It's Kind of a Funny Story

by Ned Vizzini

don’t know for the life of me how Sarah suspects something out there that I couldn’t see at point-blank range.

I look at them: my safe environment. I frankly wouldn’t be surprised to find any of them in Six North.

for once he’s just my dad, watching his son who has fallen so low. “All

“No,” Mom says, looking me in the eyes. “What’s a triumph is that you woke up this morning and decided to live. That’s a triumph. That’s what you did today.”

Fake Shift. That’s what I call it. When you think you’ve beaten it, but you haven’t.” “Exactly. We don’t want one of those.”

“Life is not cured, Mr. Gilner.” Dr. Mahmoud leans in. “Life is managed.”

don’t know how much of it is really chemical. Sometimes I just think depression’s one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there’s so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.”

This place isn’t real. This is a facsimile of life, for broken people.

leaving Muqtada asleep, or awake and paralyzed by life; it’s tough to tell.

A caravan of my fellow bleary mental patients—or wait, I think we’re called in-patient psychiatric treatment recipients, technically—

so maybe what I’m asking for is communism, but I think it’s actually deeper than communism—I’m asking for simplicity, for purity and ease of choice and no pressure.

I’m asking for something that no politics is going to provide, something that probably you only get in preschool. I’m asking for preschool.

I work, Monica, and I think about work, and I freak out about work, and I think about how much I think about work, and I freak out about how much I think about how much I think about work, and I think about how freaked out I get about how much I think about how much I think about work. Does that count as a hobby?

PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESS CONTRIBUTE TO OUR WORLD.

send out a fill for him. He sings back. I’m convinced that some part of him knows we came in together.

and he shakes my hand in that way that people do in here to remind themselves that you’re the patient and they’re the doctor/ volunteer/employee. They like you, and they genuinely want you to do better, but when they shake your hand you feel that distance, that slight disconnect because they know that you’re still broken somewhere, that you might snap at any moment.

We tend to have things a little bit easier than girls. And we tend to assume therefore that the world was built for us, and that we’re, you know, the culmination of everything that came before us.

It’s like this: when people have problems, you know…I come in here and I see that people from all over have problems. I mean, the people that I’ve made friends with are pretty much a bunch of lowlifes, old drug addicts, people who can’t hold jobs; but then every few days, someone new comes in who looks like he just got out of a business meeting.” Noelle nods. She’s seen them too: the scruffy youngish guy who came in today with a pile of books as if it were a reading retreat. The guy who came in yesterday in a suit and told me in the most practical way that he heard voices and they were a real pain in the ass; they didn’t say anything scary but they were always saying the stupidest stuff while he was in trial.

“I cut my face because too many—too many people wanted something from me,” she tries to explain. “There was so much pressure,

“It doesn’t matter what kind of surgery I have. I did it with half a scissor, Craig. It’s going to leave scars. I’ll have scars for the rest of my life.

“Everybody has problems. Some people just hide their crap better than others.

“It’s a guy and a girl, see? I didn’t do any hair, but you can see how one has a feminine profile and the other is masculine.” They’re lying down, not on top of each other, just side by side, floating in space.

“Well, there are lot of people who make a lot of money off the fifth- and sixth-life crises. All of a sudden they have a ton of consumers scared out of their minds and willing to buy facial cream, designer jeans, SAT test prep courses, condoms, cars, scooters, self-help books, watches, wallets,

eventually a baby will be born and the doctors will look at it and wonder right away if it’s unequipped to deal with the world; if they decide it doesn’t look happy, they’ll put it on antidepressants, get it started on that particular consumer track.”

“Your problem is you have a worldview totally in formed by depression.” He leans in. “What about rage?”

I’ve tried to take cold showers and they’re wonderful when they’re over, but during the process they feel like some form of animal torture.

“That’s crazy.” I shiver. “It’s like…Who’s out there and who’s in here, you know?”

I was really glad to have Dr. Minerva to go to. “I’m doing okay, I think.” She looks at me calm and steady. Maybe she’s my Anchor.

haven’t been able to answer my e-mail. No, I’m not important, just incapable.

“Because I do them,” I say. “I do them and they’re done. It’s almost like, you know, peeing?”

“Right. I do it; it’s successful; it feels good; and I know it’s good. When I finish one of these up I feel like I’ve actually done something and like the rest of my day can be spent

But then again, I’m already in the loony bin; how practical am I going to get? I might have to give up on practical.

You can think someone’s hilarious and want to help them at the same time.

“Did you almost kill yourself to get in here?” Aaron asks. “That’s what Nia told me.” “Yeah.” “Why?” “Because I wasn’t capable of dealing with the real world.” “Craig, don’t kill yourself, okay?”

“You have kids?” I ask, keeping my voice down. “I had thirteen miscarriages,” she says. “Imagine that.” And she looks at me without any of the humor or attitude that she usually puts on, just with big wide eyes and empty questions.

want him to finally open up, to call me Craig, to tell me that we came in together, but he’s still Jimmy—his vocabulary is still limited.

“You’d better love it,” Dad says. “Because it’s a hard life. It’s mostly the artists who end up in places like this.” “Well, then he has to be an artist; that’s where he is!” Sarah says.

“I love you,” I mumble. “Even though I’m a teenager and I’m not supposed to.” “I love you too,” Dad says. “Even though…eh…No. I don’t have any jokes about it. I just do.”

pregnant pause, a

“As you go through life, you think of me and hope that I am better.” “I will.”

I’m not better, you know. The weight hasn’t left my head.

All of that is still there.

I haven’t cured anything, but something seismic is happening in

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.