LESSONS I LEARNT FROM BOJACK HORSEMAN PT2:
LIFE’S A BITCH AND WE KEEP ON LIVING
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched Bojack Horseman stop reading now!!!
“Life’s a bitch and you keep on living” were some the last words Diane said right before the series ended forever. And for me it was one of the most impactful part of the entire series and probably the entire point of it, and that statement was one of the things that helped me overcome my sadness over the meaninglessness of life.
The episode prior to this was when Bojack was stuck in a dreamlike state after trying to drown himself where he met everyone who had died in his life, from Herb to his mother, to Sarah Lynn, to Secretariat/His father and the moment that struck me the most was the performance of Secretariat who we all committed suicide.
As he performed the poem I was brought to tears and I’m not someone who cries easily especially not from watching a TV series. But I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing as he spoke about how he regretted it at the last moment and how he wish he could have stopped at midway, or how as he reached the bottom he wished something could break his fall.
At that moment I couldn’t help myself from remembering how that felt about a year ago, with the rope around my neck and I let go, for that one second I wished I could stop it, I wished I could go back, but then I fell and hit the ground because I didn’t tie the rope well.
My life was saved because I didn’t tie the rope well, then I only felt bad again because I couldn’t do anything right, I couldn’t even kill myself right , I failed at that too.
I tied it tighter later on, but before I jumped again, I saw my baby brother’s picture and I realized that I couldn’t die, not yet, life was terrible but I had to at least live for him.
The thing about being suicidal is that it’s not like you don’t care about your family, but sometimes the pain becomes overwhelming and you begin to honestly believe that your loved ones and the world would be better off without you.
Suddenly you begin to forget all the good times, you try to hold on to the good memories but your mind squeezes them away and the more you try to grasp at them the faster they disappear or the more they look like they were irrelevant and never mattered.
You see yourself as only causing pain, to everyone around you, but my brother many at times had only me, my mind couldn’t squeeze out the good memories because I had very few bad ones and more importantly I remembered how much he needed me. That was enough for me at the time.
And no, everything did not magically become better; I didn’t suddenly become a paradigm of mental health. In fact there are still many dark days when I feel terrible, then there are good days when I feel ok, sometimes even elated, and that’s just how life is.
I feel great and the darkness creeps in and I can’t even trust the happiness so much so that when I’m happy I can’t even be happy for too long knowing that the darkness is not too far away. Sometimes I get tired of the cycle and want it all to end, but then what can me, a simple homo sapient do against life.
Life’s a bitch and the only thing we can all do I to keep living, keep getting through each day, keep striving and keep looking for meaning in the things we do because that really is all we can do.
