“You lied to me! You said you wouldn’t make me! I hate you! I hate all of you!”
I realized then that I had been viewing her through the lens of my own frustration, rather than her reality. We began to talk, not about school, but about the things she was consuming to escape. We discussed the lore of her video games, the intricate plots of her anime. Slowly, the barrier between us began to thin. I learned that for her, the school hallway was a gauntlet of judgment, and the classroom a prison cell of expectation. She wasn't skipping school to avoid work; she was avoiding the sensory overload and the crushing weight of performance anxiety. 30 days with my schoolrefusing sister final