I met a woman in the psych ward and something felt like that should have been me.
She had gauze wrapped around her wrist like I had felt so many times before, but these wounds had kept her here.
I had been sent home.
I never needed stitches, but I couldn't have a needle,
so I was always left with the common thread of being sent home.
I was never taken seriously until one day I was,
but I'd forgotten how to take it any way at all.
The woman in the ward would wander the halls,
hauling her hidden distress in the dressing.
I wondered if she'd also been told 'it wasn't that bad,'
but if she was, she might have been home by now.
Something keeps asking why she hadn't been me.
I was so confused about where they said I should be and didn't know how to prove if I knew where that was.
Dismissed from all urgency by nurses with certainty, but implored by all others who glanced at my wrist;
each party so confident I'd be in hands that were better as long as those hands weren't theirs.
I was scrubbed from this place of belonging while being too stable for the people in scrubs.
Maybe that's why I stay as close as I can to the psych ward while still holding the key card to leave:
I had lingered in limbo too long to know which direction to go. What do I believe? Which loss do I grieve?
I had proved myself too healthy; I had proved myself too sick.
I was a revolving door patient who never got admitted.