Dear Rehab,

When I met you, I wasn’t myself.

I came to you from the floor below,
still trembling —
from withdrawal, sleep-starved delusions,
or some bitter cocktail of both.
A fog so thick
I couldn’t tell the walls
from the weight pressing on my chest.

You were sterile and white,
like the hollow shell of a second chance.
I hated you.
I feared you.
And yet —
something in me stayed.

The first night, I tried to run.
My mind rebelled,
dragging my body with it,
until I landed alone
in a room meant for two.

Blanket draped like a shawl.
I wrapped myself in whatever warmth I could find.
That blanket became my armor.

My journal—my confessional.
Your little track—my ritual.
Forty-eight laps a day, chasing pieces of myself in circles.
Hoping they’d fit back together.

I hardly spoke at first.
But group cracked me wide open.
Especially when someone new arrived —
loud with rage or quiet with sorrow.
I recognized them.
We all did.
And it broke me.
Then, slowly, it rebuilt me.

I learned how to create again.
Beaded jewelry with trembling hands.
Scribbled thoughts like soft confessions.
Songs that clung to me like sunlight.
I wrote in my journal like it was scripture.
Your walls didn’t flinch
when I colored outside the lines.

You never asked me to be perfect.
Only honest.
Only present.

And in that presence,
I became someone new.

When I left you,
I felt like a child again —
fragile, raw, but holding something rare:
hope.

I didn’t want you.
I didn’t think I needed you.
But sometimes the most sacred places
are the ones we fight hardest to accept.

And now, when the world grows quiet,
I still hear you —
not your silence,
but the voices of every soul I met within you.

Their pain.
Their healing.
Their stories,
stitched into mine.

If I ever return,
let it be with open hands —
to offer what I once came seeking.

With Reverence,

(ProWritingAid Style Score 100%)