I'm writing this from a hospital bed. I’ve been here for 5 days.
And I’ve never been so grateful to be the same bitch that wrote there is no rock bottom and lessons in losing your mind.
There’s a band on my wrist, a tray of food I haven’t touched, and a part of me still hoping that if I can make this legible—if I can name it clearly enough—someone will believe me. I’m not here because I wasn’t aware. I’m here because I was.
The truth is, my first thought wasn’t about safety or help. It was: Anything but the hospital. Because I knew what would happen once I got here. I knew that once I crossed a certain threshold—once the symptoms stopped being subtle, once they stopped being easy to hide—I would lose something. Maybe everything. I was right.
It started quietly. I forgot what I was saying mid-sentence more than usual. I lost time—just little gaps, nothing dramatic. I felt myself getting smaller inside my own mind, like I was sitting farther back in the room of my own body. Still there. Still me. But a little off-center. I noticed the changes. I even wrote them down to prove to myself that they were real. And then, it got louder.
Thoughts I didn’t recognize started showing up, and they weren’t kind. I became convinced a friend of mine had gone on vacation with someone with a massive platform just to spite me. I played the scenario over and over in my head—told myself it didn’t make sense, told myself I knew better, told myself it wasn’t real. But the thoughts kept coming. That’s what made it so terrifying: I still had enough presence to know they weren’t real. I just couldn’t make them stop.
I tried to shake it off. I tried to ground myself. I was angry—furious, actually. Not just at the situation, but at my own brain. Rage became the only thing that cut through the fog. Rage that this was happening. Rage that I couldn’t stop it. Rage that the sicker I got, the less believable I became.
That’s the paradox of visible illness—especially the kind that touches the mind. When it’s small and quiet, people can pity you. They can sympathize. But the moment your symptoms speak louder than you can explain them, you’re no longer understood. You’re dangerous. You’re dismissed. You’re doubted.
I hid it as long as I could. And when I couldn’t anymore—when I finally needed help the most—my worst fear came true.
I wasn’t unaware. That’s the thing people don’t understand about psychosis, especially when it creeps in through the cracks of medication. I could see it happening. It’s not always some God complex, with a first-class ticket to the astral plane. I was still there. I knew something was wrong. I just couldn’t stop it. My thoughts started running loops I couldn’t interrupt. Every doubt became a conspiracy. Every silence from a friend felt charged, like they were secretly plotting against me, or worse—laughing about me behind closed doors. I knew these thoughts didn’t make sense. I knew. But they still flooded in. I was paranoid, and painfully aware of that paranoia. I didn’t trust anyone—and I didn’t trust the part of me that suddenly didn’t trust anyone. That’s a terrifying kind of awareness: to be inside your own head screaming, this isn't real, while still feeling the fear like it is. To know you’re slipping but not yet gone. To name it out loud—“I think something is wrong”—and watch people blink at you like you’ve already lost the thread, like your voice no longer counts because it’s been touched by madness.
I was too ashamed to ask anyone for help. I didn’t want to scare anyone. I didn’t want to say out loud what I already knew was happening. So I spent hours walking—circling my neighborhood, headphones in, trying to sweat it out, shake it off, snap myself back into the version of me that people recognize.
Only, I couldn’t find Jamila.
I’d been chain-smoking, desperate for some kind of grounding. My throat was raw. By the time I finally arrived at the ER in a taxi—alone, no bag, no plan—I could barely speak. My words came out in a rasp, scattered and half-formed. I was essentially nonverbal when I checked in, and they moved me to the psych ward without much explanation. They blood-tested and even breathalyzed me, and nothing came up. I could feel the shift in the way people looked at me. A slow recoiling. I know those ugly words people use to describe people who look like me in situations like this. I won’t even type them. I wasn’t a person anymore. I was a liability. A risk. I wanted help. What I got was containment.
That’s the thing about being sick in a way people don’t understand: you have to be well enough to advocate for yourself in the exact moment you’re least able to. You have to sound sane while describing something that is, by definition, unraveling your sanity. And if you fail at that—if your voice shakes too much, or you cry at the wrong time, or if you use the wrong word—they stop listening.
But then something shifted. The moment the word prednisone left my lips, the nursing team moved like a tornado. Their faces changed. Suddenly, everything clicked. The confusion, the symptoms, the spiral. They knew exactly what to do. I was a “person” again, with moved rooms, privacy and totally different experience.
And I just kept thinking—Why did it take that magic word for me to be seen as real?
A nurse glanced at my chart and asked if I was a danger to others, and I said, “No, just scared out of my goddamn mind.” He didn’t look up. They just gave me a pill and told me it would make me calm down.
There’s a strange thing that happens when illness becomes visible, especially when it touches something as intangible as the mind. It’s almost as if, the sicker you get, the less real you become to others. Illness that is quiet, that doesn’t demand too much attention, can be something that people sympathize with. It’s easier to pity someone who’s slightly off, someone who is still functional enough to appear “normal.” But the moment that illness becomes undeniable—when the symptoms spill over the threshold of believability—everything changes.
When your body or mind can no longer be hidden or softened, when the edges of your suffering become sharp and jagged for all to see, you start to feel the shift in how people treat you. The vulnerability that should invite support instead invites distance. It’s as if your humanity is called into question the more visible your illness becomes. You’re no longer a person dealing with something hard; you’re a problem, a threat, an enigma.
