From the moment I arrived, I was met with rules, a litany of regulatory proclamations. I shivered on a chair before the intake nurse, trying to grasp my change in circumstance. I kept quiet, meek, tracing the pattern of pinprick ventilation in the dingy suede of my sneakers, unable to make eye contact, to utter even a word of protest. The entire scene felt like a copy of a copy of a bad script, one I recognized from television and books. Everything, from the nurse’s icy demeanor to my own timidity and dread—all of it a cliché little drama that must have played out in that very room countless
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