Let me preemptively state this fact for some kind of insurance against vilification from Gleeks: I don’t watch Glee, so there’s a very real chance that I don’t know what I’m about to talk about in regards to the actual episode at hand. I only saw the first season, and then I quit watching because it became so ridiculous that my brain exploded a little bit more with every new episode (which is to say that I’m being dramatic and it just wasn’t my cup of tea). Please forgiveth any recap errors.

That being said, I like to keep up-to-date on the goings-on of this show, because it tends to incite public controversy amongst media representatives who are under the presumption that Glee apparently singlehandedly shapes the opinions of every impressionable adolescent on Earth, or something. And Glee-related controversies arise frequently, because literally every hour-long segment of that show is a goddamn Very Special Episode.

Homosexuality? Gasp! Premarital sex? Gasp! Teen pregnancy? Gasp! Our children can’t be exposed to these concepts, because otherwise they’ll try to be like all the cool kids on Glee and go and get themselves teen-pregnant! Really, I’m more concerned about the liberal usage of auto-tune on that show, but whatever. (Also, that whole plotline where Quinn tried to steal her biological daughter, Beth, back from the adoptive mother was ridiculous and could’ve easily been foiled in two seconds if any other character had bothered to remind Quinn that she voluntarily relinquished legal right to custody of Beth months ago. The entire storyline neglected to acknowledge basically every reality of the adoption process in the first place. But I digress.)

Anyway, in last night’s episode, Quinn got into a car accident on the way to Rachel and Finn’s wedding (WTF? Aren’t they like 18?), and she might be dead, or some shit. Whatever. She’s a fictional character with a fairly weak singing voice, who probably isn’t even dead anyway. I think I’ll recover. What caught my attention after seeing some shocked Facebook statuses and perusing the internet for episode recaps was the fact that in last night’s episode, a supporting character—Dave Karofsky, the closeted homosexual/football butthead-jerkface who bullied Kurt for being gay—attempted suicide after enduring persistent bullying for the same reason.

Suicide rates are much higher in LGBTQ teens, and the obvious explanation for this unfortunate statistic is that queer teens are likelier to be bullied and lack self-acceptance on the basis of their sexual orientation than heterosexual teens are. But depression and suicide are much more complicated than that reasoning alone, and to put it in those terms oversimplifies the actual problems.

Approximately 1 in 8 teens are experiencing clinical depression at any given time, and 1 in 5 experience depression at some point before reaching adulthood. One of the scariest things about depression is that, particularly for adolescents (who are still in the process of forming their identities and are especially sensitive to negative social treatment), mental illness is so stigmatized that it is frequently undiagnosed, disregarded, and untreated in its sufferers, who remain undereducated about their own conditions—conditions that, under these circumstances, inevitably worsen.

However, when shows like Glee succumb to the “It Gets Better” effect and ignore the reality that depression is not entirely causal—that is to say, that sometimes it happens for no reason at all, because it is an illness, not just a feeling—they dangerously ignore the huge number of people who suffer from depression/suicidal impulses and have no clear-cut answer to their pain. And, in fact, nobody with a mental illness has a clear-cut answer or solution. Depression may manifest itself in personal experiences, but in this case, correlation does not equal causation. Some people endure torture-filled years of bullying and barrages of bad luck and manage to cope and recover, whereas many other people share similar experiences and develop severe depression. Some people walk around everyday with unbearable sadness and never attempt or even consider suicide, but many other people with the same pain feel that they are unable to cope with living.

The point here is that mental illness doesn’t have crystal-clear explanations, ever. You can’t tell a kid “it gets better” and expect that this attempted glimmer of hope will cure an illness. It is intolerable that popular culture is condescendingly treating depression and suicidal tendencies as a “feeling” rather than a disease, because to do so only further stigmatizes people with these traits—the vast majority of whom aren’t cured by three words or happy stories, and who very likely feel a great amount of shame when these supposed cures do nothing to fix their pain at all.

The “It Gets Better Project”—created as an attempt to reduce the high rates of suicide in GLBTQ teens—and its resulting messages are entirely well-intentioned, but they aren’t helpful in the long term to people with suicidal tendencies. Teens with depression don’t need to be told that their futures will brighten if they wait the pain out. They need to be informed of ways to seek help right now.

So yeah, Glee. I commend its attempt to address suicide and the bullying that queer teens have to endure in a serious manner, but I condemn its ignorance and lack of substance/helpfulness/reality. I don’t give half a damn about that show, but right now, it’s proving to be a pretty effective example of the oversimplification of the very serious and all-too-common tragedy of suicide.

