There Were Days I Didn’t Want to Be Defended Anymore
There were days I didn’t want to explain.
Didn’t want to prove myself.
Didn’t want to keep correcting the record or reminding people I wasn’t who the internet said I was.
I just wanted it to end.
Not the healing.
Not the journey.
Not the fight, exactly.
I just wanted the feeling of having to fight at all to disappear.
There were days I didn’t want to be defended.
Because being defended meant being discussed.
Being brought up.
Being looked at again.
Even if someone was on my side,
it still meant my name had to be reintroduced to the room.
And sometimes, I just couldn’t take being visible in that way again.
I didn’t want to be a controversy.
I didn’t want to be the person you had to explain to others.
I just wanted to exist.
Quietly.
Safely.
Without needing an asterisk beside my name.
But the internet doesn’t let people like me exist without footnotes.
They want a version of the story they can believe in 140 characters.
They want to know if I “deserved it.”
If I “brought it on myself.”
If I’m “still obsessed.”
If I’m “still posting about it.”
What they never want to admit is that
some damage doesn’t finish just because they’re tired of watching it unfold.
I didn’t always want justice.
Sometimes I just wanted silence — but the safe kind.
The kind I chose.
Not the kind forced on me.
There were nights I thought about deleting everything.
Letting the narrative rot on its own,
sinking into a quiet life with no files,
no evidence,
no posts,
no pushback.
But even then,
somewhere inside me,
a voice refused.
“You didn’t survive all this just to go quiet now.”
So I stayed.
And wrote.
And filed.
And fought — even on the days I didn’t want to be seen.
This is the long return.
It’s not linear.
It’s not glamorous.
It’s not always brave.
Some days, surviving looks like writing something
only so you don’t disappear into your own silence again.
And on those days —
writing becomes a form of breathing.
This post is that breath.
Truth & Advocacy By Calvin-Lee Hardie - Inverness 