This is most likely going to be the most personal post that I will ever make on this blog, but this has been bothering me for weeks at this point, and this will have me ranting about the phrase “It gets better.” I just never felt anything click or really fully understood this phrase, or even why people will say it. I first remember hearing this phrase by one of the few teachers I liked in middle school, and I never thought much of it, in fact, I never believed that what it meant was true.

Good god I am a pessimist

My family has always said I tend to focus on the negatives, so I am almost naturally pessimistic about shit, which most likely contributed to why I never really believed the phrase to be true. It didn’t help that going through middle school, shit never got better throughout those horrible years. Some things that got worse after the mentally straining years that was elementary school were including, but not limited to: I lost all my friends (either moved or stopped talking to me), totally new environment without much thought to help me (at least it wasn’t enough), massive amounts of anxiety and feelings of worthlessness developed. All of these practically stacked on top of the issues I had during elementary school to create a feeling of being thrown further down the pits of hell that is school.

It got better… In only one aspect

This aspect is not even really school related, this mainly was the fact that I switched to Linux. This felt freeing and now I felt like I had control, plus it opened the pandora’s box when it came to my interest for computers. I mean, there is kind of one thing that got slightly better in school, at least in middle school, which is that I got a teacher that I liked, and at the time looked like someone who understood how to work with people like me: people on the autism spectrum.

Tally Sheet

Times it got better: 2

Times it got worse: 3

Hey, middle school is hell, High School really gets better, right?

I already kind of ranted about this to my family, but I feel like ranting about it in a blog will just free me from these thoughts. I have been contstantly told, at least in some capacity, that “high school gets better” or that “You may find high school interesting” or something like that. Well, that was not the case, at least during freshman year, the only good thing I could say about that year was that I got one, one class that I wanted (Computer Science Principles). Let’s talk about all the things that got worse: finals happened, which really burnt me out, plus something that also happened during the finals days, but I will not talk about it because it stresses me the ever living FUCK out to think or talk about, some things I chose to do or said that embarass me and make me cringe to this day.

Tally Sheet

Times it got better: 3

Times it got worse: 6

You were just a Freshman, now it really starts to get better

Okay, yes, things did BEGIN to get better, I did get some friends (finally), and my anxiety started to go down. Like okay, things began to get better, and hey, if I wrote this around the beginning of Sophmore year, I would likely be writing a completely different post about how I was proven wrong, that the phrase began to come true for me. That is, until finals happened again. No, that other thing that happened in Freshman year didn’t happen this time, but there may as well have been. Okay, some context first, I was in a fitness class, the class was all about walking (yeah, boring, but I loved it, until that very day), and the final for that class was a two hour walk to a store, where we could buy some shit and then walk back. I am not going to tell all the details since the memory still haunts me out of sheer embarassment, but lets just say, that something embarassing happened in the store. I did get out of that, you could say unscathed, but the jury is out on that one mentally, except I forgot one thing, my payment card. Yeah, that thing is very bad to have lost, and I absolutely refused to go back to the store when I found out, and I probably never will go back, but the card problem was solved.

Don’t even get me started on the bullshit I now have to deal with since I have friends again. Yeah, some things began to go south at some school events, even though I wasn’t even involved, friend groups still manage to drag uninvolved members into it. People in my friend group began to tell me to stop talking to certain people previously in the group, but this brings in a new stressor that I have never dealt with before. Plus, some of my friends who are dating begin to go to other places to be together with their partners. While I know well enough that I didn’t do anything wrong, it is perfectly natural, but the piece of shit that is my brain says to me that I somehow did something wrong and that they don’t like to talk to me anymore.

Time for another set of tests

On top of the finals occuring, later on in the year, some damn standardized tests had to come along and fuck me over even more. Schedule changes were basically thoughtlessly made by the school and confused me, throwing me for a loop and burning me out even further. AND PEOPLE ARE EXPECTED JUST TO GO BACK TO FUCKING NORMAL SCHEDULES AFTER THIS SHIT?! I desperatly needed a break, and the two day weekends were not enough, like, I need two summers worth of break time, that is how bad I got burnt out by these standardized tests sophmores are forced to take.

Final Tally Sheet

Times it got better: 6

Times it got worse: 10

This Phrase just doesn’t sound true

I am not gonna list anymore shit mainly because this felt like it took way too long to write, and probably a bit long for you to read. Do you really think that it has gotten better for me? I really do not think things have gotten better, in fact I believe that it got WORSE. I really think that the phrase “It gets better” is more like a lie that people tell themselves so that they focus on what they can be rather than what they already are. This phrase just sounds like something you would say just to cheer people up if they are feeling terrible about what they currently are in and are going through.

At MINIMUM, it sounds incomplete

Even if it were to be true, that things do indeed get better and that I just have to wait. If you look at all the things I just said, and all the things I could list from memory, it did get better… but only in specific places and circumstances. It did get better from a socializing standpoint (even though socializing is my worst field in mastery), but every other standpoint just got worse. I mean, you could argue that it got better when focusing on anxiety too, but I would argue things got back to where I started, still an anxious wreck. So yeah, the phrase “it gets better” is true, but only if you add something to it. Something more like “it gets better, in specific situations” sounds more accurate and closer to my experience with the phrase.

Anyways, it got better, in specific situtations and circumstances. That is the most accurate form of the phrase to me.