#outtakes

an hour and nineteen or so minutes left in this shift and then maybe i will wash my hair. maybe

reminiscing on my time in the psychiatric hospital back in February. remembering the (second) girl i roomed with, who asked if i collected anything. i said Yes, dolls and stuffed toys and I’ve got a couple music boxes and lots of little trinkets and knick knacks. I tend to keep my fortunes from fortune cookies, too. she said Wow, you’ve collected all that since you were little? Or is this a more recent thing? I said back Well I’ve always collected things, just sometimes different sorts of things at different times. It’s been years of me hoarding the dolls and toys but a little less long with the music boxes, and the fortunes are a new-ish thing. i tried to think back a little. In junior high and high school I had a collection of old bottles, i told her, But I’m not really sure where those have gone, now. That’s so sad, she said, and i said It’s okay. i thought back further. I was really fixated on encyclopedias as a kid, I told her. i obsessed over them in the library as a child and then into my adolescence worked up quite a collection of them. I used to help the school librarian with book-weeding and all of the books that were too old to hold up or had inaccurate information were up for grabs, i said, And I’d walk home with my arms and bag full of the things. Not sure where those are, now, either. Like with the bottles. she was quiet, then, for maybe one whole second, and then she said Could I ask you another question? It’s related. i replied, Okay? and she asked, quickly, Were you molested? i have to admit i was a little taken aback. i said, Well. I’m not sure how exactly that’s relevant to anything we’re talking about. Why do you ask? she said back to me, The encyclopedias, as if that was an answer, and then i was even further taken aback. i asked her, What does collecting encyclopedias have to do with being molested? and she responded, Doesn’t it just seem like something a molested kid would do? and, well, i don’t know. does it? i didn’t have any idea what to say. i think she thought maybe that she’d offended me so she rushed to assure me, It’s okay! I got molested as a kid. i, dumbfounded and looking for the logical through-line, asked her So you collected encyclopedias, too, then? she laughed, a little, and said Hah, well … No.

# remembering a few weeks ago when i showed my mother a photo of myself where im smiling (because she’s always complaining that i don’t smile in pictures) and the first thing she said was Oh my God you look so big. okay!