The Long Walk Home

I spent ten days as a psychiatric inpatient during a mental health breakdown at age twenty one.I filled nearly a hundred pages of a journal in the hospital with stories, rants, anecdotes and confessions about the chaotic road back to stability.I transcribed those journal entries into stories for two years following my departure from the hospital. Those stories now comprise this book. They recount Ward 2D as I experienced it, from admission to discharge.Home isn’t a place-it’s a feeling. I felt it in compassionate nurses after arguments with my doctor. I felt it in group therapy sessions and in admiring beech trees through tempered glass windows. I felt it in jigsaw puzzles and inlukewarm tea shared with copatients. I felt it more in Ward 2D than I had for years beforehand.We are all walking home. This is a travel log.