Member-only story
“I Cried in the Waiting Room, and No One Even Noticed”
I sat in the waiting room of a clinic in Skokie, clutching my referral papers like they were a golden ticket. My hands were shaking — not just from anxiety, but because this appointment had taken two months to get.
I had translated every line of the intake forms with my cousin’s help. I had mapped out the bus route. I had missed class. I had come prepared.
But they turned me away.
“We don’t take that insurance anymore,” the woman at the front desk said without looking up.
She didn’t see the way my face fell. She didn’t hear the hope crack in my voice. She just moved on to the next patient.
When you’re a refugee, asking for help already feels like trespassing. Add mental health to that equation, and it feels like screaming in a language no one wants to understand. I grew up in Syria surrounded by war, and when I came to the U.S., I thought I would finally be able to rest. But the trauma followed me. It came in dreams, in my stomach, in the headaches that never stopped. I needed help.
But help in America is bureaucratic, expensive, and cold.
When you don’t have insurance, or English, or confidence, it becomes almost impossible to access care. And that’s the real crisis. Not that people are broken — but that the system punishes them for trying to heal.
We need warm spaces. We need trauma-informed care. But more than anything, we need someone to look up and say, “I see you. I’ll help.”
