GIRL TALK

I think I started babysitting myself when I was really young.

I used to burn plastic, there's definitely something wrong with me.

I had imaginary friends until I was seven. There was a time when I really thought they were real. When I was two I used to scare my parents and I used to talk to them and play with them. My parents thought they were ghosts because I was acting weird. I swear I remember seeing a boy. When my mom looked up their names, she found out it meant something in Sanskrit. I was two when I started seeing them.

My mom was convinced I had a past life and in that past life I was a girl named Emily. When I was younger I told everyone my name was Emily and I named all my dolls Emily. It's like, who the fuck is Emily?

I have strange unexplained fears. Like my fear of water and falling through stairs into water. What do you think that means? I can literally feel the water filling up in my lungs so much they're about to burst.

When my mom went to work I would go to the sink and light pieces of paper on fire. One time I charred the inside of it so bad. I don't know why I did that. God, I was weird. I got in so much trouble for that.

My brother said I used to say strangely reassuring and sophisticated things when I was about four. There were times when I sounded like an eighty-year-old woman.