How I learned to live with myself by watching BoJack Horseman

I've just recently started watching BoJack Horseman and it made me feel to many things that I need to write something.

BoJack Horseman is an animated series about a horse who used to be a popular sitcom star but is now an alcoholic and washed up celebrity who suffers from depression but tries to suppress it by being a hindrance on the few wacky characters who still try to put up with him.

This show about a cartoon talking horse has made me understand my point of view of depression, anxiety, self-doubt and everything in between. But the greatest realization I have had from it is that "It is your fault".

People can hurt you, events can damage you and it will make you cynical, sad or traumatized but everything depends on how you take it and what you do with it.

It is one of the harshest things I've ever realized about depression, I was mad it at first because it can't always be your fault right? 

You can have neglecting parents that will cause you to aspire to be a celebrity to chase out any attention you can get. You can become poor because of a corrupt government and become a petty thief to tip the scales of justice. Or you could grow up with people telling you you're ugly so you never get any self-confidence and become cynical to pretty people.

Bad people and uncontrollable events will always be there to tear you down but what this stupid show taught me is...they could never be the excuse all the time.

In the show, BoJack wholeheartedly admits that he's a piece of shit and a parasite of happiness, he progressively does horrible things that drive people who love him or even just tries to help him away and at first I felt bad because the show keeps showing flashbacks of BoJack's backstory like him having extremely abusive parents, being famous too soon and never knowing anything other than the sitcom life.

And BoJack keeps using his trauma's to not justify his horrible actions for the people around him but to the audience watching. I say that because the other characters in the series are all fed up with BoJack using his traumas as an excuse and in due time I understood their point of view.

A murderer can't keep killing people just because he had a rough childhood. Right?

BoJack is extremely aware that he is a broken and bad person but what's sadder about him is that he doesn't believe that he can be better or even just become happier.

And that's true, you can't just go up to a person suffering from depression and say "Hey, stop being sad" because that's stupid, will never work and as I'm writing this I'm realizing that this is exactly what BoJack would say about his situation and how he tries to fix it.

Because he did try fixing it, in season 2 while working on a new film he tries to exercise and listen to podcasts and learn "Happiness Mantras" only to discover that it only shielded him from his brokenness, he didn't face it and he fell into a pit of denial, a pit lower than he was in.

Because when you find yourself trying to fix sadness with outright positivity for example going to a dating app after you've just broken up from a loving relationship and mask it as "moving on", that is horribly unhealthy as you're trying to fill a bottomless hole and you end up hurting yourself more when you have to discover that you're still broken by being broken again.

And in discovering that even when he tried fixing his problems he will always still fail, BoJack spent a good part of season 3 pointing the blame on somewhere else and it was usually his neglectful and abusive mother, by doing that he lied to himself that the problem wasn't even a little bit his fault.

Now, I understand the "blaming other people" part, because I've been there, you have this need inside you to convince yourself that your toxicity doesn't come from you as to not somehow transfer the damaging hate you had for yourself. 

For example, I have a bad temper, I tend to get mad at my little brother for tiny annoying things and after I've scolded him or expressed my anger towards him I immediately regret it afterwards but my angry pride stops me from apologizing and at one point I realize that what I do to my little brother is what my sister does to me as she has a shorter fuse than I do and treat me as a target, so I started blaming her for making me transfer her line of anger to our little brother.

But then I realize even further that it all stems from my father having a short fuse for us and probably his father before him, so I learned that pointing fingers is an endless game and that it's up to me to stop the line of toxicity by accepting that I didn't just inherit it but actually gave it permission to make me hurt other people just because it was easier.

By season 4 it was kind of good...BoJack is beginning to see that his trauma is not his fault but by this season, they just kept on pointing fingers, BoJack is broken because of his mother but his mother is broken because of HER mother who is broken because of HER husband and I felt like the show was making a complicated yet interesting scapegoat for all the faults of the series so far.

This is my opinion on blaming others for your trauma, because others are wrong to do that and others have the complete right as they have actually been abused. But for me, no one can be broken forever, we can be broken for a long time because people broke us but it is up to us if we can fix ourselves or leave ourselves broken.

And you might think that is an incredibly selfish thing to say and you are right.

Because I'm basically saying that if you stay broken, it is your fault and you have a responsibility to fix yourself and why I think that because people will realize I am right or not realize that they can fix themselves and become angry with me but please keep in mind that this is my opinion and I hope you become better.

By season 5, BoJack not only tries to revamp his image to himself but to also revamp it in the of himself as an actor to the world because he tried going to serious roles with the whole "playing" secretariat gig to follow the footsteps of the father he wanted but didn't have but with Philbert, BoJack thought that playing a gritty character would reflect how he felt of not hiding his dark feelings but that's where he was wrong again.

This is denial on denial because this is only having an idea of what your true feelings are and taking that sliver and thinking if your physical actions reflect that that you are "being true to yourself" or "facing your demons" but no, you are facing what you think your demons are, if people see this side and think you're not "lying to yourself" anymore they will buy it and think you've changed and what's worse is you yourself will think you've changed.

And what happened when BoJack went through with this? He freaked out when a scene in the series mirrored the incredibly terrible thing he "almost" did with Penny because he was not ready to face it and he almost choked out his co-star because of all his pent up aggression bubbling up to the surface.

And finally, in season 6, BoJack tried his hardest.

This was a truly polarizing season because it tries its hardest to justify sexual abusers because it takes me through BoJack's journey of doing bad, trying to better himself, actually doing it but people still punish him for it because in todays age of SJW's and cancel culture there is no escape for people like BoJack and it makes us feel sorry for him and people like him.

But of course, this is not the case because I know this series enough that it is anything but bad, what you can get from this seasons attempt on justifying horrible people is that there is always two sides to a story.

But we'll focus on your side, learning to live with yourself means (first and foremost) living with all the regret, guilt and basically living with the knowledge that you've done bad and that you passed that on when you hurt other people.

People live with this by owning it, they hurt people, so what? because no one can hate them as much as they hate themselves.

Some own it by acknowledging they are toxic but not doing anything about it because it's easier to say they are rather than actually changing.

And what BoJack tried was probably the best he could've done which was he acknowledged his past traumas and he acknowledged that he had hurt people, he tried to better himself by learning from his mistakes, not repeating his toxic ways and when he was outed in the public he did not fight back but acknowledge his mistakes and sought for help.

But what season thought me the most was that the universe doesn't care if you live with yourself or not, bad things will continue to happen and nothing you can do or think about will stop that.

We can be positive, we can accept the bad things, we can avoid the bigger bad things, we can give up, we can NOT give up or we can do a million other things but more and more and SO. MUCH. MORE. bad things will inevitably come.

And don't say that "Good things will also come" because that's a given, we take good things for granted because we know we deserve them and it is scientifically proven that the human brain has a bias towards negative things.

There are a lot of other interesting characters in this incredible series that we can talk about, we can talk about Diane and how she keeps trying to justify her trauma as her fault and thinking that it's her fault means she's self-aware but in doing so she will fall into a pit of self-hate.

We can talk about Princess Caroline and her constant journey to create the perfect life by also creating the perfect but unrealistic people in her life.

We can talk about Mr. Peanut butter and his search of making everybody happy but turns into a perfect example of toxic positivity and inevitably becomes a whole new layer of denial. 

We can talk about Todd and realizing that life can have no goal and is a journey of discovery and that discovery can also be nothing.

But we just talked about BoJack and learning how to live with yourself because everybody is sad and that's okay.

But to be okay is also okay.