This article focuses on depression, but clinical depression is far from the only factor in determining teen suicide. However, it is generally believed to be the most common one. Depression is an illness, and having a serotonin shortage is no more shameful than having a cold. If you’re suffering from symptoms of depression or another mental illness, please do not hesitate to get help immediately. Talk to a parent, a friend, a sibling, a doctor, a teacher, or even inbox me if you need support. You don’t have to be this sad anymore, and it’s not even the tiniest bit your fault. Reach out for help (untapped resources abound you), and you can be a hero to yourself and to others who haven’t yet found the same courage.

This guy dances even more freely than I do in front of the mirror when my bedroom door is closed (and also like eight-hundred times better).

At first I’m like, “I wish everybody would have as much fun with their jobs as Awesome Traffic Cop Guy!” but then I’m like, “Oh man this guy is so bored at work that he became an incredibly skilled dancer while just trying to pass the time,” and then I’m like, “This guy is probably a terrible traffic cop because I would get into so many car accidents if this guy was directing distracting my vehicle.”

My menstrual cramps are so bad that I’m getting nauseous. I feel like this girl.

Ibuprofen would fix me but I don’t want to get uppppp

Edit: I’m not actually puking, just being dramatic

Author’s note: If you are related to me, I don’t really care if you read this entry, but maybe you should decide not to if you don’t think you want to know anything at all about the vague answer to this question.

Ha! By the “act of love,” I assume you mean, like, sex, right? Well yesterday, I posted that I don’t write about my own sex life on here, but I failed to mention that I do vaguely allude to it when I feel like it. Basically no one I know in real life or in the cyber world still thinks I’m a virgin, so let’s just be honest.

Okay so, here’s the thing! Sex is AWESOME and not “bad”—which, I guess by my definition, mainly just refers to awkwardness—IF you’re doing it with someone who you feel comfortable communicating with. That’s been my experience, anyway. So, with that being said, none of the sex that I’ve had as of late has been bad. There have been a lot of funny moments, though! It’s nice not to take it too seriously and to have it with someone who can share the lawls when something weird happens. It’s hard to think of one specific thing, but I’ll try.

Okay one time I started spotting during sex, which wouldn’t have been very unusual if I had realized it beforehand, but alas, I did not and that was kind of weird. One time, drunk people outside in the alley started yelling and talking really loudly, so we joked that they were cheering for us. One time, my sex-person’s brother almost walked in on us because he didn’t realize that we were in there. And another time, like five minutes after we finished doing it, the people upstairs starting fucking super crazy-fast, and their floorboards on my ceiling were squeaking so loudly (as usual) that it sounded like my ceiling was going to collapse.

I’m sure that there are a million other things, but they’re either too specific to say or I can’t think of them right now.

Always,

Molly

To put it mildly, this situation is just plain fucking difficult. So oy. I’m really sorry that you’re going through this kind of romantic turmoil. Are you, by any chance, a freshman in college? Because a lot of formerly happy high school relationships go through this difficult period after graduation, and it’s always to make that transition. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

As you said, you don’t want to be together because of the distance. If there’s no chance that the distance is going to grow smaller again, then I think it’s time to move on. I know that that’s an impossible thing to command yourself to do, but separating yourself will grow easier with time. I know that you don’t want to ruin the friendship that you had before the relationship, but it might be easier to grow apart if you reduce the amount of time that you talk to each other for a while until you don’t have strong feelings for each other anymore, or tell him that you want to take a break on communicating for a couple of weeks.

Distance changes relationships, and even if you do move closer to each other, it’s not likely that your relationship will be the same as it used to be. Your lives are in different places, and you’re both changing, and as wonderful as the romance that you had may have been, it might not actually be right for you anymore. So I’d suggest that, for now, you try to move on from him romantically. Distract yourself, try a new hobby, and when you’re ready, consider thinking about other fish in the sea.

I don’t mean to imply that your relationship is definitely irredeemable. Maybe you guys are meant to be together, and in that case, you need to talk to him about getting back together, and I can try to give you more tips on how to work that out. I still think that, at the very least, you need this trial period of cut-communications. But anyway, it sounds like you already feel that the relationship isn’t going to work anymore (you tried being together long-distance but felt it was straining your relationship). If you decide that you want to try to move on, I’d be happy to provide some tips on romantic recovery for you.

Either way, know that this isn’t an easy situation for anyone, but that you will make it through these feelings in the end.

