OhJoySexToy

COMIC: Space Camp - I'll Be Back For Dinner

Added 2021-11-06 00:01:37 +0000 UTC

In 2019 I went through the Intensive Outpatient Program. If you've been a patron for a while, you've heard me repeat that a million times, but if you're new, well, there ya go, that's the context you need for this post. While I was going through the program, I took extensive notes partly because I'm a documentarian at heart and I knew this would make great comics material someday and also because it was just one way I could have some kind of control over my life in that moment. Obsessively documenting almost all of my conversations and observations in this brand new environment was definitely a coping mechanism for me.

Anyway! Here we are! Two years later and I'm finally ready-ish to start turning that material into some kind of memoir-thing. For the sake of getting started, I've transcribed all my handwritten notes into text and I'm now turning segments into rough stick figure comics with the hope that having these fleshed out segments in front of me will help me figure out how to.... like... connect them together.

Today I finished the first vignette. So.

Uh.

Here it is.

End of Segment One!

Here is a comic I did about the actual conversation I had with my psych, while Matt was going about his day at home until he got my text.

There's so much about this project that I don't know how to do yet. Is it written in the third person or first? (My notes during classes were written from my POV, but the scenes that I transcribed from my conversations and experiences are written from an observer's perspective) Do I collect a series of vignettes and let the reader bridge the gaps between stories in their mind? Do I streamline this into one cohesive narrative? How much do I need to share about what instigated me being sent to a mental health care program? Because I want to focus on the program and I'm afraid including the things that sent me there will 1) derail the focus of the story and 2) re-ignite that bad stuff to happen again. But also... isn't that kind of crucial information for the reader to know??? I don't know!

Lots to figure out. Too much. So I'm just going to do it this way for now: stick-figure comicking my various story segments on their own. I'll figure out the rest later.