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Judy Blume recommended his book on the Today show?!?
Ned was, simply, a great guy: incredibly smart, gifted, humble, kind, the most loyal of friends, everyone else’s biggest fan.
his work has helped so many through the very disease he himself succumbed to. Ned took his own life at age thirty-two.
I’m left to think that Ned’s disease was sadly just bigger than that—uncontainable.
Craig says, That’s all I can do. I’ll keep at it and hope it gets better.
It’s so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself.
They don’t come out smooth and in conjunction with your brain the way normal people’s words do; they come out in chunks as if from a crushed-ice dispenser;
I’m seeing if maybe pot is the problem; maybe that’s what has come in and robbed me.
I do this every so often, for a few weeks, and then I smoke a lot of pot, just to test if maybe the lack of it is what has robbed
I have a system with bathrooms. I spend a lot of time in them. They are sanctuaries, public places of peace spaced throughout the world for people like me.
“Yeah. It’s simple.” “You like simple.” “Doesn’t everybody?” “Some people thrive on complexity, Craig.”
I’m waiting for her to say something profound—I always am, even though it’ll never happen.
want to feel my brain slide back into the slot it was meant to be in,
We’re dressing up for each other. We should really go get some coffee and make a scandal—the Greek therapist and her high school boyfriend.
and then you were in Harlem, where Manhattan effectively ended for little white boys who made forts under encyclopedias and studied maps.
A person’s relationship with food is one of their most important relationships.
She’s taken such good care of me since I got bad; I owe her everything and I love her and I tell her these days,
But I find God to be an ineffectual shrink. He adopts the “do nothing” method of therapy. You tell him your problems and he, ah, does nothing.
got an 800 on the test, out of 800.
The only thing I had done that people said was kind of like smoking pot was go really hard on the swings, and Aaron had told me that anyone who said that was probably high when they were on the swings.
It was cutting, evil, and bitter-smelling—
I looked at the scotch. My esophagus was scorched, but I took more.
thought making out was having sex.”
“You should put it on one of your cards.” “Heh.” I smiled.
had hurt her feelings, I found out later; I didn’t know I had that power.
Then I’d have flakes dripping down on me and I’d be able to catch them in my mouth. I wouldn’t be worried about Aaron seeing that.
And I could have died right then. And considering how things went, I really should have.
“Well…I’ve had them for years. Just less intense. I thought they were, you know, just part of growing up.” “Suicidal feelings.” I nodded.
I’d want to die. I’d feel wasted and burnt, having wasted my time and my body and my energy and my words and my soul.
“what you could do, or what I could do, since I’m so good at it, is get up onstage and actually throw up, and people would pay to watch, like I was a professional vomit-er.”
and think nothing. It’s a talent I’ve developed—one thing I’ve learned recently. How to think nothing. Here’s the trick: don’t have any interest in the world around you, don’t have any hope for the future, and be warm.
“I’m worried about you, Craig,” she says. “What?” “Don’t do anything stupid, okay?” “I won’t,” I tell her, and that’s not a lie. What I’m doing makes a lot of sense.
“Bye, Nia,” I say. And I mouth into the phone, I love you, in case some of her cells pick up on the vibrations and it serves me well in the next life. If there is one. If there is a next life, I hope it’s in the past; I don’t think the future will be any more handleable.
Who did you think you were fooling! You think you were going to wake up at three in the morning and throw yourself off the Brooklyn Bridge without staying up all night? Give us a little credit!
Every time I spend it, I feel as if I’m being raped. I don’t like to smoke pot, but then I do smoke it and I get depressed.
“Craig, are you still up?” “Yes.” “It’s twelve-thirty. Do you want cereal? Some times a bowl of cereal will just knock you out.” “Sure.” “Cheerios?”
wants to do this, to badoom away all the time. It’s such a silly little thing, the heart.
want my heart but my brain is acting up. I want to live but I want to die. What do I do?
“You never know what truly would have happened if you had done your shoulds and woulds. Your life might have turned out worse, isn’t that possible?”
“He lived!” Chris says. “Yeah, right.” “He did! And you will too.” Did someone tell this guy
realize what he is now. He’s not there in general or for the ER; he’s there for my protection. When you come into the hospital with a mental disability, they put a cop next to you so you don’t hurt yourself. I’m on like, suicide watch. You want to commit suicide, you call 1-800-SUICIDE; you get suicide watch.
Maybe that should be me. If I were on drugs that good, maybe I wouldn’t have time to get depressed. It’s heroin, right? That’s what I need: some heroin.
And, if I were doing heroin, then I’d be a depressed teenager on heroin. I didn’t need to be that cliché.
Chris watches, with his hands on his hips. I’m really curious about his efficacy as a hospital security guard.
‘I’m not afraid of dying; I’m only afraid of living, and I want to put a bayonet through my stomach,’ that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of any of you.”
get the feeling—I don’t know how I know the rules of mental-ward etiquette; maybe I was born with them; maybe I knew I’d end up here—
Maybe it’ll be good to be with someone like him, someone who seems worse off than me. I never really considered it, but there are people worse off than me, right?
people. Does that mean that I sometimes won’t be inclined to beat the hell out of somebody?
Part of me works that didn’t before.
ask her if I can have some. She asks what I need them for. I tell her, to deal with this crazy place. She says if they had pills for that, they wouldn’t need places like this in the first place, would they?
