Lol reading that thread on the other website about school refusal. So many people don’t get it. I was a chronic absentee, I didn’t even go for the entirety of year 10 and had way more than 20 days off per year before and after, from primary to HS. I was abused young, and my mother had untreated schizophrenia. Neither of us had support, and she certainly didn’t realise what I was going through. She’d sleep all day, because she worked nights as a cleaner in a factory. So she wasn’t home at night, and wasn’t present during the day.

Then, if I went to school I was relentlessly bullied for having frizzy hair, being fatter than the other girls (funnily enough, I was a normal weight, and they were starving themselves :/ ), for being interested in science or “boy things”. The boys bullied me too, because I wasn’t “cool” enough. I wanted to do “boy things”. Assaulted, teased. Starting in primary. I distinctly remember the boys not allowing me to play footy with them, and the girls not wanting me to play with them because I didn’t wear lip gloss or straighten my hair.

I wanted to go, I felt like a failure, which just fuelled the depression no one realised I had. I cannot blame my mum, she herself didn’t have support for her mental health, I could hardly expect she would know what to do with me.

And it wasn’t really the schools fault either. Some teachers sucked, sure, but the classes were oversized and there were kids who were loudly unruly. I was quiet, and I got really good grades. I fell through the cracks, and it was easy to fall back in the 2000s.

I’m glad that the kids in the article are getting into schools that can meet their needs and foster a sense of self-worth. That just wasn’t available to me back then. It has affected me, and still does. I blame the system, no real individual. If you don’t conform, then you’re just left to rot. And if your parents aren’t great and perfect, or they’re absent… What can the child do??

Anyway, that’s my little rant. That “other place” can be such a cancer.