When you’re in some serious life crisis, one of the things that gets said all the time is that “it gets better.” Well, sometimes that marker of “better” keeps moving. Like, if your teenage years are hell they say it’ll be better in your twenties. But then those are hell too and they say you really find yourself in your thirties. But those are hell too and of course its the liberation of the forties, fifties, retirement age, DEATH…
It doesn’t always get better amiright? Like sometimes… it just continues to be crap. Sometimes you have situations that, should they immediately cease to be a situation, would make things get better. But those situations cause your life to be a continual suckfest or at the very least fail to ever meaningfully improve to a state where you might qualify things as “better.”
Sometimes it’s just so dark that hearing “it gets better” is a cruel joke that everyone else is in on but you. It doesn’t seem like it will get better because you’ve been in it for so long that even if it gets better tomorrow, you can’t believe that to be true because the disappointment is too crushing and you don’t have the energy to get excited about anything let alone exist. Sometimes telling someone it gets better is just way too extra and you need to not.
So what do you say? It’s hard to have your friend or family member struggling to find light and levity in a world of pain and darkness and not want to happily toss out an “it gets better my dear!” But unless things actually seem to be getting better in a way that isn’t tied to very tenuous circumstances, dig deeper for words that will actually inspire them. Because sometimes, it gets better only seems like the stuff you write on tombstones (which reminds me: write that on my death rock pls!).
What I would say is:
I can’t promise you it gets better (unless you grade on a curve from when it started getting really bad to now) or tell you that it will be okay some day. What I can promise you is that you get stronger… and wiser. Your ability to process, avoid, let go of, and generally deal with the bad things in life increases- you’re stronger. And you can tell when a battle is worth fighting or better to let go and walk away from- wiser.
It hasn’t been easy for me- and that’s where I come from. There have been many times I look back and I wouldn’t say it’s better than any sort of marker point for “pretty fucking bad” I might start from. There have been good times and worse ones and great days and horrible ones. If I could characterize it as anything, it would be no worse than when it was *the worst.*
In some ways that’s utterly depressing. In others, it’s a thankful continuum. Either way, I know I’m strong enough and wise enough to weather worse. And I know that through this strength and wisdom, if it were to get better, I will avoid worse times in the future because I made it through and learned from them in the past.
I survived. You can too. And while it’s not much consolation to say who knows if or when it will get better- it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it can get better and it can get worse- but you will be better either way because you’ve dealt with worse. And while it’s not very comforting when you’re tired of it all, it is something. Being strong doesn’t mean you’re constantly lugging the proverbial weight of your distress around with you, it means that at some point the weight becomes lighter because you are stronger now than when you first tried to handle the weight of it.
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sarahmascarah 
Posted on July 11, 2016
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