If you’re getting notified about this, FYI, this post is old.
Picking up from yesterday –
Sometimes I even mentioned something slight, as the tiiiiiniest signal for help, in the world. But it’d be lumped in with just some normal stuff, and would’ve been so hard for anyone to pick up on… And even though I’m a grown adult who speaks the language of the people I was with – I couldn’t bring myself to just talk in real terms of what was really happening.
So, some people close to me noticed some weird-ness, but didn’t know what to do with it. Some people not close to me perhaps didn’t notice any. I don’t know that I noticed an external difference between my instagram post where I was desperately trying to be happy vs. the ones where I actually am.
I didn’t get help until one of my closest friends who’s known me for a while sat me down, and was just like, “Seriously, Aurora, what is going on? This is not the you I know. There is something – some part of something I am missing.” And he kept asking questions until he got to the root of the issue, and he convinced me to call a helpline. And he showed a lot of patience. And he was a giant fulcrum of help.
But how do we know? (How would we know to be him in this situation?) How do we know when something is really wrong vs. when someone is just a little off?
I don’t know the answer. I just know that it is surreal to remember how hard I was trying to keep it all together when all of this happened, and how hard I was trying to paint this facade of okay-ness. (And how only one person noticed enough/did enough/(or maybe felt comfortable enough) to make sure I got on the path of getting the help I needed. Not that I blame anyone else, as I said, I was trying to keep the facade! …Which is maybe silly anyway. I probably shouldn’t have tried so hard for too long to keep it together… I dunno.)
And, so, for a while, it seems like my facade worked (at least kind of)! I could see a scenario where people could keep it up better than me, and for longer… So, how do we know when they’re in trouble?
[I don’t have an answer, it’s case that’s unclear. I’m kind of just postulating, and opening a conversation, if anyone would like to comment or contact me, etc. Sorry, and thanks!]
[This is a post from the sexual assault series.]