I'm Not Crazy (Open)

At first, when he was released from St. Christina’s, Owen had had doubts that he was well enough to be on his own. Just the day before he’d been telling his therapist that he was itching to clean her office. To the untrained eye it looked immaculate but Owen knew better. No one disinfected properly and the place was probably filthy. However, Owen sat through the session without straightening his clothing or brushing “dirt” from himself. He didn’t organize the coffee table even when she moved items around. He helped her pick up the nuts that had spilled from the dish without having to wipe down the table or vacuum the crumbs that likely worked its way into the carpet. For Owen, all these little things were steps on an already long and bumpy road. He’d been a full time patient at St. Christina’s for twelve years prior to that session and he’d made it so far. When he arrived, fresh out of court, Owen had been a mess. He’d lose his mind if the office or his room wasn’t perfect. He’d been admitted to Ward B until he attacked his roommate and had to be moved to Ward A. From there, Owen went though intense therapy and it had been brutal. But, in the end, he’d been given his “freedom” and could live among the population.

Of course that was a whole new kind of hell. He could always see a relapse just on the horizon as they set him up in an apartment and let him be in charge of his own stuff. He’d had a bit shipped that family members kept but for the most part Owen had nothing from his life before St. Christina’s. In a way, he was okay with that. He had a few pictures of family and knick knacks with sentimental value but he didn’t need a house full of shit like he’d had before. All that shit had to be regularly cleaned and organized and he suspected that by keeping so much he’d only made himself worse. Owen was no hoarder but he didn’t like letting go of “treasures” from his childhood. Action figure collections, comic books, magazines, trading cards; all of these things were nice to have and remember but Owen took it too far. The shelf with the display of collectables had to be regularly maintained. If one fell and created a domino effect Owen would spend hours resetting them, making sure there was no damage, cleaning whatever they took down with them. He’d made a mess of himself while his world was spotless.

So when they told him he’d be working in town at Nobel’s Book Store Owen had been…hesitant to say the least. It beat the diner but surely they were setting him up to fail. He struggled to not clean his apartment every day but now they wanted to put him in charge of a store. Full of books. Books that sat on shelves. So much could go wrong so fast. His first few weeks had been stressful as hell. The owner had a terrible system and he barely knew where everything was. Owen had to fight himself to not just go and rework the system. Eventually, he and Mr. Nobles sat down and sorted everything. Owen saw this as a victory. He’d worked with someone and the two of them got the bookstore to a functional level.

Owen now saw the bookstore as a saving grace to his mental health. He had to deal with mess and with people. If he tried to clean everything all the time he’d kill himself. So there had to be give and take. Owen could keep the place tidy but he’d never get it perfect. Once he came to terms with that he was much better and to this day Owen could handle the store gathering some clutter. People left books sitting on the wrong shelves or on tables and he could leave them there for a few minutes to help customers or answer the phone and it didn’t make him turn on his head. He was still on medication from St. Christina’s and still seeing a therapist once and a while but he felt that a lot of the progress he’d made since being out had a lot to do with work. He directed his need to organize into something productive.

However, Owen was struggling to figure out what was productive about hanging a stupid sign. The previous owner had two metal hooks in the wall that you tied a rope around which held the banners up. Mr. Nobles was a 5’5” old man with a crooked spine and from Owen had gathered ninja reflexes. Standing on a stool he was struggling to get the rope properly around the hooks to tie them. “How the fuck did you do it?” He asked the presumably empty store, teetering on the tips of his toes. It never occurred to Owen that perhaps the old man got a taller employee to do it. It seemed much more logical to think that beneath the wrinkles, pleasant exterior beat the heart of a samurai warrior or covert ops agent.

Na-Ri had finally gotten her room unpacked and she now had freedom. Getting things out of the boxes was easy, but finding a place to put everything that was a little trickier. Then of course being a good big sis she had helped the little ones unpack. She assumed that at the moment they were already pulling toys out of their assigned places and making a mess. Na-Ri just smiled at this thought because she was not home at the moment. She had escaped … Well actually her father had given her permission to explore downtown, but it was still freedom from her house none the less. Downtown was the perfect place to go to see new things and maybe meet some new people. Na-Ri had to be so formal with her father; it was what was expected of her. So sometimes it was just good to get out, be casual, and explore the world outside of her home. ‘It would be an amazing adventure’ Na-Ri had decided before she even left the front steps.

Luckily she even had some pocket money she saved from birthdays and holidays and doing some things for her father. He was strict so she never had a lot of money to spare, but at least it was something. She had passed by lot of little shops window shopping. She loved to examine all of the little knick knacks and see what each store had to sell. Soon she stopped in front of the bookstore. Books were great if you had time to get into an adventure. Na-Ri could have gone to a library, but the library had always been a place for research. She had spent hours at libraries studying or researching things for projects. At a bookstore though things were random and you could walk into an adventure because you have no clue what’s inside. Wondering what books she might find Na-Ri went in.

She wanted an adventure, but she didn’t expect to see a grown man struggling to hang something on a high wall. Maybe though she could be like Sir Galahad and help the guy. “Umm Mister do you need help?” Na-Ri asked. She was already forming a plan to get the banner on the hooks. After all she was shorter than the guy standing on a chair, but they were in a bookstore so she had a lot of resources.