Chapter Six: Lights Too Bright

Hospitals are supposed to be places of healing.

But for her, they were another kind of stage—curtains drawn back, lights glaring, audience unseen. A theater where she was always performing, never applauding. Only this ballet had no music, just the low hum of fluorescent lights and the rustle of paper gowns.

She lost count of how many acts she’d performed under that cold, relentless glow. Sometimes she entered willingly, hand in hand with someone who cared. Other times, she was carried in—by EMTs, by officers, by the heavy choreography of breakdowns. The opening scene was always the same “the intake” act. Bright lights overhead. A script she never wanted to learn.

“What brings you here?”

She wanted to say: Everything. Instead, she muttered her rehearsed lines, depression, anxiety, self-harm. Sometimes silence took the stage. She let the machines take her pulse while someone with a clipboard decided which part of her to erase.

The lights in psych wards never dim. They buzz and flicker like dying stars, always watching, never blinking. You can’t sleep beneath them. You can’t cry in peace. And you can’t dance when your legs are tethered to trauma.

She wasn’t just exhausted. She was overexposed—every flaw, every crack caught in the spotlight. Not seen as a whole human, but as a fractured character in someone else’s play. Fragile. Dangerous. Disposable.

Some scenes had soft edges. A therapist who asked better questions. A nurse who whispered, “You were violated.” My head screamed back, I was loved, he said he loved me. She never understood that conversation—it stayed with her like a recurring refrain.  Years later she realized she was her mother’s competition, and her grandmother was her competition. 

But more often, it was pills before conversation. Rules before reasons. Restraints before mercy.

So, she learned to perform. To hit her marks. Say the lines just right:

“I’m okay now.”

“No, I don’t hear voices.”

“Yes, I feel safe.”

“Yes, I have a plan for help.”

She hated how convincing she became. Lying to be discharged wasn’t survival—it was an encore in a play she never auditioned for.

And yet—she watched the others. She saw herself in them.

The woman who painted sunflowers on napkins.

The boy who played the piano by ear.

The elder who quoted scripture with the rhythm of a sermon and the logic of science.

Each of them dancing in place, trying not to fall apart.

She understood that.

Over time, she began to gather the choreography of healing—awkward, unscripted, but hers. Breathing techniques. Grounding exercises. Memory trackers. She created her own workbook, her own ballet journal, filled with routines that weren’t graceful but were real. Her healing became muscle memory—deliberate, imperfect, repeated.

But even backstage, betrayal lurked. A journal stolen, passed around like dirty laundry. Another lesson: not all light warms. Some light burns. Some truth is dangerous when exposed too soon.

Psych hospitals don’t heal you—not in the way people imagine. They pause the performance. They change the costume. They dim the stage just long enough for the insurance to run out. And then they push you back into the world—script unfinished.

Still—she stayed in the dance.

Not because she believed in perfect endings.

But because she refused to stop reaching for the light.

Even when it blinded her.

Even when it burned.

Some lights never go out.