What If It Doesn't, In Fact, Get Better?

Since the recent suicides of bullied gay teens, I've been pleasantly surprised by the positive messages sent out there by celebrities and charities. One of the campaigns, however, unsettles me: I refer, of course, to the "It Gets Better" campaign. Although I feel the premise is basically true (that life after high school is amazingly better because you have freedom of movement/expression and you don't have to put up with as much homophobic harassment), I'm not sure that anyone can actually deliver on that promise. Will life get better? Obviously it didn't for that poor boy who was victimized by his roommate at Rutgers. Or for the hundreds of adult gays who die in hate crimes each year.
But I digress. The point of this post is: when we tell ourselves that a certain period of our lives is going to be brutal, but then things will "get better," isn't it just a lie we tell to convince ourselves not to give up and die? Because my life is fairly terrible at the moment (excluding the fact that all my basic human needs are being met), and everyone keeps saying "a few more months/years, and it will 'get better,'" and I feel like that couldn't possibly be true. Yes, I'm at a low "bad" point in my life, and in accordance with life-cycles, things will become less stressful and depressing and I'll have a short run of happiness. But the mountain range past that clearing is going to be even more terrifying and miserable than the one I just climbed through, is it not? After student teaching, I'll be married and out on my own, which means I have to start paying back the exorbitant amount of money I owe in student loans. Fate willing, I will have babies and will have to finance everything they do until they themselves are moved out and married. Having a career and a spouse and children are things I thought would signify my life "being better," but upon further examination it appears they will only complicate and add stress to an already unhappy situation.
Does it actually "get better?" Or does life just morph from one shitty situation to a different shitty situation, and the lesser of the evils becomes labeled as the "better" time?