Thinking about people that are institutionalized long term–it’s so fucked up, humans aren’t meant to live like that.  Humans aren’t meant to be isolated, humans aren’t meant to be kept inside. 

Yeah.  I remember, when I went to the institution in high school I was there for like a week and a half.  My parents actually broke me out, because legally I had to stay.  They forced past the security guard and broke me out, which was actually the most traumatic part of it. 

I didn’t feel safe there, because there were violent people there.  So it was my mission to get out of there as quickly as possible by proving that I wasn’t actually crazy. 

Yeah.  Compared to the other girls in there I felt very like sane and lucid. 

Yeah. I met some really cool people there actually. Definitely some interesting people for sure. I met this woman that was a pathological liar.  She said she lived through both attacks on the World Trade Center, the one in the 90s and also 9/11, but she wasn’t even old enough, her story did not line up.  My roommate was an older Russian woman who whenever I would open my eyes she would be staring at me, watching me  sleep.  There was this lady that would walk around wearing a giant floppy hat and sunglasses and her face wrapped up because she was a hypochondriac, and she said that she couldn’t be exposed to the sun.  So she would just like walk around like that, and when she would come in the room you felt like you were interacting with like the Invisible Man. 

I remember seeing a girl like that at the academic research library in Paris.  She would bring a briefcase in to do work there, and each book would be individually wrapped, like everything within a plastic bag.  It was kind of amazing, but also distracting, because you could hear her sitting next to you working.  She was like covered with plastic, she was like crinkling.  And she only wore all white.  It was kind of cool.

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