It's Kind of a Funny Story

by Ned Vizzini

It’s so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself.

“I didn’t want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that’s really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you’re so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”

“Life is a nightmare.”

I didn’t want to do anything about it. I didn’t want to eat. The idea of eating made me hurt more. I couldn’t think of anything—not one single solitary food item—that I would be able to handle,

I want there to be a Shift so bad. I want to feel my brain slide back into the slot it was meant to be in,

The absolute worst part of being depressed is the food.

When I do eat, it’s one of two experiences: a Battle or a Slaughter.

I should always eat, although I don’t; I sometimes stubbornly, foolishly try to hold the feeling and get things done while my mind can operate, and neglect to eat, and then I’m back where I started. But oh, when I slip back into being okay when I’m around food, watch out. It’s all going in.

I shouldn’t have trouble sleeping; I should be playing sports! I should be making out with girls. I should be finding what I love about this world. I should be frickin’ eating and sleeping and drinking and studying and watching TV and being normal.

The horrible thing is that I like this part, because when it’s over I know I’ll be warm; I’ll have the warmth in me of a body having just been through a trauma.

So why am I depressed? That’s the million-dollar question, baby, the Tootsie Roll question; not even the owl knows the answer to that one. I don’t know either.

Depression starts slow.

Please die right now, I mumbled in my head,

I don’t know how I can be so ambitious and so lazy at the same time.

but once the Cycling starts I can waste hours, just lying and looking at the ceiling, and time goes slowly and really fast at the same time—and then it’s midnight and I have to go to sleep because no matter what I do, I have to be at school the next day.

Some days I woke up and got out of bed and brushed my teeth like any normal human being; some days I woke up and lay in bed and looked at the ceiling and wondered what the hell the point was of getting out of bed and brushing my teeth like any normal human being.

My mind starts the Cycling. I know it’s going to be the worst that it’s ever been. Over and over again, a cycling of tasks, of failures, of problems. I’m young, but I’m already screwing up my life. I’m smart but not enough—just smart enough to have problems.

It’s gotten to a point where it’s the worst it’s ever been and I just don’t want to deal with it anymore.”

“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.”

I’m afraid of making phone calls.

“You have a chemical imbalance, that is all. If you were a diabetic, would you be ashamed of where you were?”

I wish the world were like this, if I just woke up and marked the food I’d be eating and it came to me later in the day. I suppose it is like that, except you have to pay for whatever you want to eat, 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.

“If there wasn’t coffee on this earth, I’d be dead.”

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 are screwed up in this world. I’d rather be with someone screwed up and open about it than somebody perfect and…you know…ready to explode.”

It’s tough to get out of bed; I know that myself. You can lie there for an hour and a half without thinking anything, just worrying about what the day holds and knowing that you won’t be able to deal with it.