I was fine until the clipboard came,
until they wrote my thoughts
in someone else’s name.
I was just a kid who heard too much,
who flinched at noise
and shrank from touch.
They measured me against a chart
I’d never seen,
said the way I think
falls somewhere in between.
Between what’s normal
and what’s not quite right,
between the daylight
and the hospital light.
I wasn’t sick until they told me I was,
wasn’t broken till they found a cause.
I was just a little strange,
a little loud,
a little lost
inside a quiet crowd.
They gave it letters,
gave it weight and shape,
a diagnosis I could never quite escape.
And once they named it,
once they wrote it down,
the thing they saw
was all they found.
Now I wear the label like a second skin,
wondering where the sickness stops
and I begin.
Did I make it real
by learning what to call it?
Or was it always there,
waiting for the audit?