This is Not A Very Funny Story

This Is Not A Very Funny Story

Some of My Thoughts about the Book “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” and much more of my thoughts about its amazing author, Master Ned Vizzini

It’s probably one of the best books I’ve read. It’s not very complicated, but it touches on really fucked up things like life and dying and unwant of life and wanting to die. It’s honest. And honesty will really get you a long way. Especially on topics like this.

Depression and suicide are things that are not very easy to talk about. Believe me, I’ve tried. But somehow, Master Vizzini was able to do it so artistically that it definitely touched my heart (if I have one). I am not officially diagnosed of anything, but that doesn’t change the fact that I could relate very well to the things that he is talking about. That feeling of being stuck, waking up into the nightmare that is life, cycling, battling tentacles. I know how all of that feels. Heck, I know it every single day of my life. And like the main character Craig Gilner, there hasn’t been just one time that I tried to quit it all.

I relate too well with that character, Craig. His life is pretty neat if you would look at it, a supportive family, friends, great school, no dramatic backstories, no tragic past, but it didn’t stop him from feeling the way he does – depressed, wanting to die. Sometimes, people just take in what is happening in their worlds quite differently than others. As people looking from the outside, it’s easy for us to say that other people have it better than we do. Like “Hey, why should she be sad, at least she have a family that supports her” or “hey, why did she kill herself over a failed subject, she’s very rich and famous!” or “at least she has a home, I don’t even have one but I don’t kill myself” or stuff like that. But life doesn’t hit everyone the same way. The things that you are yearning to have can be the same things that other people are dying to lose. And sometimes the things that doesn’t mean much to you, could be everything another person could ever ask for. It’s a crazy thing.

But less about the story, it’s amazing, I know everyone would agree with that (if you don’t well, how dare you?). What has been picking my mind most about it, is Master Vizzini. I haven’t researched about him well enough, well, at least not well enough that I would remember the details in the dead of the night. But when I looked him up, I saw someone accomplished, someone doing well in his life. He’s got awards for writing, he’s pretty famous in the literary scene, and the very fucking fact that he has books published, man, this person is really doing great. So why? Why could he possibly decide to do that?

It’s one thing that you’re an accomplished writer and you have this beautiful gift of turning words into stories that would change people’s lives, but he wrote something about suicide and depression and the fucking value of life. He made Craig realize how important it is to live, he, in that very mind of his, developed this very fascinating tale of how someone so messed up, was able to see some sort of light to keep moving. To keep living. So how? How could that very same mind, gathered up the resolve to finally do it? When, why and how did the Bobbys or the Dr. Minervas or the Noelles of his brain let that happen?

Don’t get me wrong. I do not have any ill thoughts about Master Vizzini. Like I said, life doesn’t hit everyone the same way. And I don’t know how life hit him. And how hard. I will never know. But it just makes me sad.

The truth is I thought as long as you have something, anything, no matter how small to make you hold on to your dear life, you wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t get there, no matter how close you are. Just one thing. One simple thing.

And on reading his book, it sounded like he’s got it. Tons of it. And he shared it to me, and millions of other people who read and loved his book.

But with what happened to him, I now think that it’s not like that at all. When you get there, and I mean, really get there, nothing will be able to stop you.

It’s like people like me, like Master Ned, have this place inside our mind that we keep circling every day. We get near to it, sometimes we walk far away from it that we forget it even exists, and sometimes it sucks us right back, but we never really get to it. Or maybe it’s a pretty door, a very beautiful door that we always wanted to open, and sometimes we’ll touch the knob, sometimes we hold it real tight, sometimes we knock just to see what is there on the other side, but for some reason, we never really open it. Maybe because we see another door open, or maybe because there was knocking on the other side of another door, or maybe because we don’t think it’s the right time. But when we do open that door, no other doors would matter, no matter how equally pretty it is. It’s like once you decided to open that door, it lets in this really really thick fog that forbids you to see anything else.

I like that door representation. I could extend it to like, when everything in your life fails, all other doors are locked, except that, let’s give it a name. The Door to Oblivion. So when schools sucks, the school door is locked, and family sucks, then the family door is locked. And sometimes, some aspect of our lives are not just locked. Its doors are rotting and vanishing and we watch it with our very own eyes but we can’t do anything about it. All doors could be locked or vanished, except the door to oblivion, to which we hold the key. It would never be locked for us.

Hah. I like that key representation too. I’m actually starting to have this picture of how our lives are full of doors, but the only one who has a key is the door to oblivion, and not everyone is given the key too. Only some. Like Master Vizzini, and he used his.

It’s… I don’t really know how to end this thing. I wish I could write a big realization in the end, but there’s nothing here. The questions I have asked are still questions I have.