In Girl interrupted, Susanna talks about being diagnosed with Borderline personality disorder which includes “experiencing instability of self-image as feelings of emptiness and boredom” (Kaysen 154). Susanna often tried to explain her condition to herself because she didn’t understand it; she states “I was in pain and nobody knew it, even I didn’t know it” (Kaysen 153). Susanna often felt she was numb and would be bored, not sure if she was real in this society and she would feel alone and not sure if she could feel anything or not, so she would remind herself that she was in pain and also do wrist-banging to feel something instead of numbness and give her sense of reality that she is here on this earth and not just drifting through life numb. Susanna also mentions “My chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom came from the fact that I was living a life based on my incapacities, which were numerous. I could not and did not want to … attend to any other subject in school other than english and biology. I saw myself as unfit for educational and social systems” (kaysen 154-155). I feel like Susanna didn’t think she had a future and was just living on less than mediocre base by her faults and this made her feel sad and empty, but she didn’t really have a high self-esteem to live by either because she didn’t know how. Susanna was a pariah in the 1960s when she didn’t go to college and was different from everyone else. She would write poems instead of essays which is why I think the chapters in this book are seemingly short since she liked to keep things simplistic. Susanna didn’t think she had skills necessary for life, so she had a pessimistic outlook; she often wondered if she could make a life out of boyfriends and literature. Susanna also had periods of self-loathing because she saw others going toward their future and she would criticize herself for her lack of interest and detachment from wanting to go anywhere in life, yet I feel as if Susanna truly didn’t know where to go in life and was confused. in one scene in the book, when Susanna visits the dentist, she is so worried about losing time; i feel as if there may possibly be the idea that Susanna feels like she is going out into the real world and that her childhood is slipping away and she is not quite ready to accept the world’s responsibilities because she doesn’t feel as if she has the skills in life. It’s as if to keep things simplistic and also find some meaning in this world since she feels time is slipping away from her. Yet, Susanna realizes she doesn’t want to ever cross the line again where she feels numb and she is in a mental hospital; she wants at least some control over her thoughts. Susanna mentions “The idea of suicide worked on me like a purgative or cathartic” (Kaysen 158). She would think of suicide and feel sad over her premature death, then she would feel better. Even though she seems afraid of facing the reality of the world, Susanna seems to think that suicide is like a giving up and she needs to at least try to understand the world and her thoughts and suicide wouldn’t help her because she would just be ending her life and not giving herself any time to think about herself and possibly understand her life. Susanna meets Lisa at the end of the story and Lisa says “I want us to be a real family, with furniture and all that. I want him (Lisa’s kid, Aaron who Lisa broke up with her significant other) to have a real life. And temple helps” (Kaysen 163). Lisa wants to have a future and create for her kid a life for him and for herself to make up for the time she lost in the mental hospital; she wants to be happy and live her life. She goes to temple for a place of comfort and worship to keep herself in hopes of her future. She even has a life as suburban matron in Brookline. Susanna goes to the Vermeer in the Frick (NY) with her boyfriend and she notices a photo titled “Girl Interrupted at her Music” from which she got the inspiration for the title of the book. Susanna says ” She had changed a lot in sixteen years. She was no longer urgent. In fact, she was sad. She was young and distracted, and her teacher was bearing down on her, trying to get her to pay attention. But she was looking out, looking for someone who would see her” (Kaysen 167).
Susanna had looked at the painting before and had been disconcerted by the girl which she thought was warning her to not do something and telling her not to go, her interpretation has changed. She now sees the girl almost like herself when she was seventeen and she wasn’t really applying herself in school and the teachers were yelling at her and she was sad because she wasn’t sure where to go in life.
It also states “Interrupted at her music: as my life had been, interrupted in the music of being seventeen,as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that?” (Kaysen 167).
Susanna feels her life at seventeen when she was young and just trying to enjoy life, not wanting to face the world’s responsibilities was snatched away from her when she was sent to a mental hospital at eighteen. She realizes that all the moments she could have had, that one with the mental hospital and the teachers yelling at her while she was in school was most prominent and how it’s not fair that that one moment could take up so much time and significance in her life and waste all the other moments.
Susanna starts crying when viewing the picture and says to her boyfriend “Don’t you see, she’s trying to get out” (Kaysen 167).
She seems to be thinking that the girl is trapped forever in the canvas and that memory in her life and she can’t get get to enjoy life fully almost like Susanna, herself who is still trapped in her own thoughts of sadness and negative outlook on life since she doesn’t know where to go.

Her boyfriend’s reply seems harsh because he doesn’t understand her interpretation of the art and doesn’t seem to even consider it as he just says “All you ever think about is yourself. You don’t understand anything about art” (Kaysen 167) and he just walks away. I almost think this is even more self-deprecating on Susanna because now someone is telling her that she is a shallow person and doesn’t really understand art which goes back to add on to the thoughts that Susanna has of herself that she feels like she doesn’t have a future in life and doesn’t really understand the world. The boyfriend’s comment makes me feel sad for Susanna because it just adds to her thoughts of inadequacy and the thought she can’t do anything right.

Upon viewing the two pictures of happiness (lady and her maid; soldier and his sweetheart) Susanna also says “Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful, we wish our clothes could glisten and ripple against our skins, most of all we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened by simply looking at them” (Kaysen 168).

She mentions that in the two paintings it almost feels like the lady and the soldier are in their own world of happiness, they have everything the want and the rest of the world is looking at them through a hole wishing they could be like them.

Susanna says “The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful overcast light of life, by which we see ourselves and others only imperfectly, and seldom” (Kaysen 168).

She seems to be saying that the girl at her music is like all the others in life who haven’t found their purpose, who judge themselves and others and also pay attention to themselves more than others. Susanna seems to wish for a world where people don’t struggle in life, know their purpose and care for each other and themselves, yet she doesn’t seem to believe such a world exists.

Girl interrupted seems like a metaphor for our world today and how everyone longs to find their purpose, how teenagers still hold on to their childhood dreams and still are finding out how to live in this world, struggles of life facing obstacles from people judging you and being overly criticizing of yourself and just trying to keep on to the hopes and dreams while braving the world and finding a place in it. And also the concept of how time seems to be slipping away and how some people try to deny reality or hold on to their memories to have something to hang on to. I feel like everyone has questioned the meaning of life and felt overwhelmed at times and wished that they could have something to keep their hopes and know that they have a future, that their life isn;t just slipping away.

I think Lisa tries to live her life and start again and make up for the time lost and I admire her. She doesn’t let what happened to her in the past affect her and is willing to try to make a place in this world. I feel that it takes courage, perseverance, hope, belief, gratitude and acceptance and taking life one step at a time and building from there to create the life one wishes to live.