Ned Vizzini

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.

I__ not better, you know. The weight hasn__ left my head. I feel how easily I could fall back into it, lie down and not eat, waste my time and curse wasting my time, look at my homework and freak out and go and chill at Aaron__, look at Nia and be jealous again, take the subway home and hope that it has an accident, go and get my bike and head to the Brooklyn Bridge. All of that is still there. The only thing is, it__ not an option now. It__ just_ a possibility, like it__ a possibility that I could turn to dust in the next instant and be disseminated throughout the universe as an omniscient consciousness. It__ not a very likely possibility.

Its so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That's above and beyond everything else, and it's not a mental complaint-it's a physical thing, like it's physically hard to open your mouth and make the words come out. 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; you stumble on them as they gather behind your lower lip. So you just keep quiet.

I waste at least an hour every day lying in bed. Then I waste time pacing. I waste time thinking. I waste time being quiet and not saying anything because I'm afraid I'll stutter.

I can't eat and I can't sleep. I'm not doing well in terms of being a functional human, you know?

you have to be the prude or the slut, and if you pick one, other people hate you for it, and you can__ trust anyone anymore, because they__e all after the same thing, and you see that you can never go back to how was before_

See, because being Cool is obviously the most important thing on earth. It's more important than getting a job, or having a girlfriend, or political power, or money, because all those things are predicated by Coolness. They happen because of it. They depend on it.

I wanted to tell people, "My depression is acting up today" as an excuse for not seeing them, but I never managed to pull it off.

That's worst than gonerreha, man!

You all right, man?' This should be my name. I could be like a super hero: You All Right Man. Ah...' I stumble.Don't bug Craig,' Ronny is like. 'He's in the Craig zone. He's Craig-ing out.

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.""And what is that nightmare, Craig?""Life.

Dreams are only dreams until you wake up and make them real.

I am a guy," I say."And I hate boys," she says."But a guy's different," I say."Maybe a little," she says.

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.

And I'm not assuming and I'm not judging. I'm just being curious.

It's such a silly little thing, the heart.

After college, I went through my own shit and decided that all physical suffering in the world couldn't compare to mental anguish. And when I got myself, I decided to help other people.

I can smell the sex on her. I hope she smells the love on me.