
This short fictional piece highlights the voices of psychiatric inpatients, as they are coming to a collective consciousness and reckoning with their oppression, loss of social status, and confinement. Also examined is the absence of true therapeutic support, the prohibition against friendships, and the lack of agency psychiatric patients have. The piece can be understood as a critique from the inside, from patients who recognize themselves as an oppressed class. Many of the issues described are from the author’s direct observations as a psychiatric patient. Content warning: mention of sexual assault, psychiatric violence, police violence.