It’ll Come To Ya – A World Without Ned

The character in IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY who kept repeating the phrase It’ll come to ya was right. It does come to me. Every once in a while I’ll be reading or writing…just lost in words and I’ll think Ned Vizzini is dead. Yeah, it comes to me. Like a shit-ton of bricks. It slaps me across the face.

I hate suicide.

Ned Vizzini wrote about a difficult subject, one that quite often gets swept under the carpet. And he wrote it for a young adult audience. It’s comforting, when one is struggling with depression and mental illness, to know that they are not alone. Where a lot of people don’t talk about these issues, Ned Vizzini took them on face-first. To read IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY is to see the face of depression head on. Ned wrote about it so well because he suffered from it. So much so that he ended his own life this past December.

He had an enchanted life. His writing was widely appreciated. He had a gazillion fans. The movie version of his novel IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY (and the book itself is on NPR’s 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels list) was a great success. He had a wife and a young son. For all intents and purposes, he was living the life…on top of the world.

It’s not fair. I hate suicide.

Yeah. Sometimes it comes to me. Ned Vizzini is dead.