There are days that divide things into before and after. This is about one of those.
What I was trying to do
At lunch I tried to get to Suzanne — my trusted adult at school, the person the system says is supposed to be available to you when things are hard. I didn't make it. My head of year stopped me in the corridor. No explanation. Just stopped. And then it began.
The room
Pastoral staff. SEND staff. Various people. The exact composition shifted but the dynamic didn't — I was on one side of it and they were on the other, and the questions started without much preamble. No real explanation of what was happening or why. Just — we need to talk to you about some things. And then three hours.
They took my phone. My laptop. My mouse. My headphones. My chargers. All of it. Everything I would normally use to cope, to communicate, to exist comfortably in a difficult situation — gone. And then they kept going.
I asked them to call my mum
At some point during it I asked them to call my mum. They said they would. They didn't. I found that out later. At the time I was sitting there believing someone was coming, that she knew what was happening, that I wasn't completely alone in it. That belief was wrong and it was the school that made it wrong.
The end of it
At the end of the day they sent me home. On the bus. In tears. That's how it ended — not with a conversation, not with my mum collecting me, not with any kind of support. Just: okay, go. Bus. Home. Crying.
What came after
I didn't go back after that. The selective mutism that had been situational became something broader. I stopped being able to talk in person to almost anyone. The people I talk to now in person are my mum, Claws, and three friends. That's the full list. That's what that day did, or at least what it contributed to.
I'm not writing this for sympathy. I'm writing it because it happened, it was wrong, and writing things down is how I process them. The full context is in the other school posts if you want it. This is just the day itself.