Elizabeth Drucker

After sporting so many plastic hospital bracelets, it’s hard to think of myself as anything other than a career mental patient. They may show my name and medical record number, but they reveal nothing about my story: what I did this time, what led to my being swept through yet another set of locked doors and their unbreakable glass windows. They are always loose, but not enough that I could just slide them around the bones of my wrist and off my hands.

These hospital bracelets remind everyone that I am sick. I am hopelessly bipolar, so it’s anyone’s guess what sort of mood state has gotten me in trouble this time. Sometimes, I take an Uber to the Emergency Room because I am hopelessly depressed and terrified that I might do something about it. Other times, I have been brought to the hospital by an assortment of well-intentioned friends who miss the old Elizabeth.

But, to me, my hospital bracelets remind me of my humanity, that despite everything I am going through, I still exist. As a person. My name is in bold print, capital letters, undeniable and floridly beautiful in its own way. I can’t be a patient forever, I tell myself as I drift off to sleep in my hospital bed each night.

I look at my hospital bracelets during morning rounds when the treatment team reminds me that I am so ill that I might need to spend another week in the hospital, that I will probably have to take a medical withdrawal from school.

Whenever I feel panicky or uncertain during my hospitalizations, these plastic bands ground me. It doesn’t really matter what put me in the psych ward or what I need to do to get discharged. My hospital bracelets provide me with the most beautiful thing any doctor could tell me: I really do exist.