I didn’t choose the hospital.
Not really.
I was unraveling, but I couldn’t see it clearly—not then. My thoughts were racing, louder than reason. I hadn’t slept in days. I was euphoric, invincible, irritable, full of ideas I couldn’t hold onto long enough to finish. My voice was too loud, my movements too fast, my heart too full of everything all at once.
Someone said, “You need help.”
I laughed. “I’m just excited.”
They looked at me like I was slipping through their fingers.
I didn’t know it yet, but I was.
When I got to the hospital, I still believed I was in control. I smiled at the intake nurse. I cracked jokes. I said all the right things. But behind my eyes, the storm was thrashing. I was buzzing and broken, and I didn’t know where to put all the energy burning inside me.
And then they locked the door behind me.
And everything stopped.
Psych wards are quiet in a way that doesn’t soothe.
It’s not peaceful—it’s suspended.
Time doesn’t pass normally. The outside world disappears. Days blur together in a haze of fluorescent lights, beige walls, paper gowns, and plastic utensils. Schedules become scripture. Your name is replaced with a wristband. Your autonomy is borrowed, measured out in privileges and protocols.
At first, I was angry.
I didn’t belong there.
I wasn’t like them.
I wasn’t sick enough.
But then I saw the others.
Their quiet sadness. Their scattered brilliance. The way they shook during group, or stared out windows that didn’t open. I saw myself in their stories, and I realized—I was exactly like them.
I was one of the broken.
One of the surviving.
And slowly, the anger gave way to stillness.
The hospital didn’t heal me. It didn’t make the illness disappear. But it made me pause. And that was something I had never done before—stop running. Stop pretending. Just be.
Inside those sterile walls, I finally admitted I needed help.
Not attention. Not distraction. Not performance.
Help.
That word tasted strange in my mouth—raw and vulnerable. But the moment I said it, the weight on my chest lifted just enough to let the air in.
There were moments of unexpected grace.
A nurse who braided my hair.
A patient who passed me a note that read, You’re not alone.
A counselor who said, “You don’t have to earn your place in this world. You just have to keep breathing.”
That sentence stayed with me.
When I was discharged, I wasn’t cured. I was shaky, scared, unsure of what came next.
But I was awake.
And maybe for the first time in my life, I wasn’t pretending.
I stepped back into the world still wounded, but wide open.
And I began again.
Because sometimes, the bravest thing you can do isn’t to rise.
It’s to fall—and allow someone to catch you.
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