Grippy Socks

I’m not sure if it was the socks, or the fact that I was in a room full of people who were either too sedated to speak or too lost in their own heads to notice me, but I felt a little… out of place.

I adjusted to the strange rhythm of the ward. I found my voice in a way I never had before. I started writing. Poems. Full-on slam poetry about everything—the people, the ward, the absurdity of it all. Each line was an eruption of everything I was holding in. It was raw, it was ugly, it was me.

I read those poems to anyone who would listen—patients, staff, whoever had the misfortune to be near me. I didn’t care. I needed to speak my truth, even if it was in rhymes.

I couldn’t stop. Writing became my escape, my defiance, my way of feeling like I wasn’t just a patient, a diagnosis, a pair of grippy socks. I was still a person—damn it. I was still me—a person who could turn pain and chaos into poetry.