I watched the movie It’s Kind of a Funny Story.  The movie tells a story about a boy named Craig, who, as the movie opens, is standing on a bridge thinking of committing suicide.  As he is standing there, he goes through all the people he is leaving behind. Each of these people tells him to think of them and how they will feel is he goes ahead and carries out this fatal action.  He listens to what they tell him and so instead of jumping, he gets off the bridge and ends up going to the ER in the hospital. The doctors end up admitting him into the psychiatric ward where he meets people with mental problems and people who, like him, have tried to kill themselves.  Here he learns that as weird as these people are, they are the ones who truly end up becoming his friends, understanding him, and helping him to recover.

In turn, he changes their lives, as well, especially by making friends with Bobby, a man who has tried to kill himself over and over again, who barely sees his daughter but loves her, and who takes Craig under his wing and watches out for him. Craig helps Bobby with his application interview so that he can be admitted into a group home; he helps him to improve what he is going to say and gives him a dress shirt to wear in order to make a great impression. After this, the two of them become each other’s best friends. Craig’s roommate, Muqtada, an Egyptian man who overdosed on acid and hasn’t been the same since, stays in his bed and refuses to leave it; however, Craig works on trying to get Muqtada back into the world again, instead of being confined to a bed.  Craig succeeds in getting Muqtada to leave his bed in the end by playing Egyptian music, the only kind that Muqtada enjoys.  Craig falls for Noelle, a girl who self inflicts cuts on herself.  She shows him that it is okay to be whom you are and he teaches her how to trust and that there are people who care. This ward, where crazy people stay, becomes a home to Craig; he comes to understand these people, he gets to know them, and before you know it, he fits right in with all of them.

The movie showed me that you can find friends everywhere and you don’t have to find them in the ‘normal’ world, where people can’t understand what you are going through and never will; but, when you are thrown into a place where there are people who are just like you and in some cases even crazier, you find that these people understand what you mean and even how you feel. They become your friends and even though they aren’t necessarily what we call ‘normal’, they become your normal. In this tiny microcosm of the psychiatric ward, no one judges anyone. I realized that to be in an environment where everyone understands one another and is accepting of one another is absolutely special because in the outside world you would never get to experience this gift of acceptance. It is amazing how people change others, especially when they are out of their element and how people from different worlds can relate and become friends within a couple of days. As I was watching this movie, I wondered what it would be like if I took Craig’s place and suddenly became him and got to see everything though his eyes. I realized that to experience everything he did would be a once in a lifetime opportunity and that it is not something you could fully understand by just watching, but rather by first handedly experiencing it.