Love always,

Molly

Haha, well shucks, aren’t you just the cutest thing? That’s a really good question! I don’t have any particular couple in mind, but I’d say that the couples who annoy me the most are the ones who constantly criticize each other and seem like they don’t like each other at all, but then top off their snarky comments with “I love you!” as if that makes it okay. I understand that fights are bound to happen, and that’s one thing, but I feel pretty uncomfortable around people who—night or day, sober or drunk—act like they don’t like their partners at all. It just makes me sad.

As for your ridiculously sympathetic friends, perhaps they’re just in their honeymoon phase? That does sound pretty annoying, but if they’ve only been dating for a short while, it’s likely that they’ll tone it down as they settle into the relationship. I get sort of cuddly with Boyfriend in front of people—although I don’t think we do the overly sympathetic thing at all—but we’re long-ish distance and don’t get to see each other all the time, so it’s forgivable in my perspective, but I’m biased towards justifying it because I want to hold his hand all the time and also kiss his face because it is awesome. I had a friend say to us the other night, “I can’t wait until your guys’ honeymoon period is over so you can start fighting all the time” (I think Boyfriend was sitting sort of leaning on me while I was holding him or something—memories are, er, hazy). That kind of hurt my feelings, so I responded, “But what if we just like each other?” and the friend who said it is a nice guy so it wasn’t a big deal, and I’m over it. But I mean, maybe it’s just because of where I am now, but the couples who irritate me most are the ones who get all mean to each other in front of people. Of course, too much PDA can be as much of a bummer too!

Always,

Molly

I don’t generally answer very specific questions about my own sex life on here. Google, and all that. Thanks for the interest in my life though. Feel free to ask me other questions. Rock on!

Always,

Molly

Note: I do talk about anything that I deem neutral, such as my boobs, my general life, my relationships (vaguely), whatever. I’m comfortable with almost anything, but I have limits because people I know IRL read this blog. But if anybody Facebook messages me something out of burning curiosity, whether it be about me or about me, I mean, I’ll probably answer you. Almost anything that I wouldn’t publish is something that I would still talk about in conversation. I’m not a super private person. But my name is on this blog, and this blog is visible on Google, so.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Somebody please give me ONE *non-religious* reason why same-sex marriage shouldn’t be legal. [crickets chirping]

No? No? Well, I’M PRETTY SURE THERE IS THIS THING CALLED SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, AND MARRIAGE SHOULD NOT BE VOTED ON BY STATE OR EVEN AT ALL. IT IS A CIVIL FUCKING RIGHT AND SHOULD BE LEGAL. IF YOU ARE AGAINST HOMOSEXUALITY, DON’T ENGAGE IN HOMO SEX, BUT ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS SHOULD NOT DICTATE THE LAW. THAT’S WHY WEARING POLY-COTTON BLEND SHIRTS AND HAVING PREMARITAL SEX IS LEGAL. FUCK YOU AND GOOD DAY! EXCEPT ACTUALLY I HOPE YOUR DAY IS AWFUL, YOU FUCKING BIGOTS.

I mean but yay about the Prop 8 thing! I realize that I’m harping an old tune here, but I just don’t even understand how this issue still exists.

Almost forgot how good this video is.

Answers would be greatly appreciated here! The following question particularly pertains to women who were taking birth control pills prior to implantation: has anybody used Implanon and is willing to share their experiences with it?

Perhaps you don’t realize the total embarrassment of procuring condoms as a teenage boy. It’s a scarring experience, really, especially when the cashier gives you that look like “…mmmhm. I know what you’re doing. And you’re entirely too young.”

I was more mocking the tone in which the boy said it in the movie. I entirely understand and sympathize for the stigma towards teens who are responsible and brave enough to attain birth control. In fact, I empathize: I’ve bought a lot of condoms myself (I understand that that’s generally considered the responsibility of the penis-bearing partner, especially if the female partner is on hormonal contraceptives as well, but it’s important for women to feel good about providing condoms too). Luckily, I’ve only experienced courteous cashiers in these circumstances.

On that note, tips to avoid awkwardness while buying condoms:

• Buy them from Amazon. Usually less expensive, more options, discreet packaging, and they’re equally as safe as store-bought condoms if you make sure you’re buying directly from the distributor or Amazon itself. For more info, shoot me an email, a Facebook message, or inbox me here at Tumblr.
• Use self-checkout. Almost all major grocery stores have these now.
• Realize that attaining birth control is your legal and moral right, that sassy cashiers don’t mean shit in regards to your personal self-worth, and that a minute or two of minor-severe awkwardness is worth the safety from pregnancy and STIs that these condoms will provide for you and your partner(s).