When I was young I cut my thigh open. I was sliding down a lumber staircase and split the flesh. As I tell him this, he smiles politely. He wants to ask me if he can see the scar, if he can touch it. You can lick it if you want, I say with an open tooth smile. He looks uncomfortable. He taps the edge of the white notepad with his blue pen. He does that thing that people do when they don’t believe you. He thinks I’m lying about letting him lick the inside of my thigh. Perhaps he thinks I’m lying about the scar. I laugh. The blue of his tie is the same blue as my nails. I hold up my hand to see it clearer. Do you like blue? I love smurf blue. He scribbles something on the notepad. Can I see it? He declines politely. I shrug. I want to know what he’s writing but I don’t want to scare him. Not just yet. He writes what he wants to write. I ignore him when he asks me if I’ve ever thought of suicide.

I have or had thought about it. 
 I tried to initiate it. 
I failed.

1. I can’t swallow pills.

2. I can’t tie knots.

3. I can’t stand pain.

4. I don’t have a car.

5. I’m scared of dark waters.

“The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living but that suicide is not worth the trouble,” he says after a long pause. He looks up from the pad he’s scribbling on. He has his legs crossed. It suits the way he lets the pen dangle from his fingers or the way that he folds his bottom lip inwards and bites on it.

People are so close. Sometimes I feel them – when they brush past me in the crowded platforms, when they bump into me as I walk down the street. I hear them talking.  Sometimes I wonder how stupid people can exist in the same world as me, and sometimes I eavesdrop in amazement and wonder why I’m not acquainted with such intelligent minds.

Do you believe yourself to be any less insignificant because you’re you? He doesn’t seem to register what I’m saying. He thinks I’m talking about suicide again. 
 “No individual is born good or bad,” he says.  For a second I believe him. 
I don’t reply. 
 Again he scribbles. I named him Mr Scribbly.  I drew a picture of him on a notepad and above his head, in neat writing, I wrote Mr Scribbly.

Do you like Bob Dylan? I ask. He nods. When I was nineteen, I wanted to be Bob Dylan. I spoke as if I were him, as if I wrote what he wrote. Now I remember nothing that he has ever written. 
 “Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past, but it’s theatre. It is the medium of past experience.” He hands me a picture that I had previously given him.

“Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, they appear in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form – it may be called fleeting or eternal – is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.”

So you think that by trying to remember Bob Dylan, I’m trying to remember what it was like to be that age at that point in time.

“To recall a past episode in your life is to reconstitute the state of mind you were in at the time. Part of this is literally sensational – the bits that become the habits of the mind, which cluster into personalities.”

If I somehow regain what it was that I obviously lost at that time, I’ll know exactly at what point and for what reason I lost my memory. 
  “As they are bound together with the sensational part of each experience, when you reconstitute something that you saw or heard, you also reproduce the personality to whom it happened.” 
So you think I have multiple personalities? 
 “A memory (and the personality incorporated in it) has a physical basis – it is there in your brain, even when it is out of your mind.”

Who are you talking to now? Is this the real me? Have you spoken to more of me. 
“I believe that one of you knows why you have no memory. In fact, our various personalities do not share the same experiences or at least, they do not share the same experiences equally. Although they are produced by the same brain, they are generated by the same brain processes.” 
Am I real? Slap me! 
”You’ve said this before.” 
Why don’t I remember it?
 “You told me that you’ve been forcing yourself to forget everything. Why do you think that is?” 
I’m scared to think about it.

What if I’ve done something bad? 
He gets up, reaches for my hand and wraps his arms around me. “It’s ok,” he says, “it’s better not to remember”.  He strokes my hair. 
 Thank you Mr Scribbly.  “You’re welcome Weepy. Now go to sleep”. 
He leaves, closing the door behind him gently. 
 It’s his turn now. 
I curl up against the padded cell and in the distant, I hear the click of the door lock.

The attendant enters the room.  He finds Mr Scribbly, scribbling on his paper and with an open tooth smile he says, “Good Morning, Mr James”.  Mr James says, “Good morning, you ready to see the Doc”? Scribbly nods.