I Didn't Want an Audience. I Wanted Someone to Notice.

I’ve been called an attention seeker. And honestly? I hated the attention.

There’s this thing that happens when you’re struggling and you can’t keep it inside anymore.

You post something. Maybe it’s vague — one of those “some days are harder than others” kind of posts. Maybe it’s more direct. Maybe at 2am you type out something you’ve been carrying for months and you hit share before the part of your brain that second-guesses everything can stop you.

And then you watch the notifications come in.

And you feel worse.

That’s the part nobody talks about when they throw around the phrase “attention seeker.” They say it like the person wanted an audience. Like they were fishing for likes. Like it was some kind of performance.

But here’s what was actually happening — at least for me.

I didn’t want attention. I wanted someone to notice I was drowning.

Those are two completely different things.

For many years I would post dramatic things on Facebook. Questionable things. Things that, looking back now, I can only imagine the worry and puzzlement my friends must have felt seeing come up in their feed. I think about that sometimes — someone just scrolling on their lunch break and suddenly there’s me, unraveling in public.

But those posts were never about gathering an audience to my pain.

They were about saying: I’m here. Help. I don’t know what to do with this.

That’s it. That was the whole message. I just didn’t know how to say it any other way.

And some friends got it. They’d message me privately — “are you alright?” Others would reply directly on the post asking if I needed help. And I wouldn’t answer. I couldn’t. Because answering meant explaining, and I didn’t have the words for what was happening inside me. So I’d go quiet.

And then there’d be a knock at the door.

Two police officers. A wellness check.

Some friends eventually labeled it as crying wolf. And I understand why — from the outside, that’s probably exactly what it looked like. The dramatic post. The silence. The pattern repeating. I get it.

But it was never crying wolf.

A wolf cry is a false alarm. What I was doing was a real alarm with a broken speaker. The emergency was genuine. I just couldn’t transmit it clearly.

Attention means people are looking at you. And when people look at you, you have to perform. You have to respond to comments. You have to explain yourself to people who didn’t ask the right question. You have to watch someone write “praying for you 🙏” and feel more alone than before you posted.

What I actually wanted was for one person to see it and quietly reach out and say “hey — are you okay?” Not a crowd. Not the comments. Just to not feel invisible.

But that’s not how it works, is it.

What you put out publicly, the world responds to publicly. And suddenly you’re exposed in a way you didn’t fully consent to, even though you’re the one who hit post. You wanted a lifeline and instead you got a spotlight.

And then comes the shame.

Because now people know. And some will treat you differently. Some will forget by tomorrow. Some will bring it up months later at the wrong moment. And I get why. If I was blasting it on Facebook for everyone to see, why wouldn’t it be fair game in a normal conversation? That’s a reasonable assumption. I put it in a public space — that must mean I’m comfortable with it being public. But that’s the contradiction at the heart of all of it. The post wasn’t comfort. It was crisis. And crisis doesn’t follow the same logic as a normal conversation. So you end up with mixed signals on both sides — friends who don’t know how to handle it, and you not knowing how to explain why the thing you shouted into the internet you can’t talk about over coffee.

And some people were just honest. They’d tell me outright — “I don’t know how to deal with what you’re going through. Please contact your therapist or a crisis line.” And I understand that too. That’s not abandonment. That’s a person knowing their limits and being straight with me about it. There’s actually something decent in that, even if it stings in the moment. Not everyone is equipped to be someone else’s emergency contact. Not everyone should have to be.

The problem is that when you’re in that place, any version of “I can’t help you” — however kindly meant — just adds to the weight.

You start wondering if you should have said anything at all.

That’s the loop depression puts you in. You’re isolated, so you reach out in the only way that feels available. The reaching out goes sideways. Now you feel isolated and exposed and embarrassed. So you pull back harder. And the silence gets louder.

I want to stop here for a second and say something important.

I love my friends. I genuinely do. And I can only imagine the roller coaster they’ve been on with me over the years — the high points, the low points, the posts that must have made their stomachs drop, the silences that must have been just as confusing as the noise. They have stood by me through all of it. That deserves more than a footnote. That deserves to be said out loud.

Today I’m in a much more stable place. I’ve largely stepped back from yelling for help on Facebook. That chapter has quieted down. But every once in a while something slips — because the loneliness still shows up. And when it does, what I really want isn’t advice. It isn’t solutions. It isn’t a hotline number or a gentle redirect to my therapist. It’s just someone who will listen. Sit with it. Not try to fix it. Just be there on the other end and let me know I’m not completely alone in it.

That’s all it’s ever really been.

My friends have given me that more times than they probably realize. They didn’t always know what to say — how could they? — but they stayed. And for someone who has spent a lot of time feeling invisible, being stayed for matters more than I can properly put into words.

Attention seeking. That’s what they call it.

I call it not knowing how to ask for help in a way that actually gets you help.

There’s a difference between wanting to be seen and wanting an audience. Between needing connection and needing applause. I think a lot of people who get labeled as attention seekers are just people who never learned how to say “I’m not okay” in a quiet room to one safe person.

So they say it loudly. In public. And then regret it immediately.

If that’s you — you’re not broken. You’re not manipulative. You’re just someone who needed something and didn’t have a better way to ask for it.

And if you’ve ever rolled your eyes at someone’s “dramatic” post — it might be worth asking what they were really trying to say.

And if you’re one of the friends who stayed — thank you. You have no idea.