There have been several periods in my school life when I felt too feminine or shy to be noticed by mental health services. I’d spoken to my school on multiple occasions about my mental health and how it took a toll on my performance in school, just to be told that I wasn’t sick enough. At that time, I had recently found out I was going to have a disability which would affect me for the rest of my life, leaving me unable to do certain activities like dance.

Not once was this taken into consideration when I was forgotten about. Being told that there were no physical signs of my deterioration destroyed me inside. Meanwhile, boys who were portrayed as naughty because they acted up in lessons and were known to be troublesome were being referred to mental health services every day. It made me think, “Do I need to become aggressive and disrupt people’s lives for people to hear me?”