This is where the betrayal happens—the deep betrayal of asking for help and being met with disbelief, confusion, or outright fear. It’s painful, almost unbearable, because it strikes at the core of what you’re seeking when you finally show up broken: validation. You just want someone to see you, to believe that what you’re experiencing is real. But when that doesn’t happen, the isolation deepens, and the shame wraps tighter around you.
It’s the stark contrast between what you know to be true and what others are willing to acknowledge. And the thing is, it’s not about your illness being any less real; it’s about how other people are comfortable navigating it. There’s a threshold of believability that people—especially medical professionals, but also friends, family, society at large—can tolerate. If your suffering aligns with what they expect, or what they think is solveable without being too burdensome, they can handle it. But when it crosses that line, when it disrupts their worldview, when it threatens to unmake the neat categories they've created for what's normal and what's not—suddenly, your experience doesn’t matter as much. Suddenly, it’s no longer real in the way that would make others feel safe because it is inherently NOT safe.
What’s worse is that, often, the more desperate you are, the less likely you are to be believed. Because desperation, whether you’re fighting off psychosis or any other form of visible illness, is messy. It doesn’t fit into the neat little box of “the right kind of patient.” When you’re breaking down, when you’re lost in the fog of a mind you no longer trust, the clarity you might need to explain your situation in a way that aligns with the accepted version of reality is gone. Your symptoms don’t come with the perfect explanation. You might not even have the words to convey what’s happening to you. So when you ask for help, the cracks in your story—the unfiltered emotion, the panic, the incoherent thoughts—become evidence to those around you that you might not be reliable.
It’s as if, by simply existing in your most raw, unpolished form, you’ve crossed into territory that is too complex, too foreign for others to deal with. People are comfortable with illness that fits their expectations—illness that doesn’t threaten the stability of their own lives. But when the illness in question disrupts not just your life but theirs too, that’s when their fear shows. That’s when your humanity slips away, and you are reduced to a symptom, to a diagnosis, to a problem that needs to be contained, or worse, a danger.
And that’s where the shame lands for me—when you need help and are met with fear, disbelief, or indifference. It’s not just that your illness is being dismissed; it’s that, in that moment, you, as a whole person, are dismissed. You become an inconvenience, a person whose experience simply cannot matter because it’s too complicated, too messy, too real. Everyone has had enough. Why is it always something with you?
This experience is telling me something I’ve known for a long time, something I haven’t been willing to listen to until now. It’s telling me I need to trust my body again, listen to it, and honor its needs. The advice I’ve received for my health has been clear: leave the city. But I wasn’t ready to let go. I wasn’t ready to face what it would mean to leave behind the life I’d built here, even though I knew it wasn’t sustainable for me.
But this situation has forced my hand in ways I couldn’t ignore. And now, in a strange twist, it’s making it easier for me to move in the direction I’ve resisted. To leave the city. To find somewhere calmer, slower—somewhere surrounded by nature, with fewer demands and less stress. A place where I can breathe again. A place where I can focus on healing.
This might be one of the most horrifying experiences I’ve ever had, but it’s also become a permission slip. A painful but necessary push to do something I’ve known I needed to do for a long time: reclaim my body, my mind, and my life after everything it’s been through.
So shortly Berlin will see my butt jiggling away to more wholesome green pastures, and as I sob typing this, I feel brave knowing I can take you all with me.
in kinship.
Jamila
Support My Sabbatical & the Completion of My Book
If my writing has resonated with you, if you believe in the work I’m doing, or if you simply want to help me finish this book while navigating a life-changing health transition, I’d deeply appreciate your support. I’ve reactivated my GoFundMe to take a full sabbatical, leave Berlin for a quieter space in nature, and focus on completing this book through the summer and autumn. Every contribution, big or small, makes a difference—and sharing helps too.
Thank you for being here. It truly means the world.
Thanks you so much for sharing your experience. I’m sorry you were not met with the assistance and care you deserved.
I can see myself in parts of your experience both as the person and as a friend. It’s given me a lot to think about in how I listen to others. I can see myself being overwhelmed if a friend reached out with similar needs. But, understanding that you really didn’t need a professional, at first, just someone to care and advocate for you. I hope I can keep that take away for myself and if I find others in that need. Good luck on your move. Fresh starts have so much possibilities and anxiety but I hope you find what you need.
Thank you for sharing in such an honest way. I've lived that strange contradiction: when it's at its worst and I need the most understanding, that's precisely when people seem most skeptical or uncomfortable around me. The part about needing to "be well enough to advocate for yourself in the exact moment you're least able to" resonates. It's exhausting having to perform wellness just to be taken seriously about your unwellness.
Sidelining goals to make the best decisions for your health is not easy, but I want you to know it can lead to unexpected gifts. I am three years out from when I was hospitalized repetitively over the course of a year, and what's happened since then has transformed me. I've learned about surrender and discovered the actual power in it, not as giving up, but as creating space for new possibilities. What feels like loss right now may reveal itself as redirection. We're more resilient than we know, and growth comes in the most surprising ways when we honor what our bodies are telling us.
Wishing you healing and unexpected joy in your new beginning.