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 in lukewarm 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.

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