Flutterby™! : It Gets Better

Following the suicide of yet another bullied young gay teen, Dan Savage wrote:

"My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas," a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas to my blog. "I wish I could have told you that things get better."

I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

And they started the It Gets Better Project at YouTube, where people record videos telling teens that "it gets better".

Which is a message I sure wish I'd heard more in high school. But there are some alternate takes: It Gets Different; Leveling Up and Not it: you. You get better. are both messages directed more towards personal change.

The only problem I have with those two messages is that I remember feeling in high school, and even college, that my life was on rails, and I didn't have much leeway to change without completely going off those rails. Saying "you get better" isn't much help to someone who's also simultaneously trying to play the various societal success games as well.