if it was my fault, unless I harmed someone else in the past, in which case, I agree that it would be right for me to be held accountable, and to force me to face the consequences of my actions, why should I be forced to pay the price of something that affected only (or primarily) me?

Also, this excuse assumes that everyone can get better, ignoring that those who make this argument not only likely didn't experience the same thing, but that, even if they did, we all have different mindsets and ways of living with things, and that these factors are not malleable however we please, unless something important enough happens and changes them. It also ignores that we can't all be the same, so even if someone suffered in the past, or is suffering now, for the same reason, the implied conclusion that "I experienced X and got over it, therefore you can do it too" is bullshit, because we are not the same individual and we cannot necessarily be, not just when it come to more superficial details, but at a deep, psychological level: we don't have the same psychology, the same tolerances, the same pain thresholds, and often not even the same needs or standards.

Finally, this argument ignores that, in addition to being more similar to a hope, a bet on the future, "getting better" is something that only living beings need. If I CTB today, and 10 years later I would have been happy enough to be alive, that doesn't change that, once I'm dead, I will not be in a position to regret what I made 10 years earlier. There is no reason to think that I will linger as a ghost in purgatory, thinking to myself: "Nooo, I was so dumb, had I waited 10 years, I could have put my pee pee into Scarlett Johanson's vagina, that would have been so cool" (I know, I'm being a bit facetious here , and I don't even like Johansson that much), I will simply be unable to even conceive of such thing as regret.

On the other hand, living beings can indeed experience regret over not killing themselves at an earlier date, because life can always get bad enough to make you wish for death, but the latter can't get bad enough to make you wish for life, due to you not even having a brain to be able to have such a desire.

Getting better ultimately means being better at solving problems created by our very presence in this world, and thus it can't be a good reason to justify coercive suicide prevention, nor to spout platitudes and act like you made a good, rational argument for why we should stay alive. Which, in case it wasn't clear, no, you didn't, that's a NPC argument.