Question: What does the word “inventory” stand for in this story?

In the short story Inventory by Carmen Maria Machado, we see that the title is Inventory, but what can this possibly mean? Well, at the start of the story, we can see that she starts telling us who her past lovers are, and she mentions the experiences she had with them, even if they involved sex or other things. She continues by talking about how she lost her virginity and how she reunited with the same guy again.

Throughout the story, she runs away from a pandemic that honestly could mean an actual pandemic, or it can be used as a metaphor, but that is another question to ask later. As she moves to get away from the virus, her relationships, I feel like, start to get a little more crazy and extreme. For example, the time when she was almost killed, woke up to a knife at her throat, and had to send the guy away. After that, she mainly became more interested in women than men. The same happens when she splits up with her wife and sleeps with men more than women. As worse events happen, her relationships also get worse.

I feel like this is a pattern she is used to and is not able to be alone by herself. If she is by herself, she would probably get this feeling of being alone, which is not what she wants. She lacks a lot of self-love and respect for herself because this feeling of loneliness makes her feel empty. At the end, we get to this moment where she is probably alone and finally able to find herself as the woman she is. But you can sense that she feels alone and scared. Due to this, she starts having a moment of reflection and looks back on her past relationships, seeing both the worst and the good in them. She is going back in time and seeing herself as she was, and I feel like she might want to change that.

The word inventory stands for a complete list of items, such as property, goods in stock, or the contents of a building. In this case, she makes a list of the people she’s been with and reflects on it at the end of the story. So that is what Inventory means to me in this story.