It's Kind of a Funny Story

by Ned Vizzini

The big concerns of my life would be what sort of bottom-coating slime to feed off of—that’s not so different from now—plus I wouldn’t have any natural predators; then again, I don’t have any now, and that hasn’t done me a whole lot of good.

This is another trick of shrinks. They never let you stop in midthought. If you open your mouth, they want to know exactly what you had the intention of saying. The party line is that some of the most profound truths about us are things that we stop saying in the middle,

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.

I’d missed how it happened. I hadn’t seen him lean in, or her; I wanted to know for the future, for some girl who wasn’t as desirable. But now at least I got a show; I got to see how Aaron moved his hands. He put his right hand on her face over and over, gently, while his left slid around her side and gripped the small of her back more firmly. His hands were playing good-cop-bad-cop.

we had to pick another shrink, and then another, and then another, among them the little old lady who asked if I had been sexually abused and the beautiful redhead who asked why I had so many problems with women and the man with the handlebar mustache who suggested hypnosis. It was like I was dating, except I didn’t get to make out with any of the girls—and I was also bi because I met up with guys.

I look at what she’s typing on the screen. Under “reason for admission,” she puts SUICIDAL IDEATION. That would be a good band name, I think.

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.