Gemotions

It was a suffocating feeling, like a spider web clinging to her skin. The neatly stacked boxes, labeled in her mother's perfect penmanship, loomed over her in the spare bedroom. Each one seemed to whisper a silent judgment, a reminder of all the things she’d never quite measured up to.

She sifted through the contents, her movements jerky and erratic. A perfect grade in math. A stellar performance in debate. A glowing review of her role in the school play. It all seemed…false, manufactured. She was drowning in the echoes of her mother's expectations.

She wanted to escape, to run, to smash something. She wanted to rewrite the narrative.

She picked up her report card again, crumpled it, and threw it down.