It's Kind of a Funny Story

by Ned Vizzini

“All right. Also, Craig: I think that you would benefit from seeing someone.” “I know! Don’t think I haven’t tried. I’m not really good at talking to girls.” “Girls? No. I meant therapists. You should start seeing a therapist.”

There’s so much more for me to be doing. I should be a success and I’m not and other people—younger people—are. Younger people than me are on TV and getting paid and winning scholarships and getting their lives in order. I’m still a nobody. When am I going to not be a nobody?

Here in the real world, all equals are created animal, but some are more animal than others.

A working brain is probably a lot like a map, where anybody can get from one place to another on the freeways. It’s the nonworking brains that get blocked, that have dead ends, that are under construction like mine.

But some people have to get lucky just to live. And I never knew I could make anybody lucky.

If Bobby can get a place to live, I think, then I can get a life worth living.

I’m done with those; regrets are an excuse for people who have failed.

I don’t owe people anything, and I don’t have to talk to them any more than I feel I need to.

But most of all I feel my brain, up there taking in blood and looking out on the world and noticing humor and light and smells and dogs and every other thing in the world—everything in my life is all in my brain, really, so it would be natural that when my brain was screwed up, everything in my life would be.