I Don’t Need to Convince You Anymore. I Just Need You to Know I Never Disappeared. 

I Don’t Need to Convince You Anymore. I Just Need You to Know I Never Disappeared.

There was a time I thought the hardest part of surviving would be the pain itself.

But it wasn’t.

The hardest part was watching people I once trusted —

people who had shared words with me, rooms with me, seasons of my life with me —

look away when it counted.

They saw what was happening.

They saw the headlines.

They read the comments.

They heard the rumours.

And instead of asking me what was true,

they stepped back and watched to see if I’d fall.

There’s a particular kind of silence that only shows up after harm.

It doesn’t arrive all at once.

It seeps in slowly.

It replaces conversation with hesitation, support with avoidance, familiarity with distance.

You feel it in the “seen” message that never gets a reply.

You feel it when people stop tagging you, stop mentioning your name, stop asking if you’re okay.

You feel it most when people don’t speak against the lie —

because a part of them wasn’t sure it was a lie.

That uncertainty?

That pause?

It isolates more than any accusation ever could.

I kept writing because I thought if I just told the truth clearly enough,

someone would finally stand up.

I thought if I kept posting, kept showing my face,

kept showing I hadn’t disappeared —

eventually, someone would come back with a voice that said:

“I was there. I saw what they did. It wasn’t right.”

But no one did.

And so I stopped waiting for the voices that never came,

and started building something they could never deny.

You want to know what healing looks like?

It looks like logging into the same platforms where you were reduced to a story,

and not caring who sees your face anymore.

It looks like no longer sending explanations to people who weren’t brave enough to ask for your side.

It looks like putting your truth on record —

not for them,

but so the next time someone searches your name,

they don’t only find the version that hurt you.

I don’t need to be believed anymore.

Because the truth is written,

published,

archived.

It lives in my words, not their speculation.

They can ignore it.

They can pretend they didn’t see it.

They can scroll past like they did the first time.

But the record is still here.

I am still here.

And when the story changes again —

when the cycle turns —

when the next person is silenced and rewritten and publicly broken —

maybe then they’ll remember that they once knew someone who told them what it felt like

to vanish while still breathing.

I survived more than slander.

I survived absence.

I survived the people who said nothing.

Who didn’t want to pick sides.

Who thought their neutrality didn’t count as harm.

But now I’m not neutral either.

I know what happened.

And I’ve made it impossible to forget.

This is Post 19.

And I’m not writing to convince you.

I’m writing because I never disappeared.

You just stopped looking.