It's Kind of a Funny Story

“What did you want when you were a kid? Back when you were happy? What did you want to be when you grew up?” Dr. Minerva is a good shrink, I think. That isn’t the answer. But it is a damn good question. What did I want to be when I grew up?”

For Craig to have more peace, he has to deconstruct his assumptions about what it means to be successful. While he has pressured himself to enroll in Executive Prep High School, he realizes that his trajectory is only bringing him anxiety.

“I should be able to eat three plates of it. I’m a growing boy; 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.”

Because It’s Kind of a Funny Story is written in first person, the reader experiences Craig’s inner thoughts and can appreciate the magnitude of what he is going through. While he might seem lethargic or disinterested to observers, readers understand just how desperately he is trying inside. This shows how the inner and outer world of someone with a mental illness can be two very things.

“The day I got those test results, a cold, plaintive, late-fall New York day, was my last good day. I’ve had good moments scattered since then, times when I thought I was better, but that was the last day I felt triumphant.”

After working nonstop to get into Executive Pre-Professional, Craig’s life takes a turn for the worst. As Craig becomes more and more overwhelmed with his schoolwork, he no longer finds satisfaction in school. Part of Craig’s journey is learning how to find things that make him feel whole and triumphant, even if they don’t look “successful” based on society’s standards. While striving to be the perfect student doesn’t make Craig feel triumphant, being able to pursue his art and connection with friends does.

“I never told her, that my friends were a bit estranged. They’re sort of ancillary anyway, friends. I mean, they’re important–everybody knows that; the TV tells you so–but they come and go.”

Craig struggles to connect with others. His intense desire to “be the best” and get into school drives him away from others. At this point in his journey, he discards the importance of deep friendships. While he mentally knows that connections are important, not until he finds new friends at Six North does he begin to realize that authentic support and human connection makes all the difference in navigating life.

“I didn’t want to get up. What was wrong with me? Where did I lose it? I had to stop smoking pot. I had to stop hanging out with Aaron. I had to be a machine.”

This moment marks an important shift in Craig’s journey with mental illness. When all the warning signs begin to appear in his life that he needs to slow down and take care of himself, Craig instead sees them as signs that he needs to speed up and work harder. The fact that he needed to smoke pot to calm down shows how the pressures of school were causing his anxiety and depression. Not until Craig is able to reject the desire to “be a machine” is he able to find peace.

“I’d been through some crap, but I was learning from it. These pills were going to bring me back to my old self, able to tackle everything, functional and efficient. I’d be talking to girls in school and telling them that I was messed up, that I had had problems but that I’d dealt with them, and they’d think I was brave and sexy and ask me to call them.”

This quotation ironically highlights Craig’s black and white thinking, both positive and negative. Craig seems to think that his anxiety and depression are something that will magically go away with a pill, making him charming and heroic. As the book progresses, he realizes that mental health is a constant journey, not a one-time event.

“Here’s something for you, Doctor: my parents are now part of the Tentacles, and my friends too. My Tentacles have Tenacles, and I’m never going to cut them off. But my Anchor, that’s easy: it’s killing myself. That’s what gets me through the day.”

It’s Kind of a Funny Story tackles the difficult topic of suicide, shedding conventional misconceptions about why people die by suicide. This quote shows that Craig is finding himself increasingly stuck. The things that used to be “anchors” or sources of peace no longer give him peace. The reasons for suicidal ideation differ from person to person. Craig’s journey shows that for some, suicide seems to be the only escape from unbearable pressure.

“Screw it. I want my heart. I want my heart, but my brain is acting up. I want to live but I want to die. What do I do?”

This marks an important moment in Craig’s development: when he can distinguish the difference between what he truly wants and what is caused by his anxiety and depression. This quote illuminates how conflicting it can be every day to live with anxiety, depression, and/or suicidal ideation.

“This is the most life-affirming thing you’ve ever done. […] I thought I was a bad mother, but I’m a good mother if I taught you how to handle yourself. You had the tools to know what to do. That is so important.”

Craig’s relationship with his parents is incredibly important to his development and ability to cope with his anxiety and depression. It’s Kind of a Funny Story shows that children with supportive parents still struggle with excruciating mental illnesses. However, their support systems can make a huge difference in their ability to handle those mental illnesses.

“This morning I was a pretty functional teenager. Now I’m a mental patient. But you know, I wasn’t that functional. Is this better? No, this is worse. This is a lot—.”

This quote illustrates how societal stigmas about mental health can impact the experience of people with mental illnesses. Craig perceives that being a functional teenager is incompatible with being a mental patient. Only when Craig is able to abandon the stigmas about being “stuck” in Six North is he able to embrace treatment.

“But I also get the impression that you can volunteer the reasons you got here at any time and no one will judge; no one will think you’re too crazy or not crazy enough, and that’s how you make friends.”

One of the most significant factors in Craig’s ability to reach a baseline is the community of acceptance at Six North. Because others welcome him, Craig can accept himself. By seeing that mental illness is a reality, Craig can stop denying his own experience and embrace treatment.

