Community Stories

The gym was bright and loud and felt enormous in the way that spaces feel enormous when you're already trying to disappear into them. We were playing badminton. I was bad at it, though I didn't understand why at the time. I didn't know I had dyspraxia. That my brain processed movement differently. That the coordination everyone else seemed to access without thinking was genuinely harder for me to reach. I just knew I kept missing and that Abby's face was doing something I rec

I was eight years old, sitting cross-legged on the stage floor with the rest of my class. Everyone else had their bell instrument. The music teacher was talking. I wasn't really there. Something was happening inside me that I couldn't name. A heaviness expanding in my chest like a balloon being slowly inflated, pressing against my ribs. Thoughts I hadn't invited were spinning, weaving scenarios I couldn't stop or explain. The familiar sting of tears started building before I