How was your day?

Hurting

Title — How was your day?

“……So Jason, how was your day?”
Mrs Faith’s lips had been moving for the past ten minutes since Jason sat down, but those were the first words that were able to get through to him, cutting through the thousands of others already crowding his head.

Jason shook his head, breaking eye contact with the clock behind Mrs Faith. He had been using it to focus his thoughts, just so he could hear her.

“My day?” Jason whispered. The words bubbled up in his throat as he managed to spill them out.

His fingertips found their way down the right sleeve of the red jacket as he struggled to pull them further down his arm, the same jacket his mum had strongly insisted he wear today.

“Good boy. All covered up and normal,” she had said, avoiding eye contact as her thin lips stretched into a smile Jason knew was fake.

He knew what her real smile looked like when she spoke to Brian on the phone—Jason’s elder brother, studying law at Harvard—her smile widened so much he could see the wrinkles behind her eyes and the way her breath moved with ease.
But with him, she breathes as though she were walking on thin glass, her broken son.

“Yes, Jason,” Mrs Faith continued.

“I’m a bit worried that we haven’t been able to make any breakthroughs yet. Your mum mentioned that you no longer let her check your arms, and we’re worried about you, Jason. Everything we do now—”

Jason inhaled slowly, filling his nostrils with the smell of cinnamon that filled the room. He was already losing her words again.

The voices in his head now echoed loudly, too loud, drowning every single sentence she uttered as he stared at her blankly, trying his best to grasp the meaning in it all, but failing again.

“She asked about your day,” the voices said.

“What is so important about your day?”

“Jason, are you listening?” Mrs Faith snapped her fingers in front of him, the sound zapping him back for a moment.
Jason’s blue gaze met hers. He steadied his breathing. The voices quieted when she did that.

“You zoned out again?” she asked, her voice soft now, waiting.

Jason stared at her, trying to piece together the words to explain what goes on inside his head, but his voice failed him again; that was all he ever did —fail.

How does he explain that even he didn’t understand his days? That time passed without him inside it? That nothing felt solid enough to hold? How does he explain that some days he thought about not existing? How does he explain the thoughts he never said out loud, the ones he kept buried deep enough that no one would ask?

The buzzing of his phone from this morning came back to him. It had violently yanked him out of the only place where he didn’t have to fight the voices — sleep, the thick fog immediately clouding his brain as he stirred awake, his fingers scrambling for the source of the sound.

He stared at the screen. No one had texted him. That small hope he woke up with every morning vanished as he scrolled through messages that weren’t meant for him. His friends now discuss in the group chat in codes that only he couldn’t understand.
Jason exhaled as his feet touched the cold tiles. He stood in front of the mirror, his eyes tracing patterns engraved on his skin that he refused to name.

Being excluded no longer made his heart bleed like it used to.

Who would blame them?

He made people uncomfortable. Any normal human wouldn’t want to be five feet away from his empty soul.

“But they’re supposed to be our friends,” the voice whispered.

How was his day?

Well, it had passed like every other one.
At a school where he was invisible, the voices now louder than the lectures.
Where he never hears the sound of his name on time and gets sent to the principal’s office when they discover that he had not been attentive in class, again. No one wants to deal with him anymore.

Being inside the principal’s office was the only place where the noise softened, the fog lifted, and he felt in control, picturing Principal Whale’s voice come to life as he talked endlessly about his hiking trips from his youth.
Inside these four walls, one would notice what was hidden under his thick sweater. No one to make uncomfortable.

“Jason, how could you do this again?”His mother’s voice snapped, breaking the first calm moment since he had woken up.
Her heels clicked on the marble floors as she stepped into the office, the veins on her face tight with disappointment.

The calm was scattered as the broken parts gave way to the waves of noise that rushed back in, wrapping around him, warm and suffocating at the same time.

Sometimes Jason let himself think
What if the principal truly saw the real him, buried underneath this noise?
Or was he just doing the job he was paid to do?

Now he was back here again, like clockwork. Sitting across from the middle-aged blonde woman who happened to be his mother’s best friend. The family therapist.
His family’s solution to his “issues” as his mother labelled them.
Her grey eyes filled with worry, resting on him, waiting, like she always did.

“How was your day?”

Author’s Note
This piece explores the emotional isolation many teenage boys experience when their pain is acknowledged but not truly held. Jason’s story reflects how mental health struggles are often managed through systems, school discipline, therapy appointments, and parental concern without addressing the deeper need to be listened to without judgment or fear.
The general issue addressed here is the silencing of hurting boys: how discomfort, stigma, and misunderstanding can turn support spaces into places of quiet withdrawal. This work speaks for the many young people whose struggles are noticed, yet not truly heard.