Anxiety
The narrator, Tori, is dealing with some mental health issues, but the main issue is that she just wants people to stop trying to figure it out. "I don’t want people in my head, picking out this and that, permanently picking up the broken pieces of me." What she is saying is that other people are trying to figure out why she is acting the way she's been acting. And she is upset because figuring out what is wrong inside herself is her job.
The Misery Chick
There are times when Tori gets close to becoming something like Daria. Generally, she avoids becoming the misery chick, although she does show up to a costume party as Wednesday Addams. "Emotions are humanity’s fatal disease. And we’re all dying." The metaphor here is pretty dark. Fortunately, it is about as dark as Tori gets. It is important to understand the point. She is trying to navigate the world of adolescent emotions about to become adult emotions while still trying to hang on to childish emotions.
Not Normal
The difference between being abnormal and not normal is put into a metaphorical place by a character, somewhat surprisingly, who is not Tori. "For most people, normal is their default setting. But for some, like you and me, normal is something we have to bring out, like putting on a suit for a posh dinner.” But he is addressing Tori, so it may as well be another demonstration of her psyche. What is interesting here is that the imagery of the default setting is suggestive not of human beings, but machinery. So, once again, the positive aspects of emotions become highly questionable.
Jane Austen
Tori makes it quite clear that she is not a big Austen fan, at least not Pride and Prejudice in particular. When she advises another student not to read it, she explains, "It is soul destroying, and not in a good way." Soul-destroying in this sense is a metaphor for something that abducts a part of what makes a person human. It is pure hyperbole, of course, but also a demonstration of the type of metaphorical imagery Tori leans toward. She is a master of an overstatement.
Thought Storm
Most people probably have those nights when the thoughts just won't stop interfering with sleep. For a select few, however, this describes every night. "When I get back into bed, every single thing that you could possibly think about in one day decides to come to me all at once, and suddenly there’s a small lightning storm inside my head." Tori is one of those few who rarely experience the underrated joy of simply falling right to sleep. The metaphorical imagery of a collision of thoughts inside an active mind is very appropriate because, like lightning, those thoughts are difficult to willfully ignore.