“Compared to them I’m…well, I’m a spoiled rich kid. Which is another something to feel bad about. So, who’s worse off?”

It’s Kind of a Funny Story shows Craig’s struggle to reconcile his mental illness with his socioeconomic privilege. While Craig is not as wealthy as many of his friends, he has a comfortable life, and his parents are supportive of him. Craig must reject the assumption that people with privilege cannot have mental illness to confront his anxiety and depression.

“I heard his parents are sending him to a different school.

He couldn’t handle it here, anyway. He was always such a loser.

He’s freaking out in front of his computer. He can’t move or anything. He’s catatonic.

He woke up and thinks he’s a horse.

Well, whatever, what’s question three?”

This quote shows what Craig imagines his classmates are saying about him. It’s Kind of a Funny Story honestly portrays how difficult acceptance and belonging are for teenagers. Significantly, Craig knows that while his classmates might gossip about him, they won’t really care. By letting go of the opinion of people who don’t care about him, he is able to find true connection and belonging.

“How could I not be? I never had a boy want to kill himself for me before. It’s like the most romantic thing.”

This quote shows Nia’s ignorance and self-centeredness—and the misconceptions about the experience of mental illness. Nia seems to think there is something romantically tragic about suicide. Craig’s reality shows just how wrong Nia’s attitudes are—there is nothing romantic about what he’s going through.

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

At the time, Craig discards Dr. Mahmoud’s advice, hoping to find a miracle cure for his anxiety and depression. As his journey continues, Craig realizes that mental illness is not something that disappears overnight but that becomes gradually better, often with setbacks. Coming to terms with the fact that he isn’t going to snap his fingers and be “better” is an important part of Craig’s development.

“I feel the Cycling starting again—I’m going to get out of here at some point and must go back into my real life. This place isn’t real. This is a facsimile of life, for broken people. I can handle the facsimile, but I can’t handle the real thing.”

This quote illustrates one of Craig’s greatest struggles. He is caught in the liminal space between being ready to venture out and create a life that feels better for him while not yet knowing how to do it. He’s still navigating the extreme polarities of his life and his mind, his identity at Six North and the old identity in the “real world” that he is shedding. This is Craig’s cocoon phase; no longer a caterpillar but not quite butterfly.”

“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 has no politics is going to provide…”

During his time at Six North, Craig realizes how his life has become too full of pressure. He feels relief at Six North because he doesn’t feel like his entire future rests on the decisions he makes at that exact moment. To fully heal, Craig realizes that he needs to find new outlets for his stress and also remove some of the pressures from his life.

“But I’m already gone. I’ve got the river started at the top of the page, looping down to meet with a second river. No, wait, you have to put in the roads first, because the bridges go over the water, remember? Highways first, then rivers, then streets. It’s all coming back to me. How long as it been since I did this?”

This moment, when Craig begins drawing maps, is incredibly important in his development. Drawing maps is a way that Craig can reconnect with his childhood innocence and reject the pressure to perform like a machine.

“I’ve been thinking of, you know, checking myself in, spending some time here, or somewhere like it, re-centering, like you”

Nia’s attitude toward mental illness is evident in this quotation. She and Craig’s both father both make remarks about how they wish that they could spend some time in Six North, showing that they don’t understand the gravity of Craig’s situation. Craig’s mental health needed more than “re-centering”, but Nia’s attitude shows how society often misunderstands mental health.

“When I get out in the world, from now on, if I start to regret something, I’m going to remind myself that whatever I could have done, it won’t change the fact that I was in a psychiatric hospital. This, right here, is the biggest regret I could ever have. And it’s not so bad.”

This quotation shows a significant shift in Craig’s way of handling his mental illness. Previously, he has been so overwhelmed by the possibility of doing something wrong that he is crippled by indecision. Now that he has been to “rock bottom,” he realizes that living in fear of regret is far worse than living with some regrets.

“We wear our problems differently. Like I didn’t talk and stopped eating and threw up all the time—”

In this conversation with Noelle, Craig realizes that everyone struggles with something, they just have different ways of coping. Acting like having anxiety or depression is some sign of a personal fault or failure flies in the face of evidence. Realizing that so many others struggle is part of what helps Craig not to be so hard on himself.

“What if I do okay, live with the depression, get into College, do College, go to Grad School, get the Job, get the Money, get Kids and a Wife and a Nice Car? What kind of crap will I be in then?”

This quote highlights how Craig sees life events like college or marriage as check marks that he must complete to be successful. As he realizes that there is nothing inherently fulfilling about these achievements, he decides to change schools and focus on new measures of success.

“I haven’t cured anything, but something seismic is happening in me. I feel my body wrapped up and slapped on top of my spine. I feel the heart that beat early in the morning on Saturday and told me I didn’t want to die. I feel the lungs that have been doing their work quietly inside the hospital. I feel the hands that can make art and touch girls—think of all the tools you have.”

Craig’s thoughts as he leaves Six North show a huge change in his attitude toward life. At the beginning of his journey, he thought that he would reach a point where he no longer struggled with anxiety or depression. Now that he has come to accept them and manage them as parts of him, but not the only parts, he has a far healthier approach to life.