Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

Allie woke up one day feeling sad without a clear reason for why she felt that way. She tries to stop feeling sad by sheer force of will, which doesn’t work. She struggles with basic life tasks, like laundry, and with going outside. She both feels and emotes less, until she becomes unsure of her ability to feel anything at all.

Allie reaches a turning point when she rents movies and fails to return them in a timely manner. Her late fees pile up, as they did in Chapter 3 in a similar circumstance. She bikes to the movie rental store, where she hopes to rent the film Jumanji. The store does not carry it. Another patron looks at her oddly. Allie realizes that normally she would feel very self-conscious if a stranger gave her such a look, but instead she feels nothing. The lack of caring about the look makes her feel invincible, so she rents a lot of horror movies and purchases seven packages of Skittles candy. An illustration on page 120 depicts Allie biking home from the store without her hands on the handlebars under the caption “NOTHING CAN DO ANYTHING TO ME” (120).

Over the course of her childhood, Allie’s engagement with her toys lessened and the process of inventing stories for them became less fun. The second half of her depression feels the same way, with an emotional deadening that leads to a “soul-decaying boredom” (125). She has issues with generating facial expressions that correspond to the emotional valence of conversations.

Others who are not ill with depression give her unwanted advice on how to feel better or more hopeful. Allie admits the most frustrating thing about depression is that it’s not possible to fight it with hope. She uses the analogy of having dead pet fish to demonstrate various unhelpful responses she received from others when she tells them about her depression. She starts spending more time alone, which becomes a self-reinforcing cycle. She realizes that she wishes she were not alive anymore, and she wishes no one loved her to remove any obligation she feels to keep existing.

Allie thinks of various ways to tell loved ones she is feeling suicidal. Other people have lots of feelings about her lack of feelings. Allie agrees to see a doctor. Once prescribed psychiatric medication, Allie begins to have feelings again, although her first feeling is hatred. Next, she begins to cry even when she isn’t feeling sad. One day, while lying on the floor crying, she spots a piece of old corn under the fridge. Seeing the corn causes her to begin laughing uncontrollably though she does not know why she is laughing. The corn causes an epiphany that maybe things will, one day, get better.