It's So Hard To Talk When You Want To

          I am currently reading the book, "It's Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini. In this book, the main character Craig struggles with depression. The first line of the whole story was, "It's so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself." This line really stood out to me. As I continued reading the book, it became clear that Craig is seriously depressed, and carefully chooses what aspect of that to share and what not to.
          Craig has to see a weekly shrink. Even though Craig is depressed, and he chooses to keep many things secret, he does tell Dr. Minerva a fair amount about his thoughts. He told Dr. Minerva about how he woke up from a dream, and he had an awful realization that he was awake. He then goes to say that "Life is a nightmare". Clearly, he's not hiding the fact that he's depressed. At the same time however, he's not telling her everything. "There were more things to tell her, things I held back: like the fact that I was hungry in bed this morning. I hadn't eaten the night before. I went to bed exhausted from my homework and knew as I hit the pillow that I would pay for it in the morning, that I would wake up really hungry, that I would cross the line where my stomach gets so needy that I can't eat anything. I woke up and my stomach was screaming, hollowing itself out under my little chest. I didn't want to do anything about it. I didn't want to eat. The idea of eating made me hurt more." Craig seems to have a really serious problem with eating, which is extremely dangerous. What I find interesting is that he says he doesn't want to have to go to therapy. To Dr. Minerva he says, "I want to not have to come here." Dr. Minerva knows he's depressed, Craig knows she knows he's depressed, and he wants it all to stop, so why doesn't he just tell her everything?
         What really struck was indeed, the first line, which was, "It's so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself." This stuck out to me because I really understand what he means by it. I also think it is one of the main reasons why he isn't telling his shrink about his eating problems. When talking about his previous shrinks, he mentions one who asked him if he was abused. "Of course I wasn't abused. If I were, things would be so simple. I'd have a reason for being in shrinks' offices."On top of all of these emotions he's feeling, he's not even confident in his being depressed, he feels he has no reason. Adding on to all of the original problems factoring his depression, his depression is one of them. Craig probably feels like his depression has such an incredible weight. It's like he has a huge secret, but by opening his mouth just a little bit, it won't be able to escape. He has to make the effort to open wide and spill it all out. But Craig doesn't. Because "it's so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself."
          I think that everyone can relate to this. Everyone has problems that they choose not to tell, for some reason. If you think about it, we would all probably be so much better off if we just got it off our chest, but we choose not to. Whether it's because it's embarrassing, or we think we deserve whatever it is, or we don't want to hurt someone, or anything; for the most part it's not great to keep things bottled up inside of you. I can especially relate to this feeling. Last year, I was really stressed out because of all of the school work and pressure to do well, and I wasn't getting much sleep. There were points throughout the year where I was pretty depressed. Sometimes people, or my parents, would ask, "Are you okay?" or "How was your day?" or things like that. Part of me would just want to get it all off of my chest, but when I opened my mouth I found myself just saying, "Yeah" or "Fine". Now that that year has passed, I feel so much better. I can't help thinking what it would've been like if I had really talked to someone. It's so much easier not to say anything, but I think people really need to make the effort of expressing their thoughts, even if it requires a great